@juneboba / juneboba.tumblr.com
My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame, as I have been required to carry my own mother - her apparent crime to be born negro, and mine to be the evidence. Since I wish to deny her no more than I wish to deny myself, you will pardon me for wanting a husband who feels forgiveness of my bloodline is both unnecessary and without grace. — BELLE (2013)
Quick blackout post of my time as Belle in Bermuda’s Beauty and the Beast. We were so beautiful up on that stage. #BlackoutOnTheStage I love us.
YOU’RE SUCH A GORGEOUS BELLE!
the most beautiful belle i’ve ever seen
Belle + Mirrors
“The scene in the mirror, where Dido is kind of pulling at her skin. I had [the scene] hanging over me the whole time, and I knew it was important because I felt like it was the moment where we get a window into Dido’s soul, and even though she’s existing in this elegant world, we see the ugliness that is underneath. This insecurity and frustration coming out in a moment of self-harm. For me, I knew I had to commit to that. I felt that was important because that’s the starting place for her to grow into herself.” — Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Reminder to buy this movie.
That’s wonderful!
These are amazing!!
these are super good like what the fuck who when and where
How can I be too high of rank to dine with the servants, but too low of rank to dine with my own family?
Belle (2013)
“My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame.”
Belle featurette from Fox Searchlight Pictures
AHH! CanNOT wait for this to come out!!
i love the fact that a black woman directed this
Black woman director. Black woman writer. Black woman lead. Love this.
Everybody get the fuck out there and watch it. Take a friend. Take two friends. Go twice.
Remember:
Hollywood has a vested interest in watching this film fail.
Hollywood does not like leads who are not white men.
Hollywood tolerates writers who are not men, but not often.
Hollywood doesn’t like directors who aren’t white men, either, unless they’re Alfonso Cuaron, who is still a man.
Hollywood likes to prove that these are films that “people”—that means you, that means me—will not watch, so they can go back to making movies where the men are white and the women are props.
Make this film explode. Make it impossible to ignore. See it opening weekend and tell everyone you meet how it spoke to you and why.
Look for online reviews and leave comments. If your local newspaper has no critic section, write a letter to the editor. Tell a friend. Tell two friends. Tell your mother’s friends who like romcoms.
You can do something just by spending ten bucks and opening your mouth about it.
What are you doing? You’re encouraging visibility. You’re encouraging diversity. You’re encouraging women in an industry that’s very Good Ole Boys Club.
And also, you get to see what looks like it’s going to be one damned fine movie.
"My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame."
Belle (2014)
I was not expecting that!
I don’t think anyone was expecting that!
IT GOT BETTER
At nineteen I cried while watching the Princess and the Frog in theaters.
I cried. Finally there was a Disney princess that looked like me and mine. She had hair like mine. A nose like my nieces’ noses. Her skin was dark brown and she was beautiful and clever and determined. Tiana meant so much to me and I was grown by the time she came along.
To my nieces, she meant even more. They had a princess that they could play as without their white friends shutting them down because “Belle/Cinderella/ wasn’t brown”. They had a princess that looked like them and that told them that they could be a princess themselves.
And I want that for everyone. I want everyone to be able to look at the media they consume and go “holy crap, this character is reminds me of people i know or people I’m related to” because of their culture and their skin color combined, not just because they’re snarky or they’re into books.
Representation is so important and I will fight to the death to make sure that people get the positive representation that they deserve just by existing in this world.
she was an animal for most of her movie. which is all the more reason why disney shouldn't be allowed to make movies about people of color. someone please make a company that respects poc.
Gaston on women’s Lib.
You see this is the sort of thing I like. Because, especially at Disney, you don’t want to really discourage any of those ideals “thinking, having your own ideas” but you also have to stay in character. So you associate those ideals with the princess in the group, the one who the young girl is supposed to idolize. So, while staying in character, Gaston can announce his displeasure for women who read while also encouraging it in a young girl by giving it the good association of Belle. Idk, I always thought those work arounds that Disney villain face characters go through to not be overtly mean to children but stay in character were really interesting.
Gaston really is the most terrifying Disney villain because he could be anyone in the world.
Later he convinces the whole town to set up his wedding with the knowledge that the would-be bride would be thrown into it. Everyone finds his creepy-ass tactics as cute and “boys will be boys” esque. So yeah, he is terrifying.
Yeah, the truly scary thing about Beauty and the Beast isn’t that Gaston exists, but that society fucking loves him. People who deride the movie by saying it’s about Stockholm Syndrome are ignoring that it’s actually about the various ways that truly decent people get othered by society. People don’t trust the Beast because of the way he looks, which only feeds his anger issues and pushes him further away. Gaston isn’t the only one who criticizes Belle for being bookish, either; the whole town says there must be something wrong with her. And her father gets carted off to a mental asylum for being just a little eccentric.
Howard Ashman, who collaborated on the film’s score and had a huge influence on the movie’s story and themes, was a gay man who died of AIDS shortly after work on the film was completed. If you watch the film with that in mind, the message of it becomes clear. Gaston demonstrates that bullies are rewarded and beloved by society as long as they possess a certain set of characteristics, while nice people who don’t are ostracized. The love story between Belle and the Beast is about them finding solace in each other after society rejects them both.
Notice how the Beast reacts when the whole town comes for him. He’s not angry, he’s sad. He’s tired. And he almost gives up because he has nothing to live for. But then he sees that Belle has come back for him, and suddenly he does. In the original fairy tale, the Beast asks Belle to marry him every night, and the spell is broken when she accepts. In the Disney movie, he waits for her to love him, because he cannot love himself. That’s how badly being ostracized from society and told that you’re a monster all your life can fuck with your head and make you stop seeing yourself as human.
Society rewards the bullies because we’ve been brought up to believe that their victims don’t belong. That if someone doesn’t fit in, then they have to be put in their place, or destroyed. And this movie demonstrates that this line of thinking is wrong. It’s so much deeper than a standard “be yourself” message, and that’s why it’s one of my favorite Disney movies.
Good points. Except the Beast still abused Belle soooooo...yeah.
IM LGUHAING SO HARD I JUST REALIZED WHEN BELLE WAS SINGING SHE WAS LIKE ‘NEWWW AND A BIT ALARMING’ BECAUSE SHES BASICALLY LIKE ‘OH MY FUCKING GOD I MIGHT BE INTO BESTIALITY?’
“I was reading the most wonderful story— about a beanstalk, and an ogre, and a——-“
This girl deserves an award for doing what a lot of us want to do.
Ahhhh
This girl. I must be friends with her.
This is accurate as shit. (Heterosexual) ladies, you gotta stop trying to get with men you can't change. You're not Belle from Beauty and the Beast so don't get into a situation where you'd be in an emotionally/physically abusive relationship in hopes that he will magically transform because of your affections. That's not how a healthy relationship works. You're above that shit. Save yourself the head- and heartache—he won't change.
