Beauty and the Beast is not Stockholm Syndrome.
To get our bearings, “Stockholm Syndrome” is pop psychology, not an actual recognized condition. The supposed original incident was a spin job – the police were so terrible at freeing the hostages that the robbers looked reasonable by comparison, and when the cops asked a hack for an explanation why the hostages mysteriously disliked them, he spun a fake story about captor brainwashing without even meeting the hostages. Gnarly stuff.
That’s damning but doesn’t tidily wrap up our story.
1) Even though the “syndrome” is illegitimate, there are some legitimate pieces at play. Trauma bonding and disorganized attachments are recognized phenomena, under which people can bond with individuals who hold power over them and mistreat them. They have nuances that don’t match with all cases - to be brief, they often require sustained relationships over single experiences, and often require the abusing person to treat the target well sometimes. But if BTTB prominently features them, me saying “nope no Stockholm Syndrome because that’s not real” reads as pedantic and missing the point.
Similarly, prolonged periods of isolation from the outside world (like that in some captivities) can facilitate bonding, because, well, people naturally tend to have bonds one way or another. If your pool of bonding targets is limited, you have some incentive to pick someone from the pool, versus nobody at all. One of the robbers of the original “syndrome” case (though notably not the captives) cited this dynamic.
2) Even if Stockholm Syndrome is not legitimate in the real world, a fictional story could draw on it and depict its dynamics. Media uses pop psychology all the time.
3) Again to avoid being pedantic, maybe their relationship is abusive in a way different from what Stockholm Syndrome implies. If the movie falsely paints a different abusive dynamic as good, that sounds not great, too.
So let’s actually talk about the movie.
First, the Beast makes Belle his prisoner, confining her in the castle. The movie understands this is abusive. The Beast is also not seeking Belle’s love or manipulating her in that direction, fatalistically believing he will never have another’s love. Belle is hostile and not in love with him. Not Stockholm.
Later, the Beast finds Belle in the forbidden West Wing of the castle, and angrily forces her to leave. Then, seeing Belle ambushed by wolves, the Beast returns to save her life, but takes serious wounds in the process.
Freeing her (…in a way) is the opposite of anything Stockholm. Belle, instead of fleeing, returning to tend to his wounds and help heal him, is straightforwardly a response to this positive act, and not a bizarre Stockholm reaction to confinement.
From here, their relationship gradually blooms and blossoms. The prior analysis has been more prosaic bookkeeping - let’s get deeper. Let’s take the bigger picture question as “Is their relationship a story about abuse and its consequences?”
The answer is no. The relationship is based on something else instead: Beast’s increasing willingness to be vulnerable, which allows Belle to see and experience his sincerity and goodness. When we talked about negative framings of their relationship, it was about Beast’s power over Belle, but the reality is actually the opposite. Their relationship only grows as Beast continually gives up power, culminating in their equality. That is the soul of the answer, and key to the movie’s beauty.
First, he risks physical power, and loses much of it for a time, by saving Belle from the wolves. Then, he gradually cedes emotional power by allowing Belle to treat him and teach him, and by reining in his anger and flaws. He listens to her and learns from her, even for something as vulnerable-to-his-masculinity as gently feeding birds by hand. And he shows he does have the gentleness, control, and goodness to win their trust, and Belle’s. She tells us so pretty plainly. He didn’t cajole her love through mistreating her, but as he gradually improves himself and how he treats her, Belle chooses to give it to him.
This mutual growing love, but also platonic respect, regard, and care too, builds up to its natural ending point – equality. Beast explicitly lets Belle leave to save her father, letting her do completely as she wishes, out of care and respect, even abandoning him if he wished. And she chooses to return to his new self, sealing their love. Following his emotional transformation, where he regains his humanity, comes the physical transformation of the Beast regaining his human appearance to match.
Would a real life version of the story work the same way? Probably not. Besides the magic powers, Beast’s emotional arc is made cleaner and compressed for the sake of a 2 hour movie. Lots of people who start out as abusive as Beast does don’t heal and improve to the extent that Beast does ever, let alone in the movie’s compressed time. And even with such a perfect arc, Belle would be well within her rights to cut him off and leave at any point, and she very well might! This story only works if she really has the agency to abandon Beast forever, making her choice to stay with him a real, meaningful choice.
But as before, Beast’s and Belle’s behaviors are storytelling choices to get at a very real bigger picture. Even if someone starts very flawed and abusive, they can absolutely improve, stop their abuse, and replace it with authentic love. If the person receiving abuse chooses of their own will to give healthy, authentic reconciliation and love (not flawed facsimiles from fear or disorganized attachment in abuse), the two could genuinely reconcile. They could even find true love - it doesn’t even need to be the romantic kind - as two separate, independent, and coequal, but choosing to unite with each other, people.
