![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkThis is something I've been thinking about lately.
The "Beauty and the Beast" archetype is extremely pervasive in romance stories. Explicit retellings usually focus on the aspect of ugly appearance vs. inner beauty, but the secondary message of the story, that jerks can become better people through love, has been widely influential. You can see it in everything from Pride and Prejudice to Twilight and other works of paranormal romance (including Fifty Shades of Gray); you can see its influence in the eternal popularity of "bad boy"/jerk love interests.
But this message, changing people through love, can become problematic. I don't doubt the power of such a message and the grip it holds on many people's imaginations. The issue is, though, that in real life it often doesn't work. It's one thing to have a Pride and Prejudice situation in which two people only fall in love after they consciously try to become better people to become worthy of each other's affections; it's another thing to have a Twilight (or any of its knockoffs) situation in which a girl keeps clinging to a relationship that ranges from unhealthy to downright abusive because the misogynistic and/or violent boyfriend "is really a good guy deep down." Or, even worse, because the guy's misogyny/violence "is actually an expression of his love."
In worst case scenarios, with literal retellings of "Beauty and the Beast," it begins to come off as Stockholm Syndrome. The recent TV series Once Upon a Time has a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" with Belle and Rumplestiltskin, starting with the season one episode "Skin Deep." And I thought the episode was sweet. Then in season two, Belle & Rumple's relationship take much more of center stage, and this is when I began to get a sour taste in the back of my mouth. Belle consistently makes statements like "I'll keep fighting for him!" when Rumplestiltskin fails to curb his violently sociopathic tendencies toward his enemies. It's beginning to seem as though her task is hopeless and she's seeing something in him that isn't there.
When this trope is applied in the traditional sense gender-wise, it comes disturbingly close to rationalizing abusive relationships. In the rare cases in which it's flipped, it comes off as chauvinistic. In the TV series Arrow, there's a subplot with Oliver Queen trying to teach the revenge-obsessed Helena Bertinelli to pursue justice instead of vengeance and therefore "save" her. When they have a falling out, he realizes that she was "beyond saving." He has to act as her "guide" and "mentor" because she doesn't know better, but his efforts are wasted anyway. Also note the interesting gendered assumptions that accompany this switch of the usual archetype: in BatB stories where the guy must change, the girl changes him through her love and emotional support; in Arrow, Oliver has to teach Helena to be rational, to plan ahead, and to use weapons that require "discipline."
The fact of the matter is, laying the responsibility on one romantic partner's shoulders to change the other rarely ever leads to positive implications. BatB retellings that focus more on the appearance aspect than the change aspect, such as Robin MicKinley's Sunshine, or BatB stories that focus on something different entirely, like The CW's 2012 Beauty and the Beast TV series, avoid this problem by portraying the "beast" as a nice guy to begin with; therefore, the story becomes about two different people trying to understand each other.
I'm not saying that the "love changes people" storyline can never work. Pride and Prejudice shows that it can. It's just that this particular narrative structure is so often misconstrued, leading to highly unfortunate implications, that I would caution against its use without thinking through what you're writing first.
The "Beauty and the Beast" archetype is extremely pervasive in romance stories. Explicit retellings usually focus on the aspect of ugly appearance vs. inner beauty, but the secondary message of the story, that jerks can become better people through love, has been widely influential. You can see it in everything from Pride and Prejudice to Twilight and other works of paranormal romance (including Fifty Shades of Gray); you can see its influence in the eternal popularity of "bad boy"/jerk love interests.
But this message, changing people through love, can become problematic. I don't doubt the power of such a message and the grip it holds on many people's imaginations. The issue is, though, that in real life it often doesn't work. It's one thing to have a Pride and Prejudice situation in which two people only fall in love after they consciously try to become better people to become worthy of each other's affections; it's another thing to have a Twilight (or any of its knockoffs) situation in which a girl keeps clinging to a relationship that ranges from unhealthy to downright abusive because the misogynistic and/or violent boyfriend "is really a good guy deep down." Or, even worse, because the guy's misogyny/violence "is actually an expression of his love."
In worst case scenarios, with literal retellings of "Beauty and the Beast," it begins to come off as Stockholm Syndrome. The recent TV series Once Upon a Time has a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" with Belle and Rumplestiltskin, starting with the season one episode "Skin Deep." And I thought the episode was sweet. Then in season two, Belle & Rumple's relationship take much more of center stage, and this is when I began to get a sour taste in the back of my mouth. Belle consistently makes statements like "I'll keep fighting for him!" when Rumplestiltskin fails to curb his violently sociopathic tendencies toward his enemies. It's beginning to seem as though her task is hopeless and she's seeing something in him that isn't there.
When this trope is applied in the traditional sense gender-wise, it comes disturbingly close to rationalizing abusive relationships. In the rare cases in which it's flipped, it comes off as chauvinistic. In the TV series Arrow, there's a subplot with Oliver Queen trying to teach the revenge-obsessed Helena Bertinelli to pursue justice instead of vengeance and therefore "save" her. When they have a falling out, he realizes that she was "beyond saving." He has to act as her "guide" and "mentor" because she doesn't know better, but his efforts are wasted anyway. Also note the interesting gendered assumptions that accompany this switch of the usual archetype: in BatB stories where the guy must change, the girl changes him through her love and emotional support; in Arrow, Oliver has to teach Helena to be rational, to plan ahead, and to use weapons that require "discipline."
The fact of the matter is, laying the responsibility on one romantic partner's shoulders to change the other rarely ever leads to positive implications. BatB retellings that focus more on the appearance aspect than the change aspect, such as Robin MicKinley's Sunshine, or BatB stories that focus on something different entirely, like The CW's 2012 Beauty and the Beast TV series, avoid this problem by portraying the "beast" as a nice guy to begin with; therefore, the story becomes about two different people trying to understand each other.
I'm not saying that the "love changes people" storyline can never work. Pride and Prejudice shows that it can. It's just that this particular narrative structure is so often misconstrued, leading to highly unfortunate implications, that I would caution against its use without thinking through what you're writing first.
