Be Our Guest: The Spectacle of Checking Into A French Airbnb

Why is my French Airbnb host showing me how the faucet works?

In Disney’s 1991 animated classic Beauty and the Beast, the French candlestick, MC and libertine, Lumiere spends three minutes and 44 seconds explaining to Belle each item on the menu for the evening as Belle sits and listens. He introduces the cutlery, the desserts, his own backstory as a servant who is not serving, and famously encourages his guest to…