Reasons why Belle is probably NOT reading Aladdin
I hate the fan theory that Belle is reading Aladdin during the song Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Here are the reasons why I do not think she is reading Aladdin.
1. The film’s director said the lyrics were supposed to allude to The Beast himself in a kind of foreshadowing.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/keelyflaherty/that-beauty-and-the-beast-and-aladdin-theory-has-been-offici?utm_term=.xqPGMlY0w#.uly5bORJo
2. The book has chapters. Aladdin does not have chapters. In fact Chapter three (Specifically mentioned in the song) is where Belle first meets Beast in the 1740 edition of Beauty and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast was a full length novel that was later shortened into the popular fairy tale.
3. Magick spells, daring sword fights, far off places, a prince in disguise describes Beauty and the Beast. The castle is not near by, the Beast is under a spell which keeps him disguised. And there is at least one sword fight. Similar could also be said of Sleeping Beauty. When Aurora first met Phillip she did not know he was the prince. In fact Belle and her father’s horse has the French version of the name Phillip, Phillipe.
4. When Belle sings at the fountain you can clearly see the illustration in her book is of a European setting. There is no way this could be the traditional Arabian story.
5. In fact if you look closely at the illustration you can see the woman is in a blue dress similar to Belle’s and it’s a French or Germanic castle in the background.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/2e325acd3c24a3d968f2bc78681a59c8/tumblr_inline_okfeiqocAn1qec1pk_540.jpg
6. Beauty and the Beast is one of the few Disney faery tales based on a full length novel. Another one beng Pinocchio. Most Disney faery tales were short to begin with and then had to have padding adding. Beauty and the Beast was originally a two hundred page pro-feminist novel from 1470 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve that had to be shortened into the traditional faery tale length later by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Beauty and the Beast is one of the few faery tales entirely by a woman author, and later shortened and revised by a woman author. It’s one of the few faery stories (at least in it’s original novel length) long enough to take up a book that thick.
7. There is nothing even remotely Arabic about the book’s text, or the illustration.
8. Aladdin is one of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). Aladdin would not have been sold as a stand alone story in the era Beauty and the Best is set in. In fact it simply would have been too short to take up a book that thick with print that size whereas the original Beauty and the Beast actually was full novel length.
9. In the original Beauty and the Beast novel and the 1987 Canon Fairy Tale classics movie length version of of the story, Belle had dreams in the castle of The Beast appearing to her as the prince in a lush garden but he never revealed who he truly was to her in those dreams. This illustration looks just like one of those dreams.
10. Gary Trousdale, director of the animated Beauty and the Beast officially debunked the story as NOT being Aladdin. He literally said “It’s Bull. Sorry guys.”
11. Though not exactly the same continuity the TV series Once Upon a Time (also made by Disney) gives the book the title “Her Handsome Hero.” (Yeah, I don’t like it either.)