The Beauty, the Beast and Gaston give us a perfect lesson of consent

         Beauty and the Beast, the perfect lesson of the notion of consent
 

LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE - A beautiful yellow dress, a small village where all the inhabitants say hello, a candlestick, a teapot and a clock best friends of the world: welcome in "Beauty and the Beast". You certainly know the Disney cartoon released in 1991, Jean Cocteau's 1946 film and you may be able to see the new version with Emma Watson in the title role that is released this Wednesday, March 22.

It is the story of a young woman who, in order to save her father, is imprisoned in her place by a shadowy and frightening beast in a castle which is itself surrounded by a forest full of wolves. In the end, they fall in love and the beast turns out to be a handsome prince. A beautiful lesson of life: Gentlemen, to melt women, imprison them and wait for your charm to take effect.

Except that the story is a little more complicated than that, especially because of a secondary character, Gaston. And in this sense, it is a good demonstration of the notion of consent and its subtleties. One of the regular criticisms of this fairy tale is to put forward a love story between a captive and his executioner, to glorify the Stockholm syndrome. The real danger is yet to be found elsewhere ...
                                                La Bête (Dan Stevens)

Beautiful, victim of Stockholm syndrome?

Interviewed on the subject, Emma Watson, committed feminist, defended itself before the film's release. "It's one thing I had a lot of trouble with at the beginning," says the actress interviewed by The Entertainment. "Beautiful is constantly arguing and always disagrees with the Beast," she recalls. "She has none of the characteristics of someone who develops Stockholm syndrome because she keeps her independence, she keeps her independence Intellectual property. "

Moreover, the new version of "Beauty and the Beast" went further in the painting of the emerging feelings between the two protagonists. The unusual scenes make it possible to better understand how a character as independent as Belle can feel feelings towards an abductor.

After the Beast saved her from the wolves, Belle voluntarily returns to the castle to look after him. The film then shows how the two characters share their interest in literature, how they go on a romantic escapade through an enchanted book, or how they discover together the destiny of Belle's mother. They thus share an intimacy that creates the conditions for the development of amorous feelings. The postulate of departure, captivity, is no longer part of the equation.

The real beast is Gaston

In this story, the Beast is not the one who bears the name. Remember Gaston, the real villain of this story. This mountain of muscles, unable to open a book, lives with the certainty that Belle only dreams of one thing, to marry him. This brute makes the girls of the village dream. Here is the real danger, a peril far more frightening than the mother-in-law of Blanche-Neige, Simba's uncle, or Ursulla, the witch of the Little Mermaid. Because the Gastons exist in real life, them.


Whenever her path crosses that of Belle, Gaston neither hears nor respects what the young woman says or does. When he wedges her against a wall to try to kiss her, the only way Belle can free herself is to push him out of her house, into the mud. "The whole body language of Belle cries 'No!'", Recalls the American blogger and novelist, Sierra Dawn, who wrote an accurate decoding of the consent in the cartoon of 1991

And in this, Gaston's attitude is no more opposed to that of the Beast. After the famous ball scene, when Belle and the Beast share a moment on the terrace of the castle, the latter asks her if she is happy without looking at her. "Yes," Belle answers. When the Beast is about to declare his love, he looks at his face and realizes that a veil of sadness has actually seized the young woman. She worries for her father who now lives alone far from the castle.

"Her words told her that she was willing, her body language said the opposite and responded to body language," Sierra Dawn said. In the film, many changes have occurred in the psychology of the characters, especially in Belle. On the other hand, all the work of Luke Evans, the actor who incarnates Gaston, has been to make it "as dark as a Disney character can be".

"You will see this man become a perfect monster in the film," warns Luke Evans. For Gaston, only own Belle account. And for that, he does not hesitate to mount the whole village against Maurice, the father of Belle, then against the Beast. The ignorant will then follow the brute without thinking when he agitates the most primary fears before them. And that's what makes Gaston such a realistic and frightening character. "Maybe one of the main lessons to be learned from this film: if you know a Gaston, what are you doing to stop it?" Asks Teen Vogue.


A hangman, a hunter, a prey. This is the "love" triangle around which the action of "Beauty and the Beast" is articulated. A history written in the eighteenth century, certainly. But three centuries later, this story still resonates in our society, especially by the portrait of the stalker Gaston. "The toughest is Gaston", sang the villagers ...


This misogynist character is an invention of the cartoon of 1991 which does not exist in the original novel or in the film of Cocteau. Gaston is a harasser who poisons the life of the whole village. But his excesses are forgiven him because of his past as a war hero. Besides, he sees in Belle nothing but a new battle to be waged and won, whatever the price.

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Bruno Le Roux: 24 CDD and a resignation

The Minister of the Interior had to leave his post on Tuesday after the revelations about the repeated jobs of his daughters as parliamentary assistants when he was a deputy. These jobs are the subject of a preliminary investigation by the National Finance Office.

Wounded in less than twenty-four hours. Minister of the Interior since December, Bruno Le Roux left office late Tuesday afternoon, replaced Place Beauvau by Matthias Fekl, until then in charge of Foreign Trade.

Le Roux has been on the spot since Monday night, when Quotidien, the TMC program hosted by Yann Barthès, revealed that the elected member of the first riding of Seine-Saint-Denis had regularly hired his two daughters as parliamentary assistants between 2009 And 2016, a practice not illegal, but for which the reality of the work carried out remains doubtful, according to the data collected by Quotidien. In the Fillon case, suspected of having granted a fictitious job for years to his wife Penelope, the executive quickly delayed the Minister of the Interior. The latter will now have to explain to the investigators of the Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Fiscal Offenses (OCLCIFF), who are responsible for conducting the preliminary investigation opened on Tuesday by the National Financial Office. A procedure that could have "prejudiced the work of the government," as Bruno Le Roux acknowledged by announcing his resignation.

