Please Don't Feed the Ego

“I’d like to thank you all for coming to my wedding - but first I’d better go in there and propose to the girl.”

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Which Disney villain is most sympathetic? Thus asks a very entertaining video by Cracked: After Hours.¹ Jafar, Ursula and Scar are all considered, but the villain ultimately awarded the Most Sympathetic title is Gaston from Beauty and the Beast.

♫I use antlers in all of my deeeeecoraaaaating♫ ... thanks to De Disney on Disney Wikia for the picture.

It is, perhaps, an unexpected choice: Gaston is not an interestingly-developed character, nor is he particularly likeable: his personality is more or less defined by his extreme arrogance. However, the conclusion was not based on either of these criteria, but the idea that according to his own perspective, Gaston acted justifiably. If Gaston is still to be cast as the villain of the film, therefore, it must be assumed that there is something wrong with his perspective. There are probably many more flaws in it than those I outline below; still, I chose them because I think they illustrate especially strikingly that the beliefs that fuel Gaston’s ludicrously exaggerated arrogance aren’t so different to some I can be tempted to hold myself.²

1)      My value is based on the extent to which I excel in the role that I expect, or am expected, to fulfil.

Gaston’s entire self-worth (that is, his idea of his own value) is rooted in the fact that he is extremely good at a range of macho activities like shooting, wrestling, spitting, being brawny, being hairy, and tromping around wearing boots. To what extent the society around him imposed these criteria, or Gaston assumed them for himself, isn’t really the point here: what matters is that Gaston has an idea of what he ought to be like, and, for as long as he fulfils it – or, more specifically, surpasses everyone else he knows in fulfilling it – his arrogance (that is, a disproportionately high idea of his own value, and resultant superior behaviour) is intact. He’s content that he’s the best.

When, therefore, Belle turns down Gaston’s marriage proposal, he has two reactions. Firstly, he is overly upset and disheartened – not out of any genuine love for Belle, but rather because her rejection of him has undermined the entire structure of how he values himself. For Gaston, being unable to get his own way amounts to dismal failure. “No one says ‘no’ to Gaston!” he exclaims. “Dismissed! Rejected! Publicly humiliated! Why, it’s more than I can bear.” Secondly, he is angry, because he feels deprived of a right. He is the best, therefore he is entitled to Belle’s affections. In fact, this feeling of deprivation is the only way he can retain his sense of self-worth: the fault must be Belle’s. It is not that he is insufficient, but that Belle, in rejecting him, has wronged him, and defied what ought to be.³

Maybe I don’t measure myself according to quite the same criteria that Gaston does, but it’s still all too easy to ground my self-worth in how good I am at what I do. For instance, I am prone to setting up Being Really Good at Ancient Languages as a pillar on which some aspect of my value rests. If I know the correct answer to a question about a Greek or Latin plural or etymology, I feel quite smug; if I don’t, I feel a pang of failure. Nevertheless, the fact is, even if I genuinely am really good at something, I’m not going to succeed at it all the time without exception. The arrogance that results from my success is necessarily doomed to fall along with its foundations, since arrogance is, by definition, thinking more of myself than is realistic. For as long as I derive my sense of value from my ability to excel, I will either end up feeling worthless because of my failures, or desperately blaming others when things go wrong, out of a sense of entitlement to whatever I define as success.

2)     Other people’s compliments are an affirmation of my belief that my value comes from what I do.

Gaston is brought out of his sulking about the rejected proposal by an entire pub full of people literally singing his praises. “For there’s no man in town half as manly,” declares his minion LeFou,⁴ for example, “perfect, a pure paragon.” Gaston soon perks up and starts once again to believe that he is the best (and the rest is all drips), because that’s precisely what everyone else is telling him.

Surely everyone likes receiving compliments. I know I do, particularly when those compliments pertain to those things I do in which I invest quite a lot of myself: this blog would be a prime example. I have received some very kind feedback about my weekly online musings, and I’m not lying when I say that these comments means a lot to me. I feel sure any content creator would say the same, that it’s absolutely lovely to be told that what you do is of value to someone.

Still, I find receiving compliments somewhat problematic, because the way I am prone to basing my worth on the success of what I do means that these compliments can quickly become fuel for my arrogance – just like the compliments of Gaston’s various groupies were fuel for his. Now my self-worth is based not only on how good I am at what I do, but also how good other people say I am at what I do. Perhaps I should just refuse to accept compliments – stick my fingers in my ears and sing loudly if anyone tries to give me positive feedback and, to reduce the risk of it ever happening, carry round a large sign emblazoned with the command: ‘Please don’t feed the ego – it may bite’.

I don’t much like the sound of that. It’s a good thing to compliment people: it shows that you care about them, you value them, you notice the things they do. It’s loving. It builds and strengthens relationships. The issue is not whether we should compliment one another, but how we can avoid those compliments contributing to arrogance.

3)     I am the hero of the story in which I feature.

