Tulisa Compare And Contrast Essay

Both the 1991 animated Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast, and the Indian folktale, The Tale of Tulisa, are examples of Aarne-Thompson Folktale Type 425. Despite their similar classification, both works follow relatively different plots because they are variations of the same Aarne-Thompson Folktale Type. In fact, Beauty and the Beast is specifically AT Tale Type 425C, while The Tale of Tulisa is AT Tale Type 425A. As subsets of “The Search for the Lost Husband,” the basic scheme involves a maiden who falls in love with a man who transforms into his monstrous form; however, this does not account for small details that set the two apart. From her father’s occupation to how Belle does not only see Beast at night, Beauty and the Beast proves

to be much more than an identical copy of The Tale of Tulisa. Therefore, some of those individual elements that Disney incorporated into their classic movie make Beauty and the Beast an original retelling of this common folktale.
For one, the maiden’s father in both Beauty and the Beast and The Tale of Tulisa have different occupations, despite the fact that they concern the same thing. In Beauty and the Beast, Maurice works in the basement of his house, where he invents various machines. As Belle’s father tinkers with one of his intricate contraption used for chopping wood, Belle tells him, “You’ll win first prize at the fair tomorrow … and become a world-famous inventor.” On the other hand, Tulisa’s father, Nur-Singh, does not work as an inventor. Instead, Nur-Singh “supported himself and his wife and daughter Tulisa by wood-cutting.” Although both of their jobs involve cutting wood, Maurice is not the one actually cutting it himself in Beauty and the Beast. Nur-Singh also chops the wood to support his family, while Maurice’s profession is not solely based on providing for his daughter. Instead, Belle’s father is presumably an inventor simply by choice.
Furthermore, the maiden’s reason for venturing into the forest in the first place is unique for both The Tale of Tulisa and Beauty and the Beast, as well as how important it is to each of them. Tulisa’s father, Nur-Singh, cuts wood for a living, so he needs logs to perform his job. Therefore, Tulisa “went into the forest to gather wood” for Nur-Singh to use. She seems pretty relaxed about the whole situation too, since she was simply wandering around before finding the enchanted well. In Beauty and the Beast though, Maurice was traveling through the forest to go to a fair to show off his new invention. Yet when Belle sees his horse approaching her, she can immediately tell he did not make it there. In fact, Belle pleads, “Where’s Papa? Where is he, Phillipe? What happened? … You have to take me to him!” She then sets off on a serious mission to find her father, and thus heads into the forest with Philippe serving as her guide. Although both Tulisa and Belle go into the forest to help their father in some way, they do it with much different degrees of urgency. Tulisa knows her father is definitely not in danger when she finds wood for him. Belle, on the other hand, actively tries to save her father, who mysteriously vanished in the forest.
Consent and the concept of marriage also play a critical role in separating the plot of Beauty and the Beast from The Tale of Tulisa. In Disney’s animated movie, Beast takes Maurice captive in his gloomy castle. Once Belle arrives to save him, she offers to take his place as prisoner because she notices her father’s deteriorating health. Maurice suddenly pleads with her, “No, Belle. I won’t let you do this!” Therefore, Maurice never agreed for Beast to take Belle from him. By contrast, a voice in a well asked Tulisa to be his wife, but she nervously responded that her father had the final say on the matter. To her dismay, Nur-Singh “obeyed the summons, and persuaded by the promise of great wealth, consented to his daughter’s marriage.” Unlike Maurice, Tulisa’s father fully consented to the whole affair and wanted his daughter to marry Basnak Dau. Going deeper, Belle and Beast never formally marry one another in the film, which is different from Tulisa and Basnak Dau. Instead, Belle and Beast only go as far as to admit their love to one another after gradually building a romantic relationship. In this situation specifically, Beast declares, “Yes, but you must promise to stay here forever.” For this reason, Belle is more of Beast’s prisoner than his wife, especially in the beginning.
In The Tale of Tulisa and Beauty and the Beast, the maiden sees the monster she lives with at different times of day. After marrying her husband, Tulisa spends her days in the palace, but rarely gets a chance to be with Basnak Dau. She “lived very happily with her husband, but only saw him at night-time.” On the other hand, Belle does not only spend time with Beast in the evening. At one point in the film, Beast and Belle are eating breakfast and they head to the courtyard to sing a musical number about their budding amorous relationship. As they belt out the tune, Beast confesses, “She’s never looked at me that way before.” The importance of this quote is not in the reasoning behind why he said it, but because this song takes place in broad daylight outside of the castle. Contrarily, Tulisa only spends time with Basnak Dau in the darkness within the confines of Basnak Dau’s palace, which sets the two versions of this folktale apart.
Each prince’s transformation back into his original form, as well as how long each maiden had to complete some task or tasks for that transformation to even happen, occurs under peculiar circumstances that are unique to both plots in Beauty and the Beast and The Tale of Tulisa. To restore Beast’s kingship, Belle must break the spell cast on Beast by a beautiful enchantress from the beginning of the movie after Beast turns away an ugly beggar. The narrator goes on to explain, “If he could learn to love another and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.” As Beast lies on the floor after being stabbed in the side by Gaston, Belle whimpers, “Please don’t leave me! I love you!” Suddenly, several beams of bright light from the sky lift him in the air, thus transforming him into a human again. In The Tale of Tulisa though, Tulisa defeats her mother-in-law when the Huma egg hatches and the bird pecks out the snake’s eyes around her neck. One of the squirrels specifically told Tulisa that after the bird pecks out the green snake’s eyes around her mother-in-law’s neck, then “Basnak Dau will recover his kingdom and become reconciled to his wife.” Although it is not explicitly stated if Basnak Dau became a snake or human after he transformed back into his original form, both him and Beast transform in their own distinct ways. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle’s words are enough to cause Beast to transform back, while Tulisa must complete several seemingly impossible tasks to please her mother-in-law before she can be reunited with her husband in his original form. Going further, there is a clear time limit set on the spell in Beauty and the Beast because the narrator explicitly mentions, “The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year.” Therefore, if Beast does not break the spell by his twenty-first birthday, then he will remain in his monstrous form forever. This is different from The Tale of Tulisa because there is presumably no specific time constraint for Tulisa to defeat her mother-in-law, thus restoring Basnak Dau’s kingship over the snakes and allowing him to transform into his original form.
While The Tale of Tulisa and Beauty and the Beast are both variations of “The Search for the Lost Husband,” each retelling incorporates certain elements that make them authentic, thus revealing more about the cultures who composed those pieces.

