Some Jerk with a Camera - Top 11 Florida Attractions Not in California (Part 1)

Oan [v/o]: Previously on Brows Held High.

Cocteau!!!

[At the Adventure Lawn Gazebo]

Jerk: Well, the Disney version had good directors, too.

Oan: Directors? Plural? So, was the film making by a committee?

Jerk: Everyone knows that two directors makes it twice as good.

Oan: Fine. What else did they do?

Jerk: Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Oan: Ugh!!

Jerk: And Atlantis - The Lost Empire.

Oan: Ugh!!

Jerk: And a short cartoon that used to play at Epcot right before and animatronic show about a little guy named Buzzy that controlled the brain of a twelve-year- i-it closed in 2006.

No one plots like Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise,

No one fra- No.

Oan: Quite the oeuvre.

Jerk: Quit speaking French! Look...

Jerk [v/o]: First of all, multiple directors is the norm in animation. They're not just pointing a camera at actors, they have to painstakingly create the movie frame-by-frame. That means more material needs to be approved and there aren't enough hours in a day for one person to approve it all.

Oan [v/o]: What about Brad Bird?

Jerk [v/o]: Brad Bird is too a sweetheart for our media. He doesn't count. Second of all, the term “Disney movie” may have a lot of negative connotations to high-brow types like yourself, but if all their movies were as good as this one, it wouldn't. Amid all the tie-in products, god-awful direct-to-video mid-quels, and questionable marketing choices...

Commercial: The fantasy of Beauty and the Beast, now with Pizza Hut.

Jerk [v/o]: ...It's easy to forget just how acclaimed Disney's Beauty and the Beast was. Hell, the New York Film Festival gave a standing ovation to an unfinished rough cut.

Roger Ebert: And I can't see the New York Film Festival and standing up and applauding anything...

Jerk [v/o]: It won the Golden Globe for Best Picture: Musical or Comedy and was the first ever animated Best Picture Oscar nominee.

Jerk: Your precious Frenchman never even won at Cannes.

Oan: He was named Honorary President for life at Cannes... posthumously.

Jerk: So, they named his corpse President for life? How meaningful.

Oan: I just don't understand why you're not giving the Cocteau version enough credit. Without it, the Disney version wouldn't exist the way it does.

Jerk: I order you to elaborate!

Oan [v/o]: First, the Beast's appearance: Yes, the medium of animation allowed for Disney to be wilder for their designs for the beast, but in general, he still has a very feline demeanor. That started with Cocteau. Before, the Beast was depicted as a boar, or an elephant, or a stag. In fact, Cocteau wanted a stag-like design for the beast, which would tie in to Cernunnos of Celtic Mythology.

Jerk [v/o]: [in a melody] Is that why the beast uses antlers in all of his decorating?

Oan [v/o]: Pretty much, yeah. Second, the magic of the castle: Cocteau had a reliable stable of go-to motifs, including mirrors. The magic mirror appears first in Cocteau's film, which would later become a key device in the Disney version. Also, in the original fairy tale, the castle has no servants. Food magically appears before its guests, the beds are self-made, the room is self-cleaning. It was Cocteau who made those invisible servants visible.

Belle: 

Oan [v/o]: Yet, he still called them invisible, okay. But, the smoke-breathing statues, the hand-candelabras, handelabras? Handelabras. All Cocteau's idea. Disney then took that idea and had them sing and dance, because, well, it's more fun to get your picture with characters that have a face.

[Cut to a photography of Oan and Jerk smiling and pointing at one of Cocteau's “Handleabras.” near Sleeping Beauty castle]

Jerk: So, basically, Cocteau made the Richard Purdum version?

Oan: Who?

Jerk [v/o]: Rrrrichard Purdum, British animator and original director Disney hired. In Purdum's take on the tale, there were no songs, the enchanted objects didn't talk, Gaston was an aristocratic fop, and, in place of her shrewish sisters, Belle had a shrewish aunt who bore more of a passing resemblance to Cinderella's shrewish evil stepmother. Disney Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg didn't think it worked at all, so enter Little Mermaid songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken and the rest is history.

Oan [v/o]: Again, and let's all just assume that time is linear and things that happen after other things happen after other things. Shouldn't you be saying that Richard Purdum was trying to be like Cocteau's film?!!