It is, as is pointed out at the end of the Cracked video I mentioned, pretty much the entire point of Beauty and the Beast that Gaston isn’t the good guy just because he’s handsome – but, of course, Gaston himself didn’t get that memo. As far as he’s concerned, he’s the best, everyone loves him, and he’s obviously the hero. His job is therefore to slay the monster and get the girl.⁵ Ultimately, stubbornly continuing to attempt this is what gets him killed.

In the same way, I often cast myself as the hero of my own story. I place myself at the centre of the plotline. Sometimes that manifests as a determination to get my own way, because my priorities are the most important; sometimes it can be more subtle, for instance, as the idea that it depends entirely on me to solve a particular problem. It’s essentially a case of thinking I’m more important than other people – arrogance just like Gaston’s.

From here, it’s easy to see how the first two attitudes I mentioned arise. If I am the hero, if everything depends on me, then a failure to fulfil that role – however I might be defining it – means I’m not what I thought I was and tried to be; in fact, I’m not really anything at all. Therefore, of course my worth is tied up in my success. And, since I am bound to fail in some way or other, I use other people’s compliments to bolster the foundations of my tottering arrogance – and a sense of self-worth that relies on me being the hero of my story is necessarily arrogant, because, the truth is, I’m not. I’m not even the talking teapot. I am the helpless victim and, at the same time, the villain.

The entire story can be gleaned from one verse – or actually, half a verse is quite sufficient – which I expect you rarely come across outside Advent. An angel is explaining to a rather perplexed Joseph that the child in his fiancée’s womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit: “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1: 21)⁶

It’s a straightforward enough plotline. There is a victim, the one who needs to be saved – us. There is a villain, the one keeping the victim captive – again, us, by means of our sin. There is a hero, the one doing the saving – not us. Jesus.

This casting correction has some pretty hefty implications for my arrogant attitude. I am not the most important person, the one on whom everything depends: Jesus is. My worth is not defined by my success at being the hero, but by Jesus’ success at being the hero, since he both rescues me (as victim) and justifies⁷ me (as villain): the happy ending is his responsibility, and, although we haven’t reached that point yet, he has already established everything necessary for it to happen; we’re living in the last chapter.⁸ Therefore, my self-worth is not grounded in my own unreliable ability, but in Jesus’ perfect ability, which both stabilises it and removes the possibility of arrogance, since to be arrogant is to have an exaggerated view of my own ability. And as for those compliments, they are redirected to God’s glory instead of my own: he is responsible for anything about me that’s worth complimenting, and I can’t do anything of value without him.⁹

So, if you’ve found anything valuable in this post, then God be praised that he could use me to communicate it. If not, it’s OK: my worth is defined by Jesus’ redeeming me, not by my talent for blogging.

Footnotes

¹ Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiGhALxbtK4. If you’re into elaborate criticism of film storylines (and, let’s be honest here, who isn’t?), Cracked has plenty of videos worth checking out.

² If you haven’t seen the film, don’t worry: you don’t need to have done so in order to understand the rest of the post. It would, however, probably be worth watching the scene containing the song ‘Gaston’, which is largely the source of my points, and can be found in roughly the first three minutes of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK3x2DOoJIc.  I will also freely admit that I haven’t seen Beauty and the Beast in some years and am quite happy to be called out on any mistakes: the reason the film has been on my mind this week is because it has featured in Disney Society’s most recent a cappella session, for which I arranged the song ‘Belle’, and probably drove my housemates crazy in the process with my endless singing through possible parts.

³ I think that’s a pretty disturbing way to think about another human being, but the idea of male entitlement to female affection is all over the place. This article is a very effective examination of its role in nerd culture: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html.

⁴ It’s French for ‘the mad’.

⁵ Yes, yes, it’s a cringingly awful definition of what it means to be a hero, but the point is that it’s the way heroes are frequently portrayed in popular culture. In subverting the pattern, I think Beauty and the Beast criticises it.

⁶ I know I said we only need half a verse, but the whole chapter’s worth reading anyway: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1&version=ESVUK. There’s even some quite interesting stuff to be drawn out of the lengthy genealogy.

⁷ Here used in its theological sense, to declare guiltless. It’s a big theme in Paul’s letter to the Romans; Romans 5 is my go-to scripture when I need reminding of my having been justified: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+5&version=ESVUK.

⁸ That’s why Jesus said, “It is finished,” when he died (John 19:30): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+19%3A28-30&version=ESVUK. The word used in the Greek is τετελεσται (tetelestai), which is a passive, perfect-tense form of the verb τελεω (teleō). This means ‘finish’ not just in the sense of being over, but being fulfilled, and the perfect tense indicates something that happened in the past but still has an impact in the present, so another possible translation might be something like ‘it has been accomplished’. Essentially, the point is that there’s nothing more that needs to be done. Amazing stuff.

⁹ “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5) is one of those Biblical phrases that I think we hear a lot and have become a bit desensitised to. It actually makes an incredibly radical and challenging statement about the extent to which we should be relying on God: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15&version=ESVUK.