Marxism+English+paper

//I chose my final paper for Trends in 20th Century Literary Criticism as a sample of my appreciation for human diversity. While the paper does center heavily on my interpretation of Marx and the Disney classic, Beauty and the Beast, I believe it speaks to my appreciation of different classes of society and their representation in media.//

//In the 21st century media drives nearly everything we do, including teach, thus being aware of particular undercurrents will allow any teacher to connect with diverse student populations on a new level. Whether we are tracking what Glamour magazine decides should be beautiful or analyzing the alienation of the working class in Beauty and the Beast, being conscious of the world students inhabit and how these differences in class can trickle down into the classroom is necessary. I always recall this paper when I am discussing class differences or even when I am teaching Much Ado About Nothing. The relevance of status or class and being able to analyze the factors concerning such disparity is immutable. Ignoring class would be apropos to ignoring race or religion in the classroom.//

//Back to Appreciation and Human Diversity//

Jason Weiss Literary Criticism November 28, 2011

//Beauty and the Beast: //Capitalism  Through a Marxist lens, Disney’s //The Beauty and the Beast// models the divide between class structures in a traditionally oriented society .  The film’s society consists of a class of lower, peasant-like servants who maintain a nobleman’s house .  Here, the nobleman is cursed and transformed into a beast. The curse does not merely affect him, but also his servants .  Beyond trope or plot device for teaching a morality lesson to children—the story is not merely a fable— t he curse also serves as a mechanism for the reinforcement of class structure and thereby the struggle of laborers in the world they inhabit: the base and the superstructure .  Disney reduces the servants to their basest form—a direct translation of their function in the manor house to their corporeal forms <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The body becomes the labor and vice versa; there is no separation of function and form when the servants become transfigured <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Folding the labor into the laborer blurs the alienation of the task, the alienation of a capitalist or even feudal society <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> //Beauty and the Beast// collapses the physical separation of labor and body, while constructing class as a microcosm of society <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Just as Marx designed //The Communist Manifesto// to be accessible to the public, Disney redesigned the French fairy tale, // La Belle et la Bête // <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">, to be accessible to children <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Disney’s interpretation of the fairy tale asserts the underpinnings of the capitalist dogma that Marx loudly rails against in //The Communist Manifesto// <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Specifically, Disney uses the curse to assert these underpinnings, creating a powerful, simple image of the division of labor and its relationship to society <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Disney’s rendition not only does the nobleman assume the form of a beast, but the service is transmogrified from humans into allegorized objects that represent the function of their labor. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Reaffirming labor relations, the curse acts as a microcosm of a whole society founded upon capitalism—the owners of the means of production assume powerful, bestial forms while the actors of production assume the form that best suits their function. For instance, the maître d' as candelabra illuminates passageways and guides Belle throughout the castle <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The divisions of labor and the curse are nothing without reasoning behind them; Disney’s choice to remain honest to the fairy tale, but overplay the roles of the servants is a direct result of business—there was profit to be made <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Foremost, the Disney animation company is a business and thus seeks to make money on any commercial endeavor <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> //The Beauty and the Beast// is a beloved film of children worldwide, but it reasserts western capitalist themes of class structure and labor division <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> By naturalizing base and superstructure interactions, art creates ideology—it is not the simple representation of the capitalist reality. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> While a typically left-leaning company in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Walt Disney himself was a frequent member of HUAC and a staunch believer in patriotism and the American way—particularly business and making money: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As always, there were commercial considerations involved <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Feature-length movies might return more to the studio than did the short subjects[… <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">]As always, he was his own best salesman, describing the picture as an audacious and expensive experiment and inviting the public to come and see if the experiment was a success. (Berkowitz 135) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">As a vehicle for producing profit, //Beauty and the Beast// naturally asserts themes that support the ideology which makes the film possible as a commercial success <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> In the original fairy tale, the servants are transfigured as well; a holdover from a feudal society or the remembrance of a feudal society the strict division of labor reflects Marx’s interpretation of the division of labor present in capitalist societies <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> However, the conscious choice to make the servants relevant, supporting characters places the division of labor in the forefront for the audience, who will accept the division unconsciously due to the superstructure <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> While //Beauty and the Beast// does seriously complicate the superstructure and base by blurring the gulf separating them, it does not prevent viewers from appreciating the transfigured servants as normal, despite being as uncanny as the Beast <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The audience view of Beast and his servants as “normal” is due to the nature of a fairy tale; the expectations of the audience are altered, because of the genre <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> As a microcosm, the curse creates the conflict and tension of the film, but also the tension of the ideological assertions of capitalism <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The nature of the curse is curious; the old woman cursing Beast at the opening of the film includes the servants, despite only being turned away by Beast <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The curse was meant to punish Beast for his callous turning-away, but it assumes a direct relation between the master of the house or bourgeoisie, and the servants or proletariat he possesses <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Marx argues that: “the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and with them the whole relations of society” (659) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> While Beast does not cast the transfiguration spell, his castle and servants are cursed with him, forced to suffer his fate, thereby class becomes a microcosm as it is shrunk