Jerk [v/o]: Things happen in the order that I perceive them!! And maybe Katzenberg hated that version for a reason. Frankly, I think that Disney's existent version gives the story even more depth. In Cocteau's film, Belle's antagonist sisters have a lesser impact because everyone knows they're antagonists.

Servant: 

Oan [v/o]: That line should not sound that beautiful in French.

Jerk [v/o]: Gaston, on the other hand, is beloved by the entire town and he turns from a mere buffoon into a full-fledged villain so gradually you'd hardly even notice.

Oan [v/o]: Which brings me to Cocteau's third addition.

Avenant: 

Oan [v/o]: Cocteau created Gaston. The character's name here is Avenant, but it's essentially Gaston. He's a hunter by trade, smarmy, he's got a big violent streak, and, most importantly, he is Belle's human suitor. There is no character like this in the fairy tale. The villains, as you said, were Belle's selfish sisters. Cocteau's innovation was to create a human suitor for Belle and inversion of the beast, beautiful on the outside while beastly on the inside. Hitting that point home, Jean Marais plays Avenant, as well as the beast. Cocteau basically made the story as we know it today, a love triangle power dynamic hinging on perceived beauty versus internal beauty.

Beast: 

Belle: 

Belle: He's no monster, Gaston! You are!!

Oan [v/o]: How's that for an elaboration, Mister Mickey Mouse Cl-

Jerk [v/o]: Does John Cocktease really want me to prefer the beast over this Patrick Swayze-looking dude?

Oan [v/o]: What do you mean?

Beast:

Beast: 

Belle: 

Beast: 

Jerk [v/o]: That's right, ladies. Ignore all that empty flattery. If you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his manipulative self-flagellation.

Oan [v/o]: Oh, that's not fair.

Jerk [v/o]: Come on, that was the most passive-aggressive horseshit I've ever heard.

Oan [v/o]: Well, is a passive-aggressive beast any worse than an active-aggressive one?

Beast: Go ahead and starve!! If she doesn't eat with me, then she doesn't eat at all!

Jerk [v/o]: Yeah, the story's kind of inherently fucked-up, stripping of metaphor and it's a guy keeping a woman prisoner and piling her with stuff until she agrees to sleep with him.

Oan [v/o]: Well, when you're right, you're right. It's not impossible to tell the story without somewhat glorifying abusive relationships, but neither is it easy.

[At Downtown Disney, in front of ESPN Zone]

Jerk: So tell me. How does this little story about a young woman who falls for a caring yet emotionally distant mysterious man whilst defending off the advances of a more familiar, more dangerous, and more macho suitor and at the same time harboring affection for both men's more monstrous sides... [realizes] Oh dear, god. [gags]

[Oan runs after Jerk who ends up nearby the Grand Californian, the colors of the picture turn cold and blue]

Oan: Oh crap, he figured it out.

Jerk: It's a love triangle. The lead protagonist is boring. The magical rules are arbitrary and the syndrome's, like, Swedish or something. How old is this tale?

Oan: As old as time.

Jerk: How long is it been as old as time?

Oan: What?

Jerk: I know what this is.

Oan: Then say it........ Out loud.

Jerk: Twi-No! Every time I say that word without following it with “Zone,” somewhere a real vampire dies of cardiac arrest.

Oan [v/o]: Then, don't say it. Now, let's just brush it all aside and go back to-

Jerk [v/o]: He eats live deer, too? OH GOD! HE IS EDWARD!! I CAN'T UNSEE IT!!!

Oan [v/o]: You gotta try. Try to unsee it.

Jerk [v/o]: Okay. Okay. Just let me look at the screen and get a-HE'S SPARKLING/, HE'S SPARKLING!! /HE SPARKLE.../ow! uh... /Sparkling./

Oan [v/o]: /Um okay calm down, calm down. /CALM DOWN, MAN!! /[smacks Jerk] We can get through this. We can get through this. /He's just a little shiny./ Just a little shiny. We can get through this. Huh! Here's why it's not a big deal. Howard Ashman called it “a tale as old as time” because the idea of a beauty falling for a beast is as old as time, or at least as old as the written word. Our oldest known story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, has a love story of sorts between the divine priestess, Shamhat, and a savage wild man, Enkidu. And that idea of a heavenly woman falling for an animalistic man has been repeated and retold for millennia since. Enkidu and Shamhat, Hades and Persephone, Death and the maiden, Christine and the Phantom of the Opera, and, yes, Bella and Edward are all variants on Beauty and the Beast. There are various reasons why the story's retold, either as a tirade against superficiality, or as a metaphor for heterosexual cisgender relationships, or as an expression of perverse lost for the forbidden. And there are certainly problematic undertones which we as a culture have only recently come to terms with, but in any case, the basic trope is sturdy enough and culturally ingrained enough to support a multitude of interpretations and subversions over centuries of storytelling tradition, regardless of how our society has reacted to this most... recent... retelling of the basic story idea.

