Colonialism and the Beast
In 2021, I wrote a blog post entitled Unconscious Bias: A Conscious Confession , in which I recognised my own tendency to make first-impression judgements based on names, accents, colour, appearance etc. Well, now I'm confessing to the presence of blind spots as regards my own White Privilege. Specifically relating to my favourite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. A couple of weeks back, I made the hideous mistake of posting a plot analysis of Our Flag Means Death based on Beauty and and the Beast in a private fan group. My innocently-meant observations ended up seriously upsetting another fan by tapping into 600 years of colonial hurt. I apologised and took the post down. I don't intend to repeat what I posted there, as that would defeat the object of removing it. But I would like to talk about some of the issues involved and how I could have missed them. The Problem My fellow-fan alerted me to the dangers inherent in casting Stede and Ed as Beauty and the Beast, given that ...