a most peculiar mademoiselle

I’ve always considered Beauty and the Beast to be my favorite Disney movie but the other day, after watching a particularly bad pirated copy in which the sound moved at twice the speed of the animation, thereby leaving the second half of the film silent and might I say a great deal more poetic, I realized the plot is essentially an argument in favor of bestiality. Sure, Beast is actually a slightly effeminate man who was turned into an animal when he turned away a creepy old woman with unusually long fingernails, but “quite different from the rest of us” Belle doesn’t actually know that when she falls madly in love with him. Fingernails have been shown to harbor the human papilloma virus. That prince was no fool.

Having recently turned 25, I felt a bit weird watching Beauty and the Beast in my underwear with the curtains drawn but in my defense, I like watching movies in my underwear with the curtains drawn. I suppose I could have put on some pants and invited my closest friend in Kisoro over to join me but I was worried about the possible long-term psychological effects of such a movie on a four year-old boy, especially in a four year-old boy whose favorite activity is pulling grasshoppers apart piece by piece, presumably as a means of unearthing their deepest secrets before moving on to the more extreme tactic of water-boarding. Children here aren’t taught to play nice with animals, let alone encouraged by motherly tea kettles to fall in love with them. Tea kettles are there to make tea, candlesticks are there to supplement the rough realities of shoddy electricity and young women aren’t likely to give that lion with the standoffish personality another chance, regardless of his ballroom dancing abilities.

I’ve been told kids who abuse animals grow into adults who abuse people but if that’s really true, every primary school class in Uganda is actually a Future Batterers of Uganda convention. Americans are quick to cite cruelty to animals but I think I’d rather watch a grasshopper be disfigured than watch one more innocent dog be forced into a Christmas sweater. I’d venture to say the grasshopper retains more of its dignity. When you think about it, there’s really nothing more mysterious than a missing limb. In fact, an injury like that might be just enough to entice an attractive French bookworm with a romantic inclination toward misunderstood animals, which should make any Disney-loving American quite pleased indeed.