down into the laborers and the owner of a single castle <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The relationship between Beast and his servants is a recreation of Marx’s //The Communist Manifesto// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> All of society is inseparably intertwined with capitalism, thus the relationship of the owners of production to the laborers is the relationship of every person to every other person <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Disney presents their version of //Beauty and the Beast// as a fairy tale romance story with easily related ideas—thus children can quickly create a frame of mind to appreciate the actions of the characters <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Transfiguring the servants only makes sense, in terms of animation and plot, as if it were a microcosm of society, thereby making the film more relatable, despite the fact that is seems to be set in a feudal system <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The blending of body and labor creates a visual synecdoche that realizes the workers as nothing other than their work: the maître d' (Lumiere) becomes a candelabra, the majordomo (Cogsworth) a grandfather clock, the head of kitchens (Mrs. Potts) changes into a teapot, the dog into a footstool, the maid (Babette) into a featherduster and even the son of Mrs. Potts becomes a little, chipped teacup. In fact, the relationship between Lumiere and Babette underlines the fusion when they express their love for each other as Babette polishes and cleans Lumiere <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> According to Terry Carver’s analysis of Marx: “The workers cannot engineer their own makeup to reduce their need for steady employment”; the constant need for employment relates to the servants in //Beauty and the Beast//. Each member of the proletariat is wholly dependent on the owners of the means of production, therefore it would necessarily make sense that should the owners fall or become “transfigured” in some way there would be a causal relationship reverberating back to the proletariat (57) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The symbolic imagery here shows an integral relationship between function and form—the base and the superstructure have stopped informing each other resulting in a new layer of ideological experience <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The question becomes: is this labor exploitative or meaningful? Clearly, exploitative as the work did not noticeably change, but only their form did; the work never fluctuated in its meaning or effective species-being, however, transfiguring the laborers into household objects suggests that their only purpose is their specific labor. Creating species-being in labor is crucial in Marxist theory, but not at the cost of humanity. Consider that: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. (Marx 662) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The actions or base can no longer relate to the superstructure of castle servants, because the division has been obliterated <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> A division which was the basis for all of Marx’s arguments as the base creates the superstructure; the “definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will” can no longer be independent as what possible other purpose could a candelabra have other than to light the passageway? Candelabras must serve whomever lights them, but this does not make the work a positive experience. The items and possessions must serve and will do so without much fuss; it is nothing more or less than merely an experience, hardly good or bad. Forcing the workers to assume the shape of their work objectifies them and removes all humanity from the experience, despite the servants animated personalities. Notice the servants gait, their walking or talking style—they have changed significantly and will not comment about such a significant change, nor will they rail against world like Beast. Intrinsically, the workers cannot experience anything other than their own relationship to the castle and their function within it, but extrinsically the transfiguration negatively impacts each worker as a person, because his or her experience of humanity has been hindered and stripped bare. The curse serves as antithesis to Marxist ideology since, at a foundational level, retort is hardly possible; the worker simultaneously having become his or her work and the process of that work <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Fusing the labor and the human is hardly the surface of //Beauty and the Beast//, because these servants also become actual possessions after being transfigured <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The teapot, kettle, candlesticks, the wardrobe, all these characters are physical possessions that can be traded, consumed, destroyed, and inherited through the economic system <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The transfiguration, then, is a literal commoditization of labor and thereby the worker: “Marx takes the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to be intrinsically antagonistic and seeks to explain all major institutional features of a capitalist society in terms of this relation” (Carver 56) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The commoditization is a relationship of antagonism, as Marx suggests, reaffirming the alienation of workers from the product of their labors <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Further, the alienation is blurred by the transfiguration—can one truly be alienated from the product of one’s labor if one is the labor, product, object, and commodity oneself? Are cattle alienated from the product of their “labors?” The amalgamation of labor and self forces the product to be directly attached to the labor of the worker <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Any discrepancy between the labor and the worker would then only reflect poorly on the worker, in turn creating a sense of connection to the labor, albeit false and contrived <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Such a fusion of function and form opposes Marx’s claim directly: “There, the existence of the labour which stamps them as commodities, [has] absolutely no connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations arising there from” (664) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Marx claims that the labor itself is what defines the commodities and establishes them, but when the body and labor are no longer separated, as in //Beauty and the Beast//, the physical properties have an essential connection and commodities become far more complex <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “The existence of the labour” is not enough to “stamp” the sum as a commodity when the labor and person are inseparable—just as Lumiere creates light, he cannot separate that part of himself any more than humans can separate their thoughts from their brains <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Thus, the servants, while becoming tradable goods, cannot follow the Marxist ideal of commodity which requires the presence of labor, but does not account for the inseparable nature of the servants <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> However, Marx also claims that: “it is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility” (665) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The curse is inherently commoditizing the labor of the servants or the “objects of utility,” because they are tradable, exchangeable items <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Disney reaffirms the servant role as a lower class by having them transfigured into household objects, not animals, even going so far as to have the pet dog transfigured into a footstool <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The servants still retain their, now natural, skills and labors once Belle arrives: Cogsworth gives her a tour of the castle and Lumiere advises Beast to show her the library <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Despite the castle falling into disrepair the servants can still perform their original functions while being anthropomorphisms of various labors necessary to maintaining a castle <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Retention of original function is crucial to comprehending the servants as objects of utility, commodities, and people <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Through the functions of the curse the division of labor has been physically enforced, resulting in an unchangeable society <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The curse further dilutes the base and superstructure by confusing the division of labor until Marx’s solution, communism, is no longer an option <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Communism as a solution to capitalism requires that people are able to move freely through “spheres of activity,” but the curse is a physical barrier to communism: “for as soon as labour is distributed, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon and from which he cannot escape” (//Social Theory// 48) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Marx asserts that in capitalist societies there is no option for the free movement between spheres, except through communism, but when the body assumes the labor there is literally one set of labors possible by that body <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Babette only can dust as a featherduster, while any other function of her form would be considered ancillary <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The curse serves to physically divide labor in a precise, concrete method leaving no room for shifting of roles or positions <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Physical divisions aside, the classes are still separated by Beast issuing orders to both Cogsworth and Lumiere on multiple occasions <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The mental division of labor is what Marx refers to as: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The division of labour, which we saw above as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifest itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves. (//Social Theory// 46) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Beast, as the “mental” laborer, assigns orders to the rest of the staff, but is also entirely responsible for their wellbeing <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Should Beast fail to lift the curse, then the rest of the servants will remain cursed for life as well <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The servants must accept their fate, because they have no means of acting upon it, while Beast is “perfecting the illusion of the class,” though in the film that “illusion” is a stark reality <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The outlier of //Beauty and the Beast// is that Beast is actually a sweet, caring individual who is deeply flawed, but equally concerned for the wellbeing of those around him—particularly Belle, his love. While Disney created Beast to be a redeemable character, the facts of the story remain the same: a wealthy, land owning nobleman slights a disheveled woman and pays the price for his arrogance and selfishness. Cursed, the man becomes a beast as is persecuted by the local village and wins the heart of the princess with his mysteriousness and gallantry. Beyond Beast’s gentle-natured personality, the workers do seem to express a healthy species-being. The labor is fused with the body and the work they presumably love becomes a function of their existence. Is species-being healthily expressed through good labor? According to Marx, absolutely, but are the servants experiencing “good labor?” The muddled relationship between workers and the work in //Beauty and the Beast// makes it nearly impossible to discern where the laborer begins and the labor ends, but the representation of the servants in the film suggests that they would happy enough doing any work. The servants attitude is unreal, but the unreality of the curse symbolizes the capitalist dogma Marx battled. By presenting the children of a capitalist society with a group of overjoyed workers who are more concerned about the master’s wellbeing than their own, the class structure of capitalism becomes normalized, expected, and thus superstructure. Whether or not Beast was a tragic hero or a vicious exploiter of the working class //Beauty and the Beast// normalizes a way of life by infecting the most impressionable demographic possible—children. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> //Beauty and the Beast// presents a concrete example of the microcosms Marx displays by defining the capitalist superstructure of the world <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> By coalescing every aspect of the worker into one, seamless form and anchoring that form to the actions of the bourgeoisie, the servants of //Beauty and the Beast// are physically limited to the role of servants <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> None of the cursed shapes the servants take on provide products other than that which serves the owner <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The experiences that made the workers human, such as the love between Babette and Lumiere, become tainted by the fusion of labor and laborers, as Babette must polish Lumiere to express a physicality of their love. The worker adapts and attempts to remain human despite a physical shift, but any attempt must be mediated by each ones physical form or his or her labor. While the cursed form of Beast is hardly as detrimental to his daily function as are the forms of his servants <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">, t <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">he curse actually improves Beast’s strength, grace, and only seems to stop him from interacting with other humans, except for the magic mirror <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Beast is most deeply hindered in his self-image as he shuts himself away in the castle, but the servants are directly dependent on his ability to lift the curse; such dependence is a function of the class antagonisms Marx lays out as a division of society and labor <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The servants of //Beauty and the Beast// rely on Beast to lift the curse as the proletariat relies on the bourgeoisie to provide steady employment. Weep not for the cursed prince, shackled to the castle, but for the helpless, innocent servants chained to the selfish actions of a privileged member of society—the selfish actions of the bourgeoisie <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 13pt;">.

Works Cited //Beauty and the Beast//. Dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. By Linda Woolverton. Perf. Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson. Walt Disney Animation Studios., 1991. DVD. Berkowitz, Edward D. ""Disney Introduces the Baby Boom to TV"" //Mass Appeal: The Formative Age of the Movies, Radio, and Tv//. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. 131-50. Print. Carver, Terrell. //The Cambridge Companion to Marx//. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1991. 57+. Print. ""Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels"" //The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism//. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 657+. Print. Marx, Karl. ""Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels"" Ed. Roberta Garner. //Social Theory: A Reader//. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2010. 27+. Print.