Beauty, Deformity and the Film Wonder

The top-grossing movie Wonder triggers the meditation on beauty. As is often the case, people instinctively define that a beauty must be true, and the coat of truth must be beautiful. The beauty principle overwhelms truth, and a grotesque appearance is seen as untrue and evil.

In all films about devil residing in the body of a little girl, the moment of unveiling the devil is always sauced by the emergence of its “real appearance”: the deformed figure, deformed face and deformed behavior. We also have tales about ugly and good men and women, told by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hugo, etc. but all running on the basis that “Although they are ugly, but…” Lierary tradition does not make a good example in teaching people how to face deformity.

The grotesque forms (or ugliness) still can not escape from a priori prejudice. This preconscious aesthetic rule is perhaps in accordance with the order of nature, and it’s true that the deformed appearance disobeys the general rule of nature.

It is, however, where the humanism works: human beings do not only imitate nature, but trim it into perfection as well, sometimes by reinforcing morality. Kant has his reasonable worries about the paradox of aestheticism and morality, but in the scenarios of treating disabled people, morality is the magic to beauty.