Frozen (2013)

[Edgy MD]

Is there a girl in your life? Say, 6-14? Then this film has probably taken over your existence.

Disney updates Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen.

[fimg=450]http://steadfastlutherans.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