Another World or the World of an Other? The Space of Romance in Recent Versions of "Beauty and the Beast"

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ion and rapid shifts in tonality meant that he was able to deploy music to force complex, multilayered gay reads from these otherwise flat stereotypical figures. This process is most apparent in the use of the character Gaston. In a fashion similar to the Cocteau version, B and B/Disney forges a male homosocial relationship of rivalry between and Beast, then charges this with gay currents. Once more, this homosocial dynamic has a double edge to it: at times, the two characters are locked into a series of visual parallels that enhance their status as gay types; at others, they become differentiated and even diametrically opposed to suggest differences between gay male and straight male perspectives. is the pivot to this dynamic: early in the film his beauty is accentuated in a parody of the voyeuristic look at the male body important to the gay reception of musicals; yet as the film unfolds, is increasingly used to suggest the violence and animosity directed by straight men against gay men. is no simple villain. Early scenes emphasize his status as a narcissistic fool, and his comic absorption in his own body and the phallic weapons he uses to adorn it is treated with affectionate irony. Gaston's narcissism and his propensity to collect phallic decorative objects are conveyed in the visual design of his lodge: a massive self-portrait hangs over the mantel, and as himself tells us, he uses antlers in all of his decorating (a possible allusion to the decor of Robert Mitchum's den in Home from the Hill [1960]). Gaston's great love of all things masculine forms the content of the production number Gaston, in which and his friends joyously celebrate his power and male beauty. Gaston is yet another queer homage, this time to the male chorus number from the musical tradition (e.g., There Ain't Nothin' Like a Dame, from South Pacific). Ashman's lyrics are amusing in that they exist as little more than an elaborate fetishization of the powerful male body, carried out in the most hy-