Beauty and the Beast features my favorite love story and my favorite Disney Princess, so it holds a very special spot in my heart. So, it’s worth looking into the film to decide when the Movie is supposed to be set.
During the opening musical number “Belle”, Belle is telling the Baker about the book she’s been reading. She’s clearly describing Jack and the Beanstalk, the earliest version being the tale of “Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean” in 1734. But she also deliberately mentions an ogre, not a giant. Near as I could find, the only version with an ogre was written by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, making Belle nearly contemporary to modernity. Belle’s excitement over the book is likely a sign that this is a new story.
During the same musical number, we see a sign depicting a tobacco pipe, but unlike with the Calabash pipe from the Little Mermaid movie. I could place it to possibly be a Billiard type, but the exact era of creation escapes me. However, tobacco pipes have been around as long as Tobacco has been introduced to European trade, starting in the 16th century.
The history of colored printing goes as far back as the 16th century, and there are illustrations from the early 1700s with an impressive variety of color that help establish a stronger time period. The book also shows the words Le Prince Charmant or Prince Charming. Prince Charming started being used in 1697 in Charles Perrault’s version of Sleeping Beauty, although there, Prince Charming was not a name. Rather, Perrault stated that the Prince was charmed by her words. The first story to use Prince Charming as a name is the Tale of Pretty Goldilocks. It was written at some point in the 17th Century by Madame d’Aulnoy, but in her version the hero was named Avenant. It wasn’t until 1889 when Andrew Lang retold the story that Avenant was dubbed as Charming. One year later in 1890, Oscar Wilde used the term “Prince Charming” sarcastically in his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, meaning that the term had gotten its more modern meaning by this point in time.
Gaston’s musket is a Blunderbuss, which was invented in the early 1600′s and remained popular through the 18th century before falling out of fashion in the middle of the 19th century. However, considering Belle states that this is a backwards town and Gaston is an old-fashioned, Primeval man, it’s possible he’s using a largely outdated weapon.
While there are no street lamps in the city, we can see in the background lanterns on the sides of buildings, which might allude to the movie taking place before the invention of gas lamps. However, gas lamps were invented in 1809, and if the version of Jack and the Beanstalk is from 1890, then by all accounts the town should have gas lamps. What this amounting evidence is leading me to believe is that the film is directly following the plot of the original fairy tale.
In the story, Beauty’s father is a merchant who loses his fortune due to a storm destroying his cargo. They’re forced to live on a farm until the merchant stumbles upon the Beast’s castle and kick starts the plot. In the opening song, Belle says “every morning’s just the same, since the morning that we came, to this poor, provincial town.” This could mean that she grew up in a much more modern, urban, and progressive town. Possibly even Paris. But that after Maurice suffered severe financial trouble, he was forced to move them to the small, backwards town that was practically living an entire century behind the rest of France, which is why she’s so bored and unimpressed by the little town. It helps explain why she’s so eager to want to get out of this town and see the world. She wants to be part of the modern world again.
Interestingly, I can support this theory with background information. According to some of my research, Belle’s village was based on the little town of Riquewihr, France, which still looks like it did in the 16th century to this day. So the idea that Belle’s little village lacks so many modern elements could be a nod to the architecture of this sleepy French village that has remained largely untouched by the march of time. Hence why it looks more like something out of the 1700s despite the many elements from the 1800s being present.
During the song “Be Our Guest”, Lumiere dances with a match stick. Match sticks were invented in 1805. Assuming the film still takes place in the 1890s, this would be concurrent with the other evidence we’ve seen thus far. Later in the same song, the silverware makes an Eiffel tower, which was constructed in 1889. Since Jack and the Beanstalk was written after that, it still fits within the suspected time frame.
During the climax of the battle, Cogsworth is wearing military garments reflective of Napoleonic styles. Napoleon was coronated in 1804 until 1814, had a brief return to power in 1815, and eventually died in 1821. So this is also congruent to the established time period.
In the Youtube Video “Fashion Expert Fact Checks Belle from Beauty and the Beast’s Costumes” by Glamour, April Calahan, a Fashion Historian from the Fashion Institute of Technology directly noted that Belle’s yellow gown lacks the shape of a proper 18th century dress, and more closely resembles the shape of 19th century dresses, fitting into the evidence that’s been mounting in support of a late 19th century setting.
As a part of his primary costume, Lefou wears a waistcoat and tailcoats, which came into vogue in the 1800s, namely from the 1840s through the 1850s.
