American Studies Commons^™

"The Guy With The Problem": Reform Narrative In Disney's Beauty And The Beast, Faith Dickens

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

When Disney's film Beauty and the Beast was first released in 1991, it was hailed by critics as a departure from the problematic portrayals of women that had plagued the company's previous efforts at converting fairy tales into animated features. Since then, feminist criticism has provided several different interpretations of the film, some of which seek to assign Beauty and the Beast to a specific literary genre. In looking at Disney's film as a literary text, critics such as June Cummins have argued that it most closely resembles a patriarchal classic romance, while others, such as Susan Swan, view it …