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Disney’s “Frozen” is the studio’s biggest hit since “Toy Story 3” and is about to hit the list of the top-25 highest-grossing films of all time. (It’s taken in $360 million in the US already.) But is it just a heartwarming parable of sisterhood with knockout songs, or does it have a deeper meaning? Here are seven theories of what “Frozen” is really all about."
Puberty
“‘Frozen’ uses the idea of magic powers as a metaphor for coming of age, a time when feelings are raw, unpredictable, terrifying and new,” writes Britt Hayes at ScreenCrush.
Coming out
“Is Elsa gay? I think there’s certainly a valid queer reading to be found in the film,” says Devin Faraci at Badass Digest.
Christianity
Frozen “might be the most Christian movie I have seen this year,” opines Collin Garbarino, assistant history professor at Houston Baptist University, at “Elsa has broken relationships, and she has guilt, and she pushes people away — and her sister is sort of like a Christ figure who pursues her.
Slut power
During Elsa’s big number “Let It Go,” “I looked over at my partner in the theater and audibly gasped,” writes Elizabeth Wallace at Redbook.
Climate Change
“Subtle references to contemporary fears and issues establish ‘Frozen’ as a definitive snapshot of the current global climate debates,” writes University of Texas student Coleman Tharpe at EnergyAtTheMovies.com.
Sexism
“Frozen” “is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale in which a girl rescues her male friend, but the film writers changed the story to make main character Anna need a man’s help,” complains Bitch magazine.
Racism
Angry bloggers at the This Could Have Been Frozen site at Tumblr complain that Disney can’t stop making movies about white girls. Moreover, Scandinavian Sami people are upset that their ethnicity isn’t acknowledged in the movie.
11 comments:
There is something called "Bitch Magazine?"
This post seems to be more of a comment on the odd structure that the internet has assumed than it is on the movie, which I haven't seen.
Since web hits are generated by condemning the Daily Outrage, each of the referenced reactions judges the movie by its little sector of political fanaticism.
Can you imagine a movie cobbled together to please each of these constituencies in order to avoid provoking the Daily Outrage?
Well... the Daily Outrage is the way to generate PR, isn't it?
The internet has developed a formula. The Daily Outrage, followed by the Calls to Chop Off the Offender's Head, followed by the Ritual and Abject Apology.
The whole deal has become hilarious. Not to mention pointless.
They should report tickets sold rather than dollars. You can't compare the relative popularity of movies with vastly different ticket prices over time.
Wait a minute.
They made a movie about the cryogenic freezer under the "It's A Small World" ride where they keep the frozen Walt Disney and Ted Williams disembodied head?
I didn't know that.
One of these days Trooper, one of these days...
Thank God I no longer have to go to these Disney movies. All of them - since the "Lion King" - have music that sounds like bad Roger and Hammerstein.
Give me the "Jungle Book" with Phil Harris any day of the week.
BTW, could they please change the Disney Corporation's name to the "Eisner Corporation". It'd be more truthful.
It has been sing along Frozen weekend and getting them back in the seats for that.
My children are complaining that everyone else has seen Frozen, but they haven't yet.
We'll probably rent it, but the more people gush about Disney movies, the more I'd rather boycott them. I guess I'm disagreeable. We didn't watch Tangled for the longest time for the same reason, but once we watched it, I really enjoyed it.
Jungle Book is one of my favorites. Comes out on Blu ray this Tuesday.
Jungle Book had some great upbeat, toe tapping Jazz songs. Loved it as a kid, still do. And Louis Prima was great.
Frozen has dreary, dreary songs. And girl power instead of Elephants, Bears, and Lions.
Of that list, only #2 has any real credence. (Well, #1 isn't completely off the mark, either, but it's so trite that it's barely worth discussing.) But to note the "queering" secondary theme is to mistake an end-table for the room, if you ask me. Yes, Elsa certainly comes across as "tragic gay" - closeted, self-destructive, fey as all get out - but she isn't the protagonist. She's the woobie - "Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds" in point of fact. Anna's the actual hero of the piece, the one with a moral arc beyond Elsa's tragic short-circuited brokenness.
No, Frozen's more about family, sisterhood, and a moral ranking of emotional priorities which displaces adolescent romance from its imperious throne as ruler of all, savior of all, justifier of all. Romance is presented both as a distraction from what ought to be done, and also something of a trap. It is both impressive that they went there with a "princess" movie, and even more impressive that it has done so very well in the box office in doing so.
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