Brief Reading 5 - Identification, Control, and Relationships

Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Anastasia all have the common concept of beauty and ugliness that compare many things in their stories. Interestingly, the reading mentions how Grigori Rasputin was a homely and ugly looking man who seemed to charm the beautiful ladies. It is also interesting to note that in these movies all depict the true ugliness of each of these characters but also show a deeper sense of beauty that can be found in the ugliest of creatures. However, in the animated movie of Anastasia, Rasputin is not fortunate enough to see the beauty in himself or in others.

Our society enjoys to compare beauty and ugliness to lightness and darkness. Perhaps it is due to the aggressive and depressing nature of ugliness that makes it seemingly dark versus beauty and the perception of lightness. Overall, we judge beauty in our society to be the "goodness" within someone both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Outward beauty shows how we may judge someone based on how they carry themselves along with our mutual likeness towards them based on how we can relate to that person.