Frozen: Good, could have been better
Jan. 17th, 2014 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesFrozen is, in my memory, the first movie I have been agitating to see for an entire month. This began when I saw the Let It Go clip on YouTube via Love, Joy, Feminism. Like Libby Anne I was deeply moved by the way Elsa felt free to break away and express everything about herself she had been forced to repress all her life. Watching it, I tasted again the lonely exhilaration of that moment when you forget about being good and dutiful and give yourself permission to be your own self, a necessary if not final step to healing.
This began my hankering to see the movie, which to my disappointment would not open in Korea for another month. I all but marked the day on my calendar and pestered the husband about it every few days, until the long-suffering man took me to see it yesterday on opening night.
What I loved: Most of it, really.
As others have pointed out, the movie sends enormously positive messages that are atypical of Disney fare. It melted my heart, like it did millions of others, that the "true love" that would save Anna was not some dude she'd just met but her love for her sister. It was also a refreshing departure from the traditional princess tropes (not created by Disney, though Disney certainly capitalized on it) that princeses are to be loved rather than act out of love, that they are objects of actions and not their subjects. Finally, a princess who rescues not only the kingdom but herself! A relationship between women at the center of a Disney animated feature! Romantic relationships as just one part of a woman's life and development, not the all-consuming final goal! I loved that aspect of the movie, and for that alone it was worth the month of waiting.
Strangely enough, for all its nuance in the main female leads, the movie actually mangled its male characters in different ways. I also thought the ending was a little too pat. In order of most to least glaring:
Hans: The Plot-Driven Villain
I remember thinking about Hans: "Please be a good guy. Please be a good guy." And of course, as I dreaded, he wasn't. What's more, he was a bad guy in the most contrived, mustache-twirling way imaginable. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the first that these two weren't in it for the long term. These were two giddy teenagers who had just left the confines of their cramped and lonely childhoods and were delirious with happiness to find someone they could share a connection with. The hormones helped, too, or didn't help depending on how you look at it. Elsa and Kristoff were right that Anna and Hans were being impulsive and hadn't thought things through.
Now, isn't that a good story in itself? Hans could have been a well-meaning young man who thought he was in love, only to realize neither he nor Anna was ready for the magnitude of the commitment they had thrown themselves into. The moment when Anna asked him to kiss her to save her life would have been a perfect time for that realization. The patched-in revelation that he was in it for the throne all along was a completely unnecessary twist to a perfectly good storyline.
The implications are really unfortunate, too. So it's okay for Anna to get out of a relationship that she had entered too impulsively--but only because the guy was a horrible person? Way to send mixed messages, Disney. The thing is, no one has to be a bad person for breaking up with them to be a valid choice. I see this idea in real life, too, that rejecting someone as a romantic partner is some kind of punishment that they only deserve if they're terrible. The flip side of that idea is that one is entitled to a relationship as long as he (and let's face it, it's almost always he) is a good person, and I don't think I have to go into length about how wrong that is.
Even the setup for Anna's heroic sacrifice could have happened just as well with Hans being mostly a good guy. What are some of Hans' most endearing actions early in the show? He handed out supplies, free of charge, to families who were suffering from the sudden winter. He was helping Elsa's victims, in other words. It's not such a big stretch from there to concluding that Elsa's death is a painful necessity, especially after she admitted she couldn't stop the winter. How long would Arendelle's people last in perpetual winter, with its agriculture dead and trade frozen out?
We know older and more experienced leaders like the Duke of Weselton had reached the conclusion that the winter needed to end by any means necessary, and what effect would the social pressure have had on the youngest of thirteen sons, constantly pushed about when he wasn't totally ignored? Would this not be a more natural extension of the character than the rug-pulling the audience was treated to, and wouldn't it have been a nice emphasis on the show's anti-conformist theme? This was a show that didn't really need a villain, and the creative team did the movie a disservice by shoehorning one in.
