Tools of Characterization

Characterization in Beauty and the Beast

Physical Appearance

The film wants us to know, as the narrator puts it at the beginning, that "beauty is found within." With the cursed castle inhabitants, that means they wear their souls on their faces. Lumiere is warm like a candelabra, Cogsworth is fussy like a clock, and the Beast's monstrous form reveals his equally monstrous temper. Belle, beautiful inside and out, has the fresh face of someone who means no ill will to anyone. The fact that she's the only character in the village that wears blue helps us see how she's different from them.

Gaston hides who he truly is behind a handsome face. The Disney animators even used the template for earlier hero characters to emphasize his good looks. They still slip in a few tell-tale signs that this guy isn't the paragon of virtue everyone thinks he is. There's a cruelty to his smile, some self-absorption in the eyes: things Belle (and we) clearly pick up on, but the rest of the town doesn't. Appearances can be deceiving, but in this case at least, we see everything we need to know with the characters' looks.

Actions

Watch Gaston as he proposes to Belle: it's practically an assault. Belle glides through town with her nose in a book, letting us know that she's an avid reader, interested in life beyond her own world. The Beast's temper tantrums are forces of nature, though they taper off as he learns to love and be a better person. Even LeFou gets into the act, as the ultimate toady does everything Gaston commands, even to the detriment of his own health and safety. (Pneumonia kills, LeFou.) If you want to see who these people are, watch what they do.

Location

The castle is a place of refinement and aristocratic privilege. It's also affected by a massive curse, which is why the servants look like the high-end rack at Bed Bath & Beyond. The village, on the other hand, is quiet and simple, with shallow people pursuing petty little lives. Belle and her father, the adventurers, move readily from one location to another: agents of change unbound by physical space. In some sense, the characters are defined by where we find them.

Thoughts and Opinions

"How can you read this? There's no pictures!" Gaston tells Belle as he glares at her book. Belle, for her part, has a whole song about how there's no way on earth she's going to marry an oaf like Gaston. The Beast's wounded heart comes out in his terrifying expressions of rage. Like a lot of characters in literature and film, they're perfectly happy to tell us who they are simply by expressing their beliefs and opinions in song or otherwise.