I just finished reading Gabriel’s Inferno, by Sylvain Reynard and gave it a rather scathing review on Goodreads. One of the reactions this solicited was the question of why the “Bella and Edward” trope is so popular at present. I’ve given this some thought. The “Bella and Edward” trope is, essentially, a Beauty and the Beast story, and it has always been popular. It perpetuates the pleasing social myth of women as virginal innocents and men as bestial monsters who require soothing, saving and redeeming. This binary survives and thrives because distracts us from more murky realities of who we are.
I found it interesting that this binary is characterized, in Gabriel’s Inferno, by the concept of making love vs fucking. And the song ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails is used as a symbolic device to signify the ‘fucking’ variety of sex. The only lyric quoted – over and over again – in the novel is ‘I want to fuck you like an animal”. It’s ironic in the extreme that the song, if you actually listen carefully to the lyrics, is actually quite complex and speaks to a behaviour that is quite the opposite of what animals do. The first and most important complexity in that particular lyric is the question of WHO is being likened to an animal. Is it ‘I want to be like an animal when I fuck you‘? or is it ‘I want to fuck you as if you were an animal‘? It is never clear whether it is the desirer or the object of desire who plays the part of the animal. And certainly it is worth noting: animals don’t fuck to get closer to God. They simply do it instinctively and in order to perpetuate the species.
So this characterization of the human sexual urge as being animalistic or men who have erotic appetites as being like animals / beasts, is absurd. We don’t only want to mate when females are in estrus. We seldom mate with the express intent to reproduce. Humans have, as George Bataille pointed out, a vast excess of sexual energy which requires spending. How we cope with it, out we seek out ways to expend it is eroticism. [1. Bataille, G. (1986). Erotism: Death and Sensuality (M. Dalwood, Trans.). City Lights Books] Moreover, that desire is a fully conscious one. No matter how much, historically, we have insisted on characterizing lust as a mindless and bestial thing, it simply isn’t. Anyone who has lost an erection or dried up mid-coitus, due to an errant, problematic mental image, memory, or interfering thought knows this. The writer, poet and critic Octavio Paz agrees: “Nor is eroticism mere animal sexuality; it is ceremony, representation. It is sexuality transfigured, a metaphor.” [2. Paz, O. (1995). The double flame: love and eroticism (H. Lane, Trans). Harcourt Brace, New York] As humans, we have transfigured this excess of biological energy and. over the history of our evolution, crafted something entirely complex and unique to our species with it. (Yes, I know there is some research to support the theory that Bonobos mate unnecessarily to strengthen social bonds, but human eroticism goes way past that kind of cause and effect paradigm).
We are, essentially, a perverse species, in that we have perverted/ subverted a purely biological function into an entire universe of symbols, rituals, goals, projections. The act of ‘civilizing’ or ‘ritualizing’ our sexuality is a perversion of it. How on earth does a pair of legs in fishnet stockings wearing high heels have anything at all to do with procreation? And nothing is more perverse than the way we have bound the concept of sexual desire to love. These are human-generated, culture-generated associations in the extreme. And at its extreme, we believe that this ecstatic sojourn in the realm of eroticism changes us somehow, helps us shrug off the layers of individual isolation that have accreted through our immersion in social structure and experience a sort of momentary death of the self. Hence the part of the Nine Inch Nail ‘Closer’ lyric that Reynard conveniently doesn’t quote “You get me closer to God.”
I’m not using the term ‘perversion’ in a negative way. I’m not suggesting that genetically pragmatic animal behaviour is better or purer. This is who we are. This how we deal with the excess – we mythologize, metaphorize, ritualize, embellish and fictionalize. We are creatures of imagination of language and we have created, out of the excess of our desire, an entire language system of the erotic. The full curve of the breast, the glimpse of happy trail, the redness of lipstick, the flick of the tongue, the ‘look of love’, the wanton sigh, the wedding ring, the studded metal cock ring. A universe of signs and meanings orbiting around the reality of our sexual desire.
