Article: A Short History of Beauty and the Beast in Pop Culture

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

Easy to read and navigate this article does a nice job of highlighting the "big" Beauty and the Beast pop culture highlights from its beginnings. La Belle et la Bête is hard to beat for me, though seeing a contemporary dance performance choreographed by Graeme Murphy for the Sydney Dance Company, in Australia, came close. (Neither that ballet or any other Beauty & the Beast dance work appears on the list unfortunately.)

Go over and have a look at A Short History of Beauty and the Beast in Pop Culture. It's highlights only, not a definitive works/major works timeline and will be nothing new to readers of this blog but it's great to see all in one place.

A little more obscure is this article, also by Flavorwire, of "Beauty and the Beast-style" Love on Film.


Knowing Beauty and the Beast is a personal favorite of Heidi Anne Heiner's (of SurLaLune fame), I'd love to see a visual-plus-notes pop culture timeline from her. (Like she hasn't got a gazillion things on her plate already! We're REALLY looking forward to her Beauty and the Beast Tales From Around the World anthology which she aims to have out sometime this year.)

In the meantime, I found this little gem below, showing various incarnations of Beast over the years for comparison. Originator unfortunately unknown, though I did find it HERE. (Sorry about the resolution. It's as large as I could make it without the image pixilating badly.)

Illustrations by Walter Crane, Rebecca Guay, Ron Embleton, Nilesh Mistry, Judy Riggenbach, Glen Keane, Warwick Goble, Anne Grahame Johnstone, Edmund Dulac, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Paul Woodroffe, Errol Le Cain, Anne Anderson, Kirsi Salonen, Scott Gustafson, Alicechan, Margaret Tarrant, and various Anonymous

Now with Once Upon A Time about to make their mark and two Beauty & the Beast TV series projects currently in development, there are only going to be more...

Here's the Once Upon A Time promo (somewhat spoilery) for the February 12th Beauty and the Beast Valentine-themed episode (photo previews, also with slight spoilers HERE):