Kristoff: The Whitewashed
Quite simply, I thought the trolls were nonsense. With his reindeer and his familiarity with mountains Kristoff would have worked much better as a mountain Sami rather than a random orphan taken in by random supernatural beings. And though I say "whitewashed," I'm not necessarily advocating that he shouldn't have been blond; for all we know he actually is Sami, but the point is that the writing made it damned sure that we would never know. What I'm advocating is context, not melanin, some acknowledgement that Scandinavia is home to other peoples and histories outside the monochrome stereotype.
Yes, if Kristoff were a young Sami man, the script as written would have made Kristoff's tribe into yet another group of magical indigenous people. Yet farming the boring stereotype out to non-human characters doesn't make it magically more interesting. Diverse writing isn't a costless exercise where you can keep on telling the same tales while adding a few darker faces. It's a different kind of writing where you acknowledge stories and human complexities outside the dominant narrative.
Olaf: The Cop-Out
The snowman should have died keeping Anna company. It's the only ending that made sense for him, and would have set up her own sacrifice for Elsa beautifully with the contrasting image of him melting and her freezing. Yeah, it would have made the kiddies cry, but a little-known fact about me is that I subsist on the tears of children so it's no skin off my nose, or carrot.
Everybody Loves Elsa: Another Cop-Out
Approximately a week after she threatened the survival of her entire nation, not to mention a lifetime of hiding her powers as a secret shame, Elsa is suddenly universally loved by her subjects? Forget the ice power, that's the true magic in the story. Unfortunately it's a boring sort. Lifelong prejudices don't just melt away like snow in summer. The abrupt about-face just cheapens the conflict set up throughout the movie, especially after the entire movie showed that her power could, in fact, be an existential threat.
Sure, people could have warmed to her after she gained control of her powers and cleaned up her own mess. It stretches credibility to think everyone was so wholehearted in their acceptance, however. It even looks like a form of Stockholm's syndrome in a certain light--it's not so much that people are no longer prejudiced, they're scared to speak out because she can kill every single one of them if they upset her. That's one way to live peacefully and openly as someone who's different, but it hardly jives with the movie's overall message.
In general: Not bad.
For all its flaws and limitations Frozen has come further than just about any Disney movie since Lilo and Stitch, and shows that feminist storytelling is good storytelling, period. That's only natural, since stories are about human concerns and feminist themes are issues that affect people in their relation to gender and sex. Feminism, in other words, is about huge swathes of life. Leave those out and you can't tell the full truth of human experience. Frozen goes in the right direction. My only complaint is that it doesn't go far enough.
This began my hankering to see the movie, which to my disappointment would not open in Korea for another month. I all but marked the day on my calendar and pestered the husband about it every few days, until the long-suffering man took me to see it yesterday on opening night.
What I loved: Most of it, really.
As others have pointed out, the movie sends enormously positive messages that are atypical of Disney fare. It melted my heart, like it did millions of others, that the "true love" that would save Anna was not some dude she'd just met but her love for her sister. It was also a refreshing departure from the traditional princess tropes (not created by Disney, though Disney certainly capitalized on it) that princeses are to be loved rather than act out of love, that they are objects of actions and not their subjects. Finally, a princess who rescues not only the kingdom but herself! A relationship between women at the center of a Disney animated feature! Romantic relationships as just one part of a woman's life and development, not the all-consuming final goal! I loved that aspect of the movie, and for that alone it was worth the month of waiting.
Strangely enough, for all its nuance in the main female leads, the movie actually mangled its male characters in different ways. I also thought the ending was a little too pat. In order of most to least glaring:
Hans: The Plot-Driven Villain
I remember thinking about Hans: "Please be a good guy. Please be a good guy." And of course, as I dreaded, he wasn't. What's more, he was a bad guy in the most contrived, mustache-twirling way imaginable. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the first that these two weren't in it for the long term. These were two giddy teenagers who had just left the confines of their cramped and lonely childhoods and were delirious with happiness to find someone they could share a connection with. The hormones helped, too, or didn't help depending on how you look at it. Elsa and Kristoff were right that Anna and Hans were being impulsive and hadn't thought things through.
Now, isn't that a good story in itself? Hans could have been a well-meaning young man who thought he was in love, only to realize neither he nor Anna was ready for the magnitude of the commitment they had thrown themselves into. The moment when Anna asked him to kiss her to save her life would have been a perfect time for that realization. The patched-in revelation that he was in it for the throne all along was a completely unnecessary twist to a perfectly good storyline.