What is Bruno Le Roux suspected of?

For eight years, the former member of Parliament for Seine-Saint-Denis has hired his two daughters on several occasions as parliamentary assistants. The first fixed-term contracts (DDCs) go back to 2009, during the holidays of All Saints' Day, the last to the summer of 2016. Holiday jobs, in a way, for young people visibly early: high school girls had only 15 And 16 years at the time of their first contract, the eldest was in first and its youngest in second. Face-camera, Bruno Le Roux defended himself by describing the tasks accomplished, of the "ranking". Parliamentary secretarial work, which consists in answering the telephone and e-mails and even writing blog posts. To entrust summer jobs to loved ones would be a fairly common practice, according to the elected: "Me, I remember to have taken also people recommended to me over the summer, and so I believe it is some Something that is done regularly enough to try to discover things, to try to discover a job. "Indeed, as we have shown (Libération, March 9), about one in five (A) work a member of his or her family, over long or short periods of time. In total, the two daughters of the minister have accumulated ten fixed-term contracts for one and fourteen for the other, for an amount of 55,000 euros, estimates the journalists of Quotidien.

Is this practice legal?

Yes, but it is framed. Hiring a member (s) of his / her family as a parliamentary assistant is subject to several obligations. A deputy can recruit up to five collaborators, which he rewards with his monthly envelope of 9 618 euros. The only limit for family members: since 2011, the Assembly's Rules of Procedure stipulate that remuneration for a family job must not exceed half of the credit allocated to the Member. Moreover, since the post-Cahuzac law was passed in 2013, ministers and parliamentarians are obliged to make known at the beginning of their mandate to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life their declarations of interests and heritage.

On Tuesday, it was impossible to consult the documents of the Minister of the Interior on the site of the institution. On the other hand, Libération was able to see the identity of the three parliamentary collaborators declared by Bruno Le Roux when he was a deputy. Among them, the wife of his substitute, Yannick Trigance, but no trace of his daughters. An absence not necessarily reprehensible. According to the High Authority, the declaration must be amended in the event of a 'substantial' change in their situation. But the law does not define what constitutes a substantial change, leaving this interpretation open to the discretion of parliamentarians. The two children of Bruno Le Roux having multiplied the contracts of short duration, their father will not fail to argue that it was not necessary to mention their hiring.

The Le Roux family will have to attest to the reality of the work carried out to avoid prosecution for fictitious jobs or even for embezzlement of public funds. Quotidien indeed noted several oddities. In the summer of 2013, one of the girls, Le Roux, trained at Yves Rocher in Belgium from 17 June to 17 August. Either during one of her fixed-term appointments at the Assembly ... Same configuration for her sister: she worked for a few weeks in 2015 a full-time job at the Assembly while attending her classes in preparatory class in Paris. The minister's office explained these concomitances: "These missions were carried out in reinforced schedules before and after the internship, and in remote work during the training period and for several additional days

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Pierre Moscovici was also offered luxurious costumes by a friend

"Le Canard enchaîné", which reveals this information, states that the facts predate 2012, when parliamentarians did not have to declare such gifts.

François Fillon and Pierre Moscovici share the same taste for luxury costumes. According to Le Canard, published on Wednesday (March 22nd), French commissioner Pierre Moscovici was offered luxurious costumes by a friend at the Parisian tailor dressing François Fillon.

It is at this same luxury tailor of the 7th arrondissement that the French-Lebanese lawyer Robert Bourgi recently offered two suits to François Fillon, facts that led the national financial prosecutor to grant a supplementary indictment against X for "traffic d Influence "in the investigation into alleged fictitious jobs that would have benefited the family of the candidate of the right and the center in the presidential election.

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Student Videos Contest, prize giving ceremony

We have known for a few days, the prize list of the competition of videos made by high school students, for the 50 years of SES [economic and social sciences]. This Wednesday, March 22 at CNAM, will be the awards ceremony, in the presence of the Minister of National Education and JF Copé, a beautiful illustration of the open-mindedness of SES. Other personalities will be present, including P Rosanvallon, of whom one of my pupils no longer knew whether he was a French teacher at the college or a professor at the Collège de France. The winners will receive their prizes, and in this afternoon of festivities, they will also be able to attend a small play.

Since the competition is over, one can express his preferences, his subjectivity. I really liked the two special mentions of the jury. The first special prize of the jury explains the notion of social classes (class in itself and for itself) and the other special price, takes stock of different types of unemployment. These two dense videos, in the original form show the richness of the programs of SES, and the ease of high school students who knew how to pass in 3 minutes complex notions.

I will also point out other favorites, such as this rather delirious video, explaining 5 cases in which socialization helps to get out of a bad step. Another rich and effective video, "Innov-action" explains the role of innovation in growth according to Schumpeter. We invite all curious minds to stroll on the channel You Tube dedicated to this contest, looking for nuggets.

The organizers of the competition and all participants are to be congratulated, in particular the two jury prizes: video on differential socialization, and video on the definition of purchasing power. Finally, let us not forget the public price that comes back to the video that presents the role of the ECB.

Videos, lively debates, the SES still young despite their half century, show that they know how to evolve, to innovate, to associate the pupils with the construction of the knowledge to be mastered.

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