Just because the movie manages to evoke some sympathy for her situation doesn’t in any way suggest that it condones her actions. Several of her johns are portrayed sympathetically, but even with the ones that aren’t, to assert that the movie argues for the disproportionate punishment of death for each and every one of them, painting as broad a brush stroke about gender as you claim, says more about your predisposed mindset in reading the film that way than anything that actually exists in the film to support such a wrong-headed interpretation.
Well. He can’t be Jesus if he doesn’t die and come back. Not a proper Jesus anyway. Killing him is for the greater good!
No, he didn’t. There may be some confusion due to the fact that “Beauty and the Beast” is not really a folk tale, it’s a literary work with a known author. There are several famous fairy tales that were penned by Andersen (“The Little Mermaid”, “The Snow Queen”, “Thumbelina”, etc.), but “Beauty and the Beast” was not one of them.
The author of the most familiar version of “Beauty and the Beast” was Madame Leprince de Beaumont (first published in the 1750s), but she apparently got the idea from a longer work by Madame Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. The basic idea of a woman marrying an animal or monster goes back much further, and as Iona and Peter Opie point out in Classic Fairy Tales, the story of Cupid and Psyche in The Golden Ass (2nd century AD, very likely based on an even older folktale) is pretty similar. But the “Beauty and the Beast” we know today is de Beaumont’s version. Well, I guess the Disney version may be equally famous now, but the text you find in a fairy tale anthology is probably going to be de Beaumont’s story.
Incidentally, the Disney version draws heavily from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et La Bete. Cocteau introduced a subplot involving a handsome but scheming suitor for Beauty, a man who is rejected by her early on but who later goes to the Beast’s castle and attempts to kill him to “save” Beauty.
That still misses that the actions of the joker showed that torture did not work, and I was replying to that specifically.
Now, surveillance, that is another matter.
What do you think was the filmmaker’s point in making this particular movie, about this particular person?
And what is intended by the film’s title?
To be fair, John Coffey was misunderstood…they took him to be a murderer, after all. I think he saw the futility of trying always to “take it back” and wanted to be away from all those people he couldn’t get to to help.
He didn’t smack her. He just held her hostage in his castle and flew into threatening fits of rage when she didn’t tow his line. He also, of course, threatened her with starvation when she declined to date him.
Not like that’s abusive or anything, though.
On the same note, General Hospital Luke and Laura: Your rapist can turn out to be your true love.
To be fair, General Hospital did abandon that particular message. Luke and Laura ultimately divorced precisely because of that issue.
Are you serious? Well, THAT is even more lame. They were joyfully united for a quarter century and she finally remembers that he raped her?
What happened?
Yeah, but they got back together… over and over, every time the ratings dipped. And IIRC they did not get divorced because of the rape- although their son was a bit horrified when informed of it by his half-brother.
In all fairness to General Hospital, the theme of daytime soaps is all about dysfunctional relationships.
And the rose and the magical mirror–or are those also in the original story?
My memory is pretty fuzzy, but I thought that their relationship suffered its killing blow once Lucky learned of the rape. I know that Laura was involved with Stefan for awhile after that (shudder) and she was not reconciled with Luke when Scottie drove her insane and they shipped her off to the asylum. In fact, Luke was free to marry Tracy Quartermaine after that.
Stoid it wasn’t that she suddenly remembered he raped her, it was that Lucky found out after Elizabeth was raped, and he was so horrified/disgusted that the whole thing sort of imploded IIRC. Currently, she’s living in Paris and Luke elected to remain married to Tracy.
There are a lot of stories like that - I’ve always hated “The Velveteen Rabbit”, despite its ultimately “happy” ending,
See also the original ending of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Esmeralda gets hanged and Quasimodo curls up with her corpse until he starves to death. Only the goat lives happily ever after. Wonder why Disney didn’t go with that ending?
Please recommend a compilation of these originals! 
That story of Sleeping Beauty - with the pregnancy and the baby - has always creeped the shit out of me. I keep imagining things like the umbilical cord just dragging around, and the placenta laying between her legs, and maybe streaks of blood everywhere, with flies…
yeah, that’s fucking creepy.
The magic mirror is in the original, as is the business about the father plucking the rose and thus incurring a debt to the Beast. (The latter plot point is not in the Disney movie, but is in the Coctaeu.) I believe the enchanted rose that indicates how long the Beast has left to live is unique to the Disney version, but the idea of an important rose does derive from the original story. I’m not sure why Disney changed it around, maybe to make the father more sympathetic.
I grew up reading Andrew Lang’s fairy tale compilations, which are known by the color of their covers. The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, etc. All complete with the gory details (eating babies, walking until the soles of your feet shred, cutting off a finger to finish a ladder) and quite beautiful illustrations.