Beauty and the Beast - Gaston in Detail

The articles chosen for our critics class on Beauty and the Beast included an article entitled Yep Gaston's Gay and although this is an interesting topic on its own, it got me interested in why Disney choose to add this character to the story in the first place.

After doing a bit of research on the character, it seems that Disney added Gaston to the film in order to give the tale a sense of danger and to present an even greater contrast to the tales theme on inner versus outer beauty. The supervising animator responsible for initial drawings of Gaston portrayed him as an arrogant man, heavily built and having a mustache. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was in charge of Disney's motion picture division at the time insisted that Gaston had to appear more serious to add an element of "don't judge a book by its cover."

The idea of adding to the tales already sharp sense of inner beauty vs outer beauty through a character like Gaston was a smart move in my opinion. It gives the tale a character that is truly opposite to the Beast, very handsome to look at, but evil inside. The revisions made to Gaston to properly suit the tale shows that the creators really wanted to make a statement with this character, and thus made him more appealing to a modern audience, effectively giving him a soap opera charm rather than portraying him as an old fashioned Paramour.

This once again shows that Disney is not afraid to add many layers of new characters to the original tale they are revamping. They really seem to have mastered this art and are able to more effectively make a point on theme and moral by generating these specific provocative characters.