“Eroticism and sexuality are independent kingdoms belonging to the same vital universe,” says Paz. [3. Paz, O. (1998) An Erotic Beyond: Sade. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. New York] And so the story of the Beauty and the Beast, is one of the many allegories we have evolved to tell the story of our struggle between this excess of desire and the society that seeks to control it, pacify it, force it into a workable paradigm in the context of human society.
The problem for me is that this particular allegory, in its original form, only serves to lull is into a false sense of security. It doesn’t delve any deeper into our understandings and constructions of either the Beauty or the Beast. King Kong is another version of the Beauty and the Beast myth, and one in which some of the fundamental falsehoods of the myth are explored. In King Kong, we see Kong in his own setting, in the majesty of this primeval environment. We see it ‘colonized’ by superficially more ‘civilized’ forces, who are in fact hell bent on exploiting their discovery financially. ‘Tis’ beauty killed the beast,” is the iconic line at the end of the movie. And this is what makes it a far more intelligent retelling of the story. Because in King Kong, the myth is flipped. Beauty becomes the lure, the trap, the murderous force. The beast remains the ‘innocent’.
Angela Carter has taken many of the fairy tales and myths that metaphorize our relationship with eroticism and forcefully, critically interpreted them. In ‘The Company of Wolves,’ Red Riding Hood becomes the girl child on the cusp of the sexual maturity of menstruation. The wolf is a lycanthrope who offers her submersion into the underworld of sexual desire. [4. Carter, A. (1979) The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Gollancz, London ] There is an online version of ‘The Company of Wolves’ here, if you’d like to read it.
I’m not sure how we benefit from retelling the original tale of Beauty and the Beast over and over again to ourselves. Perhaps after the deeper and more complex examinations of the story, I just find the unexamined reiteration of the original – Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, Bared to You, Gabriel’s Inferno – a bore. For all the supposedly ‘adult’ content, they simply echo the original children’s story.
I want something juicier and for grown-ups. I want to see the story inverted, deconstructed. I want to see Beauty’s nature exposed for the controlling, castrating force it is. I want to see the honesty of the desires that drive the Beast contemplated. I want to read stories that acknowledge the violence of such taming. I want to examine the sterility and the manipulative nature of what we constantly represent as innocence. The eroticism of destruction. I want to explore the possibility of Beauty being subsumed into the Beast’s world, instead of the other way around. I want to see us evolve these stories into more complex tales of ourselves instead of simple panaceas of our fears of ourselves.
I prefer the ‘beast’ to the ‘Edward’ and speaking as a man even in this supposedly more enlightened age my sexuality still feels like it’s being demonised and treated as bestial or otherwise base, ‘objectifying’ or subhuman.
The beast, at least, has a chance at love despite his superficial ugliness. The Edward, meanwhile, is superficially beautiful but has little depth.
The beast demonstrates a certain nobility in trying to drive ‘beauty’ away and spare her a life with his ugliness alongside his curse whereas the ‘Edward’ is a more selfish creature.
I agree though, it would be nice to see some different interpretations.
Oh, I think the ‘ugliness’ of the Beast is simply a metaphor for his erection, just like Edward’s fangs.
There’s been some interesting analysis of the TV version of True Blood (versus the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries), especially the season with the coven of witches. Originally, the witch (a female manifestation of power) is held in shackles and raped (also for her blood) by vampires (male manifestation of power) but she summons power and drives the vampires out into the sunlight. She dies, and her spirit possesses a witch in current times. That spirit strives to kill the vampires, and nearly does, except… In this story, the vampires are the objects of desire, therefore the witch must be vanquished. Male power must triumph over female. Male beauty must civilze the female beast. So how does it happen? The spirit decides her righteous fury over being raped and held captive was just a PMS fit and apologizes profusely to the vampires for seeking vengence. The preversion in that moral is eye opening: Ladies, apologize to your rapist if you try to seek justice. He’s sexy, and you totes deserved it for having a pulse.