Oan: So, there's no need to worry about any accidental connections between this and the worst thing ever made.

Jerk: [pondering] Did Bella get her name from Belle? [long pause]

Oan: I need to go clear my head.

Jerk: Good idea.

Beast: 

Jerk [v/o]: You'll have to pinky swear to come back. Pinky swear! Jerk: Child logic?

Oan: Child logic.

Jerk [v/o]: Hey, if I'm supposed to use child logic for the magic rules, should I do the same for relationships?

Oan [v/o]: You're not buying their relationship.

Jerk [v/o]: Well, speaking as a not-child who's totally definitely had not-child relationships before, some parts of their romance get a bit weird.

Belle: 

Jerk [v/o]: [as Belle] Also, why are you covered in blood and on fire?

Oan [v/o]: Well …

Jerk [v/o]: There's no convincing reason for Belle to actually fall for the Beast. At least, Disney Beast saved Belle from wolves and improved his personality before she started liking him. Here, he's an awkward loner who imprisons Belle, he remains an awkward loner and, I guess awkward loners are the most beautiful people in the world, ask any writer, Belle just starts liking him anyway.

Oan [v/o]: Exactly, it's her story. It's her journey to accept the Beast as he is. I really love Josette Day's performance as Belle here. She's poised, yet gentle with a soft integrity. Sure, she's written quite passively, but that's really only because the character's journey is... passive. Hollywood loves arcs, but her only arc is learning how to love a kind but ugly man. And Belle has an arc in the Disney version, which is apparently forgotten after this song.

I want adventure in a vaguely big way.

[fast] But, really I'll-settle-for-whatever-comes-along, it's-not-that-big-a-deal-maybe-I-just-want-someone-to-let-me-stay-inside-and-read-all-day.

Disney's Beast has an arc. He's a prick, that he's not. But, I don't think the Beast needs an arc. The entire point of the fairy tale is that he IS good. He simply needs to be loved before he can be lovable. Cocteau's Beast doesn't have an arc, but he still has conflict, but internal conflict.

Jerk [v/o]: For what it's worth, Cocteau's Beast is one of the best depictions of isolation and self-loathing I've ever seen. I'd say he's even better written than Belle is.

Oan [v/o]: Well, maybe Cocteau can sympathize. Remember how I mentioned Orpheus? That underworld? That dream world where artists live is represented here as the Beast's castle and Cocteau's Beast is sensitive, brooding, steeped in the tradition of a Byronic hero. The Beast is a tortured artist.

[At the French Market]

Jerk: Of course he's a tortured artist! No wonder French artsy types like this so much! [Oan makes an unsure face; pause] French artsy types did like this, didn't they?

Oan: Cocteau's relationship with the avant-garde was... complicated.

Oan [v/o]: Lots of people, including me, have called Cocteau a surrealist. Hell, the word “surrealist” first appeared in a review of one of Cocteau's ballets. But the surrealists in Paris were a distinct artistic movement, or not as collective, and they HATED Cocteau. Or at least their leader Andre Breton did. When Cocteau's film Blood of a Poet was called surrealist, Cocteau responded, “Surrealism did not exist when I first thought of it.” So, you could only imagine how Breton felt, having written the Surrealist Manifesto SIX YEARS EARLIER. Actually, you don't have to imagine. In a letter to Dada co-founder Tristan Tzara, he called Cocteau “the most hateful being of our time.” Like, wow. Hitler was alive when he wrote that. Breton had plenty of reasons for hating Cocteau. One of those being that Breton was a despicable homophobic bigot, and Cocteau... well, let's just say there's a reason this shot is in the movie. But Breton also accused Cocteau of taking what he learned from the Dadaists and the surrealists and distilling them into a more traditional form. And he was kind of right. Sure, Blood of a Poet is pretty strange and directly influenced the likes of underground Mavericks like Kenneth Anger, but look at it in context. It was made in an art scene that included Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali. Sure, a man with a mouth on his hand was weird, but people a few theaters over could see a man SLICING A WOMAN'S EYEBALL IN HALF!! Cocteau drew from old myths, old fairy tales, even old styles of film-making. Sure, he got a lot of mileage out of playing the film backwards, but that kind of thing was as old as Melies. Still, it was beautiful and it made Cocteau a darling of the French bourgeoisie for being artsy but not too artsy for them. While the anonymous avant-garde Bohemians broke boundaries toiling in obscurity, Cocteau was one of the most photographed celebrities in France. In fact, some have interpreted that opening text crawl in the movie to be aimed at his avant-garde critics. Stop thinking for a bit and lighten up for once. All because his peers were looking at him and going, *cough* sell-out *cough*.

