From the fall of 1991 to the summer of 1992, I watched Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" nine times in the movie theaters.* Granted, most of those times were in the local dollar theater. But still. "Beauty and the Beast" has always been one of my very favorite movies of all time,** but I hadn't seen it for many long years until the other day during paternity leave when we pulled out our VHS copy and popped it in for Ellie and Annie.

The result: Ellie has launched herself into a full-fledged "Beauty and the Beast" obsession. She is constantly asking to watch it, but even more often, she is asking us to play the songs on the iPod over the stereo and dance to them, or else she's asking the whole family to participate in her role-playing reenactment of the movie.

"Daddy, I'll be Belle, you be the Beast, Annie will be Cogsworth, Mama will be Gaston, and Leah will be Chip," she'll say. Shelly was relieved when the grandparents came to visit the new baby in the last couple of weeks because she doesn't always get the role of Gaston when there are others to assign it to (of course, I think once she had to be LeFou). But when it comes down to it, the only person who has to really do anything in these role-plays is the Beast. That is, me. Usually, when Ellie tells me I need to be the Beast, I'll yell back in the Beast's voice, "I thought I told you to come down for dinner!" Or, if I don't feel like yelling (which always produces a laugh from both Ellie and Annie), "You... you came back!"

I'm finally able to put my detailed familiarity with that film to good use. In fact, yesterday Ellie and Annie and I were driving in the car, and Ellie asked me to actually sing the instrumental score during the part where Maurice (Belle's father) is being chased by wolves toward the Beast's castle. And wouldn't you know it - I can do that.

Most of all, Ellie's little obsession makes me proud of her for latching on to the most quality entertainment there is for a little person like her. I would much rather have her going around singing, "There goes the baker with his tray like always!"*** than singing some silly Dora song or something. Perhaps one day she'll be old enough to understand the themes of love, forgiveness, and personal change that the story explores, and she'll find new meaning in it. It's probably too much to hope that she recognize how dazzling the state-of-the-art animation techniques were for the time it was made (the swooping "camera" in the ballroom scene still gives me the shivers).

But my little girl is a Belle-o-phile and I am proud of it. In this day and age when Disney is agressively marketing its Princesses**** as a brand in and of themselves - a campaign to which Ellie has fallen victim - it's reassuring to know that Ellie's favorite is also the Disney heroine who has been my favorite right from the moment when I met her, saw her.

* I also saw it one more time the the theater in the IMAX re-release version in 2002.

** I remarked to my family the other day that perhaps one reason I fell in love with Shelly was because her long dark brown hair and big brown eyes reminded me of Belle. I was only half joking.

*** My senior year of high school, I was selected as my school's Sterling Scholar in music. This is a big program run by the state of Utah where high school seniors compete on their academic prowess in particular areas. During the interview with the judges, I was asked who was my favorite composer. Did I say Beethoven or Berlioz or Bach? No, I actually said, without much hesitation, "Alan Menken." I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that I didn't win...

**** Of course, the Disney Princesses brand conveniently forgets that Belle is not a princess. She is born the poor daughter of an inventor in a provincial French village, and while she does learn to love (is that the same as "fall in love with"?) a Beast who turns out to be a prince, there is no evidence in the movie that they ever get married. Who knows - Belle and Beast (does he still go by the name "Beast" after transforming back into a human?) might have broken up a few weeks later. After all, I took a poll of my female friends in high school once, and they overwhelmingly said that they thought the Beast was better looking as a Beast than as a man. Even phyiscal attractiveness aside (the moral of the whole story, of course, being that we should put it aside), it's not a sure thing that their relationship can withstand returning to humdrum everyday life in a boring castle without anthropomorphic knicknacks. Belle does, in the end, "want adventure in the great wide somewhere," and when the enchantment on the Beast and his household is broken, I am not sure he is any less provincial and unadventurous than Belle's hometown.