For me the beast has always represented an escape from responsibility (it isn’t his fault, he’s just a beast) which is probably why the paradigm rubs me the wrong way. I see no reason for men to get a pass on bad behaviour when women aren’t allowed the same freedom of responsibility for their actions
Insightful as usual, and your concluding paragraph makes me hungry for those books, too.
Do you really think books like that can transform society into one that is more honest about psycho-sexual conflict and danger, so that we might ultimately harm ourselves and others less? It’s a lovely, idealistic sentiment. Yep, most people want to repeat the liturgy of denial “I am safe” all the time. Luring them gently into more self-examination is one of the sweet pleasures of writing about sex, IMHO. Once you hook them, you don’t have to be gentle anymore 🙂
Coming from a female pov here I despise Twilight. If it were to truly be a remake of Beauty and the Beast Bella would be more inclined to be with the werewolf, who would be the true beast. Edward does absolutely nothing for me and ruined the image of vampires everywhere. Truth, I will admit we as women can be and often are as dominant as a man in the bedroom. But when push comes to shove, in not so many words, I like a man to ‘own’ me as such. The beast was only a beast because the world told him he was, that lesson was more about beauty being skin deep and you cannot help what the heart wants. A true ending would have been had he remained the “beast’ even once she announced her undying love for him. But no we have to say oh she loves the Beast but she would love him better as a Prince.So we are turning the whole lesson upside down, because she loved him he then became acceptable in looks by societal standards?? Shouldn’t society have accepted him as he was, whether she loved him or not.
ah, but you see… it is love that frees him from the curse and turns him handsome. Love ‘pacifies’ the beast, or rather, castrates him.
“It perpetuates the pleasing social myth of women as virginal innocents and men as bestial monsters who require soothing, saving and redeeming.” – exactly…and this statement could be completely out of context and used in some many others…”It” could be so many things: advertising, religion, dating…
Brilliant analysis and I *love* the final paragraph.
But I also think that part of the timeless lure of the Beauty/Beast story is that it taps into a psychological state that many women do remember – when sex WAS that unexplored, longed for, threatening country, when men did seem pretty scary. It’s a state of high psychological arousal at a pivotal point in our lives, and therefore carries power – even years later when we are sexually confident and perhaps dominant. We still go back to that early state in fantasy.
So I don’t think the B/B myth is quite as cynically anti-sex as you describe it. It has other facets.
Okay, yikes… I didn’t mean to suggest it was anti-sex at all. And, personally, I never stopped thinking of sex as an unexplored, threatening country. Men will always be scary. So will women. It’s what I like about them. 😀
😀
RG,
Great essay! B&B is the timeless theme of many relationships. Relationships often begin with the B&B, he transforms into the prince, they live happily ever after. After the happily ever after, she becomes the wicked witch because her power is fleeting. He eventually refuses to conform and longs to return to the beast in which she fell in love, which is strange to me. That’s where the real conflict begins…
~TFP
oooh, I LOVE it. Write it!
You continue hitting the points of why I don’t like these books and have no interest in them. So many of these stories are so simple and the complications often come from tired tropes about purity, beauty and virginity as they are thought of in the Western World it’s exhausting and frankly uninteresting to me.
I’m an avid reader of category romance because I want to experience the arc of emotion– there will be uncertainty, conflict, and sweetness.
I don’t want the Beast castrated, but possibly domesticated. “the romance heroine draws her man into the domestic sphere, the realm of women, of home, in order to resolve their differences and establish sex with love as the central principle in their lives. Actually, both lovers must alter their earlier prejudices to create a working alliance where sexualized love can flourish.” http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/romance-novels
If “male porn” degrades the female into a vessel to rut upon, then “female porn” like Shades of Gray simplifies the male into a bank account with a phallus. The narcissistic Mary Sue heroine–essentially an empty vessel– basks in his devotion, and the envy of other women.
I do understand your affection for the genre. I know a lot of people who adore it. However, I don’t feel that, on the whole, there is much difference between representations of males in romance and those of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades.
I appreciate the need for retreat into a fantasy world where everything turns out okay. But on a personal level, I feel that this craving for simplistic stories that end nicely is an opiate.