[At the plaza nearby Walt Disney's statue]

Jerk: Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that this movie was a mainstream hit with critics and audiences alike made by a filmmaker hated by the French artists of his country?

Oan: [unsure to describe, he looks around and says]…. Maybe?

Jerk: A-ha! I knew this wasn't as hot as you wanted it to be!

Oan: I, uh, em...

Jerk: Well, if the two films are so similar, why do you automatically prefer the French... Wait a minute. Don't answer that. I know exactly why.

Oan: Alright, Jerk. Educate me. Why?

Jerk:

Monsieur Kallgren, it is with deepest pride

and greatest pleasure that I explain exactly why.

And now I invite you to chillax, let us pull up a

care as America proudly presents -

your pwnage!

[Suddenly, Jerk is in Universal Studios Hollywood at Parisian Courtyard]

' 'Cause, it's, French! 'Cause it's French!'

You just like it 'cause it's French,

Where their cheeses cause diseases,

With their pestilential stench.

Go away!

You français!

Take your stupid Bastille Day.

And your rancid ratatouilles.

Cooked by vermin France's sewies

Mon ami, can't you see,

All the films have such on oui

Oh monsieur, it makes a human spirit wench.

It's just a bunch of crying

I like my French frying

Stupid French

It's not dense!

It's just French!

Oan:

Jean Renoir!

Depardieu!

François Truffaut...

Jerk:

Sacre bleu!

That's just three surrender-monkeys,

in zat European zoo!

Oan:

Marcel Proust

Jean-Paul Sartre

Claude Monet, Rene Descartes

All their finest wine and cheeses!

Jerk: [Reading a Euro Disney pamphlet]

Jerry Lewis is their Jesus.

Oan:

'Notre Dame! And The Louvre'

Really, what more must I prove?

All my thirst for highest culture they a-quench!

Your points are all unfair,

So get your derriere

Off of that bench,

Fists are clenched,

Cocteau's soul I shall avenge!

Why does art, Praise your heart, When it's French?

Jerk:

You called him artistic,

I just called him narcissistic

He cared not for what I thought or what you think.

Ah, the line is fine between the artist...

And just an artsy-fartsy Barton Fink

This film is dull and heinous,

It's too slow to entertain us.

He cares less about the audience than himself.

Jean Cocteau's a self-indulgent asshole.

Now, with that assessment,

I could use a nice refreshment!

Ven:

'Part for me! Part for me!'

I could play the pot of tea!

I can do a British accent,

And I nearly sing on-key!

At the start, you were smart,

When you promised me a part!

Now you left the kettle boiling,

And my fury's hot and broiling!

It's my turn, you will learn,

Line producers shan't be spurn!

I will not let you exclude me from this bit!

Don't leave me suffering,

Give me a part to sing!

Oan:

But we just did!

Jerk:

We just did.

Oan:

That was it.

Ven:

That was it?!

Jerk and Chorus:

'Cause it's French! Cause it's French!'

They surrendered in a trench,

They devour filthy mollusks and their kids

and wine they drench.

They're so chic and unique,

All those dancing magni-freaks!

And to you pretentious hipsters:

French words may as well be scripture!

Jerk: [putting on a beret]

You, prefer talking frogs,

To American pig-dogs!

And a tea-pot with the voice of Judi Dench.

Oan:

That's Angela Lansbury!

Jerk:

Yeah, but that don't rhyme very

Well with French!

It's so French!

Frickin' French!

You, love, zuh, French!

Oan: Attension francophone. Je m'excuse chanson ridicule, après pour d'un bien beau pays-

Jerk: Oh, like they care.

[Continued in Part 3] Jerk [v/o]: [as Beast] Do you like my new smoking jacket? Thank you, I'll be here all your life.