The enduring trope of the gorgeous woman and the monster originates in Greek myth, finds its archetype in Villeneuve’s 1740 version of Beauty and the Beast, and is a beloved cliche alive and well in movies, television, and other romance-based media. While it clearly hits a deep psychological need within the audience, one drawing from Jung’s archetype of the werewolf or monster, there are drawbacks of the continued iteration of this trope. This research will use content analysis to trace the evolution of the Beauty and the Beast story from its original French version to the 1991 Disney film to more modern and adult-aged variations in the television show Lucifer and the Guillermo del Toro film The Shape of Water. The analysis will assess how the four works describe not just the relationship between the heroine and the monstrous love interest but also how the love interest or “beast” in each story is characterized and othered. This study seeks to understand how descriptions of each monster’s respective unusual features could also be viewed as depicting different disabilities (limited fine motor skills, burns, and trouble walking) as horrific and alienating. From there, this study will interrogate the depiction of the “beasts” in Beauty and the Beast trope-based media through the disability studies lens to critically examine how repeatedly revisiting this tale has the potential to propagate a cycle that casts disability as monstrous and that also fetishizes the other.
At the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Conference in New Orleans from April 16 – 19th 2025