But if the film is set in the 1800s, how can the Beast still be a prince after the French Revolution? Well something worth noting is that when he finds out that Belle isn’t coming to dinner, the Beast storms through the halls to her room as Cogsworth calls after him as “Your Eminence” and “Your Grace”. The address of “Your Eminence” is reserved for Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, and is an ecclesiastical style of address. “Your Grace” is noticeably an English style of address, but it’s being used by Cogsworth who is British, so I can chalk that up to just part of his culture. Although it was used for British monarchs, it fell out of use during the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547) and after that, the use of “Your Grace” became used to address archbishops and non-royal Dukes and Duchesses. Now clearly the Beast is not a cardinal or a bishop, especially if he is looking for the love of a woman to make him human, since it’s forbidden for Catholic priests to marry. So clearly that is not what is meant here. But the other answer actually does hold a bit of weight. Beast’s father was in fact, a Duke. So how is the Beast a prince? He’s not. Not entirely. See, there’s more than one kind of Prince in French nobility. There’s a Prince du Sang, or a Prince by Blood. Effectively, the Crown Prince, the sons of ruling monarchs. But the title is also given to lords in charge of a Principality, one of the smallest territorial sizes. The Beast’s principality probably only extends to having power over the little unnamed village. And with it being after the revolution, Beast might not even have the proper use of his title anymore. He’s effectively a rich kid in a fancy house with no real authority or power. He’s just old money from a by-gone era of human history. But if Beast’s address of “Your Grace” is accurate, that would mean that he’s a non-royal Duke, meaning he would not likely have been executed during the Revolution, as his family would have essentially been governors or senators than actual monarchs. They just had jurisdiction over a small piece of the Kingdom of France and reported back to and obeyed the orders of their King. Thus, he would not have been important enough to be killed or chased out of power by the townsfolk.
CONCLUSION
The movie is set between the late autumn and early-to-mid winter of 1890. Although the snow is gone when Belle returns to the village, the trees are still bare, signaling that it may just be unseasonably warm, though it could be the very early spring of 1891 between the receding of the snow and the blossoming of new spring foliage. Between the books, clothing, and references made, my conclusion is that Belle is a very modern girl living in a backwards little town stuck in the past, thus why a village in 1890 looks so completely lacking in modern technology despite the era. The Prince is nothing more than a fancy title as the son of a Duke, and he likely has very little if any actual government authority. Essentially, Belle married into wealth, not power, and will never be a proper queen, and I’m not sure if the wife of a lord ruling a principality is a princess or not, but I suspect the answer is no. Making Belle, like Mulan, a Disney Princess who did not marry royalty, was not born royalty, and thus, cannot be called a Disney Princess. She’s definitely a noblewoman, but she’s not royal by any means.
SETTING: Riquewihr, France
KINGDOM: The French Republic (France)
YEAR: Autumn, 1890 - Spring, 1891
PERIOD: The Third Republic (1870-1940)
LANGUAGE: French
This would also explain why no one in the town seems to care that their regent hasn’t been seen in years.
i’m losing my mind at the concept that Belle will very likely live to see the first World War, barring other catastrophe.
Belle is 17 years old at the beginning of the film. If the film takes place in 1890, she’ll only be 41 years old when Duke Ferdinand is shot some 800 miles away. The Beast is barely four years older than Belle. He’ll be 45.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (by way of Wikipedia), “costly battles on the Western Front forced France to conscript men up to the age of 45.” It’s not impossible that The Beast sees combat during WWI. Trench warfare, gas warfare, no man’s land, all the horrors of front line at the dawn of the 20th century. It’s entirely possible that Belle signs up with the Red Cross as a nurse, maybe utilizing a mechanical aptitude inherited from her father to aid in the war effort.
When Germany invades Poland, Belle and The Beast will be 56 and 60, respectively. In the spring of the following year, the Nazis invades France. They occupy castles and large estates across France, to use as both bases of operation and as strongholds to hoard stolen wealth (in the form of gold and art) and political hostages.
Would Belle and the Beast fight off Nazi invaders from their home? They’ve defended it before, but is there enough magic left in those old walls to mount a defense? Or would they flee their chateau, go underground, and use what remaining assets they have to aid La Résistance?
Do they have children, and if so what’s become of them in this time of war?
