Catface McHornswaggler FLIRTS

Disney has started releasing TV spots for Beauty and the Beast, which more and more looks like Belle’s Night at the Museum. (They have also released a clip of Emma Watson singing, to prove she can, I guess. She’s fine. She sounds like a good singer in your high school musical.) In one clip you can see Belle throwing a snowball to distract Catface McHornswaggler from eating her horse, but the clip I really want to talk about is the one in which ole Catface FLIRTS.

“Show me the smile,” Lumiere says, and Catface’s cat face twitches and distorts and his teeth protrude like Charlie Kelly’s bird with teeth. This happens in the cartoon, of course, but our brains process visual information differently, depending on the medium. A cartoon is patently false, so we readily accept a monster grinning because it’s happening in a fantasy world. But live action is different, the goal is to be photorealistic, and the more you try to ape reality with computers, the more our minds want to reject it. (See also: Tarkin in Rogue One.) So this is trying to tell us that the Beast is “real” and he’s smiling and if you aren’t instinctively creeped out by this, you might want to visit the nearest priest because you might be a demon.

BUT IT GETS WORSE. Because then Catface tries to flirt with Belle, who laughs because the Stockholm Syndrome is setting in and she’s subconsciously seeking to endear herself to her captor. (Consider this your periodic reminder that Belle’s agency is hopelessly compromised and every decision is made under duress.) Again, you know this was all happening in the cartoon but it’s so CREEPY to watch a live-action Beast try to bone Belle. He looks like reanimated taxidermy and Belle’s like, “This is totally fine.” I can’t even imagine what the porn parody of this is going to be like.