Premjith Mathew

BEAUTY IN THE BEAST

Tale as old as time….
True as it can be…
Song as old as rhyme ….
Beauty and the Beast….
(OST-Celine Dion/Terry Bradford-The Beauty and the Beast)

(This piece of writing is based on a true wildlife moment that happened in the campus of Madras Christian College. Setting was behind the college cafeteria. Time is an afternoon. On that destined day, I saw a strange thing. A deer and a pig were together, walking through the forest-scapes of Madras Christian College. As I walked back to my room in Bishop Heber Hall, I realised the fact that I actually had witnessed a vision. With a great sense of gratitude and love, I dedicate this article to those creations of the creator.)

Sitting in my room at Bishop Heber Hall, I made the following observations.

The scene involving the pig and the deer made me think about the beautiful and beastly world in which we live in. This dichotomy is also present in the ‘two legged creations’ known as human beings. For me the scene involving the pig and deer represent the essential division that is often expressed as;

Light X Darkness
Male X Female
White X Black
Amateur X Professional
Head X Heart
Beginning X End
Yin X Yang
As a continuation to the same train of thought, I started painting a true and honest portrait of the pig in my mind. My heart and sympathies is with that animal, the little cherubin, which had enjoyed a romantic status in the movie- ‘Babe, Pig in the City’.

(The two statements mentioned above are the significant signposts to understand the forthcoming paragraphs.)

An attempt is made here to show the reader that, there exists an element of beauty in all the (so-called) beastly figures. Drawing examples from literature and cinema, I will convince you – READER- that there exist two identities in all of us. Whether you like it or not, you are helpless before this trick of the creator.

This is how it all got started…

The story of Beauty and the Beast has been around for centuries in both oral and written literatures, and more recently, in film and video. Right from the beginning, this multiple layered fairy tale (or parable or myth) seems to have mesmerized image makers and word makers alike. The beast has always been perceived as an evil figure. The beauty creates a new mindscape in the beast, which is necessarily one of love and compassion. The beauty and the love she brings alter the beastly mental frame work.

The story of Beauty and the Beast appears in many cultures in different forms. Whatever be the context the essence of the story remains the same. If we summarize the story of beauty and the beast in a line it will read like this – a transformation takes place in the beast in the charismatic presence of the beauty.





BEAUTY IN THE BEAST AND THE LITERARYSCAPE

Literature and its wordscape are embedded with characters that are nothing but the extension of the beauty and beast myth. This is an apparent point of investigation for the archetypal critics. (Non-literary readers please examine the life and times of Northrop Frye)

There are traces of this myth in the novel of Victor Hugo’s known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story revolves around the bell ringer of the church of Notre Dame, Quasimodo. For though he is gentle and kind, it was Quasimodo's crime to have been born hideously deformed. But one day his heart would prove to be a thing of rare beauty. This is when he falls in love with a gypsy girl named Esmeralda. The height of sacrifice that Quasimodo makes to protect this girl reveals the beauty within the so called deformed character of Victor Hugo’s.

The tale of the Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde tells us about the Giant who owned a beautiful garden. He was so obsessed with it he once shouted at the children who came to play there-"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself’(The Beast in him speaks). Thus the author apart form justifying the title of ‘his story’, also shows us how cruel and beastly the Giant is. Anyway, the transformation happens to the Giant when he realises that children brought happiness and beauty into his life. ‘And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out. "How selfish I have been!" he said; "now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children's playground for ever and ever." He was really very sorry for what he had done’ (The latent Beauty in him manifests itself).

One of the ‘one book wonders’ Harper Lee, in her novel ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ presents the character of Boo Radley through the eyes of child narrator named Scout Finch. In the beginning of the story, Scout and her brother Jem, fabricate horror stories about Boo. They find Boo as a character of their amusement, and one who had no feelings whatsoever. They initially tried to get a glimpse of him, just to see what Boo looked like. At first, they thought Boo Radley was ‘EVIL’. There were rumours that while he cut out the newspaper for his scrapbook he "drove the scissors into his parent's leg.” They described him often as a monster "six-and-a-half feet tall" with "bloodstained" hands. It was reported that he ate to eat "raw squirrels and any cats he could catch.” (pg 12).Towards the end of the novel Scout discovers (along with the reader) that Boo Radley was always trying to reach out to them and he was not as beastial as others thought him to be. The novel ends with Scout walking with Boo headed for his home thus becoming an agent in the complete transformation of Boo Radley.The question that Boo radley would have probably have asked is,

Did I request thee, maker, from my clay
To mould me man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?

(Paradise Lost, X, 743-45)

Frankenstein is another character worth examining keeping in mind the duality of the beauty and beast. Critics have commented on the central duality that exists in the novel by Mary Shelley i.e. .the monster and the creator are the anti-thetical halves of a single being. Harold Bloom in his Afterword to the novel has remarked ‘Frankenstein and his monster are the solipsistic and generous halves of the one self ’.A deeper analyses of the novel will show that the creature created by Frankenstein , like Boo Radley desperately tries to reach out into the ordinary world searching for ‘that four lettered word’ called-LOVE. “Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds, which broke from me, frightened me into silence again” (99).Thus, Frankenstein is condemned to suffer because he never got a chance to express his inner beauty to the world outside.

The world of word makers has many such examples. Character of Caliban in the Shakespearean masterpiece-‘The Tempest, Lennie in John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, Velutha in Arundhanthi Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’,‘ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson are some of the characters who possess the duality of the beauty and the beast.

BEAUTY IN THE BEAST AND THE IMAGESCAPE.

The beauty and the beast image that I discovered in the deer and the pig led me to examine the matrix of the profane and the sublime in the world of images. One movie worth mentioning in this context is Bala’s magnum opus Pitamagan. The film is harsh, gruesome. The story of Chithan, an undertaker who grew up in cremation grounds seems to be tragic. It is a character modelled on the early man who was cut off from civilisation. He walks with a hunch, he grunts, he makes noises like animals. He is one who grew up in the graveyard and is a monotonously morose person who does not talk or break into a song. The body language and animal grunts underlines his inherent bestiality. Chittan is a dreadful person. However, at the same time he is blessed with an unusual energy through which he can single-handedly thrash a dozen men. It is only through his friendship with Sakthivel that he discovers the beauty of life. His subtle but restrained love for Gomathi (drug peddler) makes him all the more beautiful.

The story of Vinod in the movie Kadhal Konden is again a fine example to illustrate the fact that there is a beast and beauty residing in each one of us. Dhanush plays Vinod, a college fresher, a genius in some ways, but whose strange behaviour and habits make him an object of ridicule for the rest of the class. However, the sympathetic Divya takes him under her wings, and attempts to transform him into a socially accepted person. However, she had not reckoned with the dark side of him, which surfaces, when she confesses to him her love for classmate Aathi. Battling with the demons inside him, Vinod takes her on a journey that is fascinating, chilling, and nightmarish.

The world of cinema, too, contains umpteen illustrations to show that the image-makers were busy dealing with the binary opposites. The Hitchcockian character Norman Bates in the movie Psycho with his schizophrenic moorings is a classic example of this ‘’two in one identity’. Noted filmmaker, actor, director Kamalhasan has experimented with the theme of beauty in the beast in three movies- Guna, Aalavaddan and Anbe Sivam.

(The world of art is replete with characters and images that reflect the essential but subtle dichotomy that I happen to witness in the deep woods of Madras Christian College. The reason behind this scribbling is to show the world that there is a need to resolve this binary opposition and understand things in a larger context so that we can live in this world of beast and beauty identities , which exists is each one of us.).