I've been on a quest to watch all of Disney's animated features. This time, we take a bit of a diversion, and skipped ahead in line, instead of moving on chronologically.
Last night, I watched Frozen with my brother and his friend. Both had seen and loved the movie, and I had avoided watching it, simply because of my natural inclination to be a non conformist and the hype was a little off putting, and because I’m not a huge Idina Menzel fan. (Yes, go ahead and gasp and then condemn me, God knows I’m used to it. Just know I’m rolling my eyes at you.)
Okay. First things first,
Olaf the Snowman, voiced by the fabulous Joshua Gib of Book of Mormon fame, was adorable. His song about being in the sun was so incredibly cute, I giggled the whole time. He was doofy but fun and never annoying. Sven the Reindeer was a charming addition and even though we could have had the film without him, I wouldn’t want to see it without him. Kristen Bell predictably stole the show as Anna, today’s “Every Girl,” complete with a charming awkwardness that makes you want to constantly text her to meet you at Jamba Juice. Sadly, Elsa was so frigid as a character, I found it hard to be on her side. Kristoff is lovely, Hans is dashing and douchey and vocally, a fantastic match for Kristen Bell. The rest of the cast is pretty great. I had questions, though, about the Trolls… why were they even there? And the dude from Weasel Town kept confusing me since he was a guest in a kingdom and kept making decisions and ordering people around to kill the Queen. Um. Hi. You’re not in charge. Also, threatening to kill the monarch is attempted regicide and that means prompt beheading. Guards, get on that.
The other thing I had a big problem with was Elsa’s snow storm. Not so much with the storm itself, but people’s reactions to it. She gets embarrassed and leaves (see thoughts on this below), leaving people screaming for summer. Anna decides immediately to go find her sister. Meanwhile, we see people in Arandelle freezing and being tortured. The blurb for the movie even states, “Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna's sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.” Eternal Winter? Really? It literally takes Anna and Kristoff like, A WEEK AT MOST to find Elsa’s unbreakable ice palace of badassery… As someone who lives in Seattle, where a little inclement weather in the middle of summer is perfectly normal, if not expected, I was like, “get an umbrella and light a bonfire, whiners.” Don’t they live in a Fjord? They should be used to braving super nasty snow storms. Get a grip, dudes.
One last note; I’m an actor, a director and a writer. I see tons of scripts all the time, and in my humble opinion the writers could have done a better job at the one liner set ups. I found myself mouthing the answers and completing sentences as the characters became more archetypal. Sometimes, it felt like they were just phoning it in. That goes for the lyricists, too. They rhymed "door" and "anymore" in four FOUR songs ("Do You Want to Build a Snowman", "For the First Time in Forever", "Love is an Open Door", and "Let it Go"). Seriously, guys. You can do better than that.
Okay, now that those opinions are out of the way...
I was told that I would love Frozen because of the music, the cute snowman and the theme of girl power. (I’m a staunch feminist.) However, while I watched it, and yes, that girl power theme was strong, looking at it as a feminist vehicle made it garbled and confusing. From that point of view, I came away with garbled and confusing thoughts:
I was unimpressed by the antidote to Elsa’s (genetic?) malformity. It was obviously borrowed gratuitously from Once Upon A Time, another Disney vehicle, where True Love breaks the any curse, no matter how strong. Happily, this True Love does not rely on the presence of a man or a prince, which is refreshing. Sadly, this idea has been explored in a slew of recent films and tv shows, where they promise True Love as the key to a happy ending and then use the romantic interest’s presence as a red herring, Penelope and Once Upon A Time among them. I found it relatively predictable.
Sorry, what? If fear is the enemy, why do you seclude/terrorize the princess with insecurities? How/why does "love" recall winter? Didn't Elsa love her family all along? Elsa trying to protect Anna from herself wasn't love?
Many times in the movie it sprang to mind that what we are shown gives me no hope that Elsa and Anna would be effective rulers. There is a 3 year cut away where we see nothing of the girls between the ages of (I’m guessing?) 16 and 19. When responsibility is thrust upon her, Anna delegates power to, arguably, better leaders outside of the bloodline (didn't they have a regent or a chaperone or a nanny or someone to assist them growing up?).Technically, that’s called a coup d’etat. Elsa evades her responsibilities as queen, freezes the kingdom over, and forces her people to the brink of starvation… As a bystander, Hans' idea to charge Elsa with treason at least is more justified than anything Anna has to bargain with.
I’m all for the hero’s journey. I love it. Can’t get enough. Joseph Campbell is my personal hero. But I do NOT want to love a cowardly character. Elsa is a victim and runs away from her problems (a trait she learned from her parents, when they couldn’t deal with their child’s special abilities and decided to lock her up instead of finding a way to embrace her and accept her. Instead of looking at her strengths (The life saving ‘love’ for her sister being one of them) they condemn her for what they perceive as a danger and a weakness.
And then the last straw for me was when Elsa runs away and embraced her "bad girl" image, complete with sultry walk/slit up the thigh, though to Disney’s credit, Elsa donned the burgundy Bare Escentuals eye shadow for her coronation and it never moved. Kudos to our favorite mineral makeup line. (Pretty sure this was the only explainable magic in the film.)
I’m convinced that Frozen isn’t a Disney fairy tale about the empowerment of women. It is a Disney fairy tale about the acceptance of people and families of people with special needs. When parents dream of having children, rarely do they hope their child will have Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Spina Bifida and other developmental and neurological disabilities. They hope for a healthy, happy child. No one tells them how difficult it will be when their child is born with a rarely understood disease or disorder. No one tells them that while they love their little girl with all their hearts, she will grow up ostracised and ridiculed, thought to be a freak, stupid or slow simply because she is different. No one tells them that they might not be able to distinguish between the unconscious wish for an idealized normal child from an unthinkable, sudden reality of one who is not. What do parents do when they have no family history, therapeutic and educational supports through early intervention, education and a supportive medical community. There is no Arandelle Medical Journal. They have no one to turn to, no resources to assist them in giving their child the best chance she’s got. Instead, they lock her away, making sure she can’t hurt herself or anyone else, hiding ‘the freak’ away from public view.
Her acceptance comes from a sister who, being too young (also having her memory stripped away by trolls) to know anything else, accepts her and loves her for who she is. However, the damage has already been done. Elsa learns from her parents to run away, to hide her ‘malformities.’ “Don’t let them see,” she sings over and over, “Conceal, don’t feel,” while her sister begs her for the companionship she lost and doesn’t understand.
Here, the antidote to her estrangement, love as the answer, totally makes sense. Love and acceptance is the ONLY option available to us when living among people with differences, be they perceived as weaknesses or strengths. Absolute, “True” Love is the only way to break the icy indifference and misunderstandings of a harsh, outside world. I get it.
Only then, after it stopped being a feminist vehicle and became a vehicle for acceptance of disabilities, did I love Frozen.
9/10
9/10
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