In other words, the minute intricacies that make each story unique put on display their distinct cultural views. In The Tale of Tulisa specifically, Basnak Dau becomes a snake after Tulisa forces him to disclose his real name. Therefore, his monstrous form is just a serpent. By contrast, Beast transforms into his monstrous form because he turns away an ugly beggar based on her disheveled appearance. Yet the key difference is that Beast becomes a combination of several animals, which include such things as the body of a bear and the tail of a wolf. The fact that Beast’s outward manifestation consists of numerous species of intimidating creatures says something about American culture. Disney presumably altered this aspect of the folktale to make Beast appear more terrifying to their audience by combining pieces from several frightening animals. The Indian culture, on the other hand, presumably picked a snake as the prince’s monstrous form because one typically associates serpents with evil. When the king of the city sentenced Nur-Singh to death after his neighbors falsely accused him of a crime, the snakes killed all the citizens. When Nur-Singh called upon Basnak Dau for help, the king of the snakes ordered them to revive the dead. This demonstrates how the snakes themselves can be malevolent, considering how they murdered the townspeople, while Basnak Dau is almost an altruistic figure who undoes the snakes’ evil acts. Yet when Basnak Dau returns to the stream after transforming back into a serpent, he loses his kingship and thus all of his power over the snakes. One could assume he now becomes an evil character as well and will stay that way until Tulisa completes the tasks to restore his kingship. Therefore, the choice of

the man’s monstrous form is justifiably unique to each respective culture, as their selection reflects the significance of such an animal, or mixture of animals, to their society or audience.