The implications are really unfortunate, too. So it's okay for Anna to get out of a relationship that she had entered too impulsively--but only because the guy was a horrible person? Way to send mixed messages, Disney. The thing is, no one has to be a bad person for breaking up with them to be a valid choice. I see this idea in real life, too, that rejecting someone as a romantic partner is some kind of punishment that they only deserve if they're terrible. The flip side of that idea is that one is entitled to a relationship as long as he (and let's face it, it's almost always he) is a good person, and I don't think I have to go into length about how wrong that is.
Even the setup for Anna's heroic sacrifice could have happened just as well with Hans being mostly a good guy. What are some of Hans' most endearing actions early in the show? He handed out supplies, free of charge, to families who were suffering from the sudden winter. He was helping Elsa's victims, in other words. It's not such a big stretch from there to concluding that Elsa's death is a painful necessity, especially after she admitted she couldn't stop the winter. How long would Arendelle's people last in perpetual winter, with its agriculture dead and trade frozen out?
We know older and more experienced leaders like the Duke of Weselton had reached the conclusion that the winter needed to end by any means necessary, and what effect would the social pressure have had on the youngest of thirteen sons, constantly pushed about when he wasn't totally ignored? Would this not be a more natural extension of the character than the rug-pulling the audience was treated to, and wouldn't it have been a nice emphasis on the show's anti-conformist theme? This was a show that didn't really need a villain, and the creative team did the movie a disservice by shoehorning one in.
Kristoff: The Whitewashed
Quite simply, I thought the trolls were nonsense. With his reindeer and his familiarity with mountains Kristoff would have worked much better as a mountain Sami rather than a random orphan taken in by random supernatural beings. And though I say "whitewashed," I'm not necessarily advocating that he shouldn't have been blond; for all we know he actually is Sami, but the point is that the writing made it damned sure that we would never know. What I'm advocating is context, not melanin, some acknowledgement that Scandinavia is home to other peoples and histories outside the monochrome stereotype.
Yes, if Kristoff were a young Sami man, the script as written would have made Kristoff's tribe into yet another group of magical indigenous people. Yet farming the boring stereotype out to non-human characters doesn't make it magically more interesting. Diverse writing isn't a costless exercise where you can keep on telling the same tales while adding a few darker faces. It's a different kind of writing where you acknowledge stories and human complexities outside the dominant narrative.
Olaf: The Cop-Out
The snowman should have died keeping Anna company. It's the only ending that made sense for him, and would have set up her own sacrifice for Elsa beautifully with the contrasting image of him melting and her freezing. Yeah, it would have made the kiddies cry, but a little-known fact about me is that I subsist on the tears of children so it's no skin off my nose, or carrot.
Everybody Loves Elsa: Another Cop-Out
Approximately a week after she threatened the survival of her entire nation, not to mention a lifetime of hiding her powers as a secret shame, Elsa is suddenly universally loved by her subjects? Forget the ice power, that's the true magic in the story. Unfortunately it's a boring sort. Lifelong prejudices don't just melt away like snow in summer. The abrupt about-face just cheapens the conflict set up throughout the movie, especially after the entire movie showed that her power could, in fact, be an existential threat.
Sure, people could have warmed to her after she gained control of her powers and cleaned up her own mess. It stretches credibility to think everyone was so wholehearted in their acceptance, however. It even looks like a form of Stockholm's syndrome in a certain light--it's not so much that people are no longer prejudiced, they're scared to speak out because she can kill every single one of them if they upset her. That's one way to live peacefully and openly as someone who's different, but it hardly jives with the movie's overall message.
In general: Not bad.
For all its flaws and limitations Frozen has come further than just about any Disney movie since Lilo and Stitch, and shows that feminist storytelling is good storytelling, period. That's only natural, since stories are about human concerns and feminist themes are issues that affect people in their relation to gender and sex. Feminism, in other words, is about huge swathes of life. Leave those out and you can't tell the full truth of human experience. Frozen goes in the right direction. My only complaint is that it doesn't go far enough.