To get our bearings, “Stockholm Syndrome” is pop psychology, not an actual recognized condition. The supposed original incident was a spin job – the police were so terrible at freeing the hostages that the robbers looked reasonable by comparison, and when the cops asked a hack for an explanation why the hostages mysteriously disliked them, he spun a fake story about captor brainwashing without even meeting the hostages. Gnarly stuff.
That’s damning but doesn’t tidily wrap up our story.
1) Even though the “syndrome” is illegitimate, there are some legitimate pieces at play. Trauma bonding and disorganized attachments are recognized phenomena, under which people can bond with individuals who hold power over them and mistreat them. They have nuances that don’t match with all cases - to be brief, they often require sustained relationships over single experiences, and often require the abusing person to treat the target well sometimes. But if BTTB prominently features them, me saying “nope no Stockholm Syndrome because that’s not real” reads as pedantic and missing the point.
Similarly, prolonged periods of isolation from the outside world (like that in some captivities) can facilitate bonding, because, well, people naturally tend to have bonds one way or another. If your pool of bonding targets is limited, you have some incentive to pick someone from the pool, versus nobody at all. One of the robbers of the original “syndrome” case (though notably not the captives) cited this dynamic.
2) Even if Stockholm Syndrome is not legitimate in the real world, a fictional story could draw on it and depict its dynamics. Media uses pop psychology all the time.
3) Again to avoid being pedantic, maybe their relationship is abusive in a way different from what Stockholm Syndrome implies. If the movie falsely paints a different abusive dynamic as good, that sounds not great, too.
So let’s actually talk about the movie.
First, the Beast makes Belle his prisoner, confining her in the castle. The movie understands this is abusive. The Beast is also not seeking Belle’s love or manipulating her in that direction, fatalistically believing he will never have another’s love. Belle is hostile and not in love with him. Not Stockholm.
Later, the Beast finds Belle in the forbidden West Wing of the castle, and angrily forces her to leave. Then, seeing Belle ambushed by wolves, the Beast returns to save her life, but takes serious wounds in the process.
Freeing her (…in a way) is the opposite of anything Stockholm. Belle, instead of fleeing, returning to tend to his wounds and help heal him, is straightforwardly a response to this positive act, and not a bizarre Stockholm reaction to confinement.
From here, their relationship gradually blooms and blossoms. The prior analysis has been more prosaic bookkeeping - let’s get deeper. Let’s take the bigger picture question as “Is their relationship a story about abuse and its consequences?”
The answer is no. The relationship is based on something else instead: Beast’s increasing willingness to be vulnerable, which allows Belle to see and experience his sincerity and goodness. When we talked about negative framings of their relationship, it was about Beast’s power over Belle, but the reality is actually the opposite. Their relationship only grows as Beast continually gives up power, culminating in their equality. That is the soul of the answer, and key to the movie’s beauty.
First, he risks physical power, and loses much of it for a time, by saving Belle from the wolves. Then, he gradually cedes emotional power by allowing Belle to treat him and teach him, and by reining in his anger and flaws. He listens to her and learns from her, even for something as vulnerable-to-his-masculinity as gently feeding birds by hand. And he shows he does have the gentleness, control, and goodness to win their trust, and Belle’s. She tells us so pretty plainly. He didn’t cajole her love through mistreating her, but as he gradually improves himself and how he treats her, Belle chooses to give it to him.
This mutual growing love, but also platonic respect, regard, and care too, builds up to its natural ending point – equality. Beast explicitly lets Belle leave to save her father, letting her do completely as she wishes, out of care and respect, even abandoning him if he wished. And she chooses to return to his new self, sealing their love. Following his emotional transformation, where he regains his humanity, comes the physical transformation of the Beast regaining his human appearance to match.
Would a real life version of the story work the same way? Probably not. Besides the magic powers, Beast’s emotional arc is made cleaner and compressed for the sake of a 2 hour movie. Lots of people who start out as abusive as Beast does don’t heal and improve to the extent that Beast does ever, let alone in the movie’s compressed time. And even with such a perfect arc, Belle would be well within her rights to cut him off and leave at any point, and she very well might! This story only works if she really has the agency to abandon Beast forever, making her choice to stay with him a real, meaningful choice.
But as before, Beast’s and Belle’s behaviors are storytelling choices to get at a very real bigger picture. Even if someone starts very flawed and abusive, they can absolutely improve, stop their abuse, and replace it with authentic love. If the person receiving abuse chooses of their own will to give healthy, authentic reconciliation and love (not flawed facsimiles from fear or disorganized attachment in abuse), the two could genuinely reconcile. They could even find true love - it doesn’t even need to be the romantic kind - as two separate, independent, and coequal, but choosing to unite with each other, people.
