The Original Beauty and the Beast Opening Number Adjusted for Belle’s Giant Sense of Entitlement
She’s the cis-white elite feminist in town!
Belle walks over a bridge and into a picturesque, thatched-roofed French village. She begins to read and stroll the cobblestones. Flute plays the lilting opening phrase to the song ‘Little Town’. Then:
Belle:
Little town, it’s a quiet village
All the streets, like the ones before
Little square, full of basic people
Waking up to say…
Pedestrian: I’m poor.
Man carrying grain sack: I’m poor.
Egg man: I’m poor.
Washer woman: I’m poor.
Baker: I’m poor.
Belle: There goes the baker with his tray, like always — oh, ouch!
Baker: Belle can you please not read as you walk?
Belle: You’re stopping my education!
Baker: I’m sorry, I just –
Belle: I’m visiting the bookstore: I just finished the most wonderful story — about how the world is a big magical stage and I am extremely special.
Baker: That’s great. I have to sell bread rolls because my daughter was born with a congenital –
Belle: Byeeeeee!
Townsfolk:
Look there she goes that girl is strange, no question!
So self-important, can’t you tell?
Woman: Always crashing through the crowd
Man: ’Cause those books have raised her proud
Townsfolk: She’s the cis-white elite feminist in town.
Man I: Bonjour!
Woman 1: Good day!
Man 1: How is your struggle?
Woman 2: Bonjour!
Man 2: Good day!
Woman 2: How is your life?
Woman 3: I need six eggs!
Woman 4: I had a stillborn.
Belle: There must be more than this provincial life!
Belle swings through the door of the bookstore.
Belle: I’ve come to return the book I borrowed!
Bookseller: Finished already?
Belle: Oh, I couldn’t put it down.
I read all over the square — some village idiot hit me with their cart! But I don’t mind.
I’m incredibly special — I just have a feeling, you know?
Bookseller: I don’t think the town folk are idiots Belle. They’re very poor, and illiterate. And you get in their way. When you read.
And sing upbeat songs about their poverty being a drain on what you feel you deserve.
Belle: Well I just sing what’s in my heart!
Have anything new?
Bookseller: Seeing as you’re my sole customer, and I lend all my books to you –
Belle: That’s all right. I’ll borrow . . . this one for a third time! It’s my favorite. Far off places — a deserving heroine who heals a hideous and emotionally damaged beast!
Bookseller: I could buy different books and give you a variated sense of reality if you used your kindness to teach everyone here to read. You could single-handedly defeat the anti-intellectualism in this –
Belle: I just want to escape this place full of sad losers.
I yearn to travel, find a singular individual whose repulsive behavior is a version of misogyny I find endearing and tameable.
Bookseller: Belle, I’m not going to deny you your dreams and self-determination.
But perhaps the townspeople are rich with stories of suffering and oppression that could grow your heart — in a way you’ve never known.
Belle: What?
Bookseller: You could be revolutionary!
Depicting the poor French and their struggles to find meaning or happiness due to oppressive narratives of grandeur, inflicted by an ancient monarchy in a faraway castle?
Belle: Or… just the second half of the last thing you said! Just like in this book I love.
Please may I have it?
Bookseller: If you like it all that much, it’s yours.
For five francs.
Belle: But sir!
Bookseller: I insist.
Belle: I’ll just borrow it overnight! Byeeeee! I deserve more than this poor provincial town!
Rosanna Stevens is a writer and musician based in Canberra, Australia. Her publication credits include The Toast, The Lifted Brow, and The Believer.