Listen, what I’m getting at here is that since they’re both Disney properties, there’s an entirely justifiable team up between Beauty and the Beast and Captain America.
built around two solid points: 1) Lois Lane is the lead character; and 2) The audience dose not know who is playing Superman going into the movie.
So the movie centers around a young Lois, who’s desperately trying to get a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet, despite a hiring freeze as the printed journalism business struggles to keep up, and despite the fact she has no prior journalism experience (at least, not outside of an expensive degree that has yet to start paying for itself). Even though no one at the Planet will even return her calls, she barges in in the middle of a work day, trying to get an interview. She bounces off a lot of people (a number of them tall guys with dark hair and nice eyes who she barely notices) until she tracks down Perry White, who tells her, sarcastically, that he’ll hire her on the spot if she can bring him a properly sourced article revealing the story Metropolis’s new hero, who just yesterday stopped a runaway train with his bare hands.
She gets to work. Her friends tell her she’s crazy. Her sister bails her out of jail at least once (maybe a montage of times). Her father, General Lane, threatens disownment and/or military arrest. This “menace” broke a muggers arm last week, and is wanted for vigilantism. If she really does find out the identity of this man (who’s been gaining notoriety with every feat) and brings it to a newspaper before the military, her father would have to take action. (This country is his family, after all.)
But the more Lois looks into this ‘super man’, the more she likes what she sees. It’s hard without credentials, but she’s been collecting eye-witness reports for months trying to find the pattern to track; the pattern that everyone’s been looking for. She has dozens of interviews with police, and store owners, and caught criminals, but it’s in the interviews of the regular folk that she finds the pattern:
This man is kind.
Every headline is about a larger-than-life figure who catches falling statues, wins chases with cars, and stops bullets with his pecs. In the words of the innocent people of Metropolis though, is someone else. Someone who flies broken cars to the shop from the highway during rush hour. Someone who takes a sobbing child from the scene of a bike accident and drops off a smiling one with their parents. Someone who’s been spotted leaving flowers by the headstones of the ones who didn’t make it out of that train crash. Someone who sits in a secluded corner of the park and plays chess with the old woman who’s husband can no longer leave the house. Someone who literally pulled a dog out of a river and a cat from a tree.
So, to find the Man of Steel, Lois searches for kindness - and she finds it everywhere. She finds all the coats freely shed for someone cold. She finds all the grocery carts paid for by the previous customer. She finds lonely veterans offered a seat at the family table in restaurants. She finds hate symbols painted over with cute cartoons and symbols of love. She finds dozens and dozens of volunteers who help clean up and serve food and rebuild after train crashes and car wrecks and robberies.
She finds Superman.
And then she finds a man in the park.
He’s not doing much, just sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. The copy of the Daily Planet on the bench next to him speculates on the dangers of super humans, as it has every day for the last two weeks. Some have even suggested that the Man of Steel is an alien, though those theories have only barely broken into mainstream. Whatever this man is worrying over, whatever weight is on his shoulders, seems much heavier than a newspaper, though. Lois hasn’t worried herself with the same issue’s as her prospective employer, either. Thoughts still on the group of teens she’s just passed, each promising to beat up on some boy for their friend, are still fresh on her mind, and she takes the spot next to the stranger on the bench.
He’s not a stranger, though. Lois recognizes him. She doesn’t know his name, but she saw him that day at the Daily Planet months ago, and she’s seen him across the police tape at scenes she’s investigated. He wrote today’s front page article: “Man of Steel, or Menace of Steel?”
He’s politely flustered when she sits down, and she promptly tells him that everything about his article - she’s already read it, of course - is absurd. She doesn’t care who “made him write it”, the entire thing is just plain wrong. She finds herself repeating stories she’s read and re-read at all hours of the morning. Stories of regular people who’d told her how they’d been inspired by Superman. How they’d taken leaps of faith toward recovery and new lives thanks to Superman. Teenagers have chosen to live because of Superman. She quotes sources, and sources of people, including herself, who have said that the city of Metropolis - maybe even the world - was so much better because of Superman.
“Superman?” the reporter asks.
“It’s just something I’ve been calling him. He’s got that big S on his chest, right?”
The reporter laughs. He hasn’t smiled the whole time, only looked at her with wide eyes. His smile is… nice. His glasses are dumb though.
“Yeah,” she admits, “it’s a dumb name.”
“No,” he says. A weight has fallen off his shoulders while she was flipping through her notebooks. He sniffles a bit. Lois had just torn into his article with all the fury she could muster, is he crying about it? No, he’s smiling, still. “I really like it. Have you written all this down?”
