In the original Disney Beauty and the Beast animated film. Belle’s father Maurice is a quirky inventor, while Belle…reads a lot. This spoke to the heart of every little girl bookworm in the nineties (of which I was one!), but it begs the question: with all that reading she does (and one would assume she’s learning things as she reads), why didn’t she ever seem to do anything with all that knowledge? Well, the upcoming live-action Beauty and the Beast is aiming to rectify that.
As reported by Mediaite, star Emma Watson did an interview with Entertainment Weekly in which she gives more insight into the direction of the film—a direction that seems to coincide with Watson’s feminist activism. She says:
“In the animated movie, it’s her father who is the inventor, and we actually co-opted that for Belle. I was like, ‘Well, there was never very much information or detail at the beginning of the story as to why Belle didn’t fit in, other than she liked books. Also what is she doing with her time?’ So, we created a backstory for her, which was that she had invented a kind of washing machine, so that, instead of doing laundry, she could sit and use that time to read instead. So, yeah, we made Belle an inventor.”
First, I love that Watson apparently helped create this change, bringing her feminist sensibility to the story and asking the right questions to prompt a change in the script. Second, I love that it’s Belle’s love of reading that makes her an inventor. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, and a girl’s gotta read, amirite?
This new little nugget of information makes me even more excited to see this film! What about you?
(featured image via Disney)
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