Lois Lane writes it all down. Her new friend (who proofread the hell out of it because Lois is driven as hell but can’t spell) Clark Kent turned it in to his boss. The newest headline reads:
The Story of Superman -by Lois Lane
She’s getting paid more than Clark in under a year. He just seems to be so distracted all the time. Maybe she should look into that…
This would be a great series and I feel like the twist-thing with the audience not knowing who was playing Superman would work even better if the character was racebent. just a thought.
Headcanon that an outraged 6-year-old Charlie Weasley writes to an elderly Newt Scamander wanting to know why Gringotts keeps a dragon locked up underground and begging him to fix it. Newt writes back saying that sadly he’s been fighting that fight for years and no one ever wants to listen to him because the powerful families whose money is being kept safe by the dragon always shut him down, and that Charlie is the first person he’s heard of who’s as angry as he is about it. Charlie decides that day to dedicate his life to finding out everything he can about dragons so that one day he can free the poor Gringotts dragon. After the war, when they hear that Harry, Ron and Hermione freed the dragon, they celebrate and immediately begin petitioning to have it made illegal to imprison dragons so that nothing like that ever happens again. It’s only when Hermione becomes Minister that it’s finally signed into law.
This is the best Harry Potter headcanon I’ve ever seen
Just imagine how that conversation would go though, like Charlie’s been learning about dragons his whole life, studying them, learning about the laws surrounding them, practising the jailbreak of dragons by smuggling one out of Hogwarts, preparing for the moment when, one day, he can free the Ukrainian Ironbelly from Gringotts.
And Ron’s like “Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it—we broke into Gringotts and used him as our get-away vehicle. He’s just chilling in the wilds somewhere now so, yeah. Job done.”
I want an AU where Ron, completely convinced that he’s overshadowed by all his brothers and will never be as remarkable or as well-recognised as any of them, just accidentally achieves all of their major life goals without noticing. They’re all super jealous and think of him as The Golden Brother and he’s completely clueless.
This kid at work today completely schooled their mum about the struggles of being a retail worker and I was living for it
Mother: *grabs a t-shirt from the bottom of the pile*
Kid: you just ruined that lady's folding
Mother: she doesn't mind it's her job
Kid: she just did her job but you ruined it. You always tell me to tidy my own mess.
What if they get Pink to do the voice of Pink Diamond?
The Doctor (Bashir) in the TARDIS :D A little bit different from what I usually post, but because it included me and my Jack I post it here anyway. This is NO MANIP. I took this photo of Alexander Siddig today at FedCon 2014 in Düsseldorf. Against all odds my Jack and me were with him in the elevator when he was on his way to the TARDIS. We led him to the TARDIS and he took Jacks coat on, which is a real prop from the show - so here I give you: Alexander Siddig as the Doctor with Jack Harkness’ coat and blaster!
I have never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life
The Bucky part oh my god
WATCH TILL THE END OH MY FUCKING GOD
And just yesterday I was talking with a friend about the number of flyers The Avengers had…
So you know how earlier I said that Fanlore is an great resource and that I found that Torchwood vid on the crack page? Well, the only reason that’s the case is because awesome people like you guys write articles for Fanlore; it’s basically a fannish Wikipedia–a people’s history and fandom preservation project. And right now we’ve got our June Bloom event going on, dedicated to filling the gaps where people find themselves asking “How does this not have a Fanlore page yet?!” So even though The Avengers page has a decent amount of information on it, there are always new articles to create, and you are the perfect people to do so!
ight so you know how the weasleys car is in the forbidden forest, right? and also how harry went in to the forest to face voldemort. just picture harry walkin up an being ready to die and everything and then the car just comes out of nowhere and absolutely creams voldemort. like 60 mph dukes of hazard type shit
Just so you can see how much random fucking doodling goes on. This is not even all of it. There are tiny people running all through my sketchbooks just being shenanigan-y left and right. Lots of clothes swapping and dancing and running through hallways. Image captions are your friends, but in general, here we have:
Random Londo and G’Kar hug thing, Londo shops at Garak’s, Cardassian/Narn, Deep Dish Doki Doki, iscribble glamour SWAN!Nny, SWANNny and Edgar in the land of post-trauma support kiss, DD9 Elim and Julian being adorable.
Okay but seriously folks - as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.
It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!
First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.
Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…
…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!
*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*
Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.
Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”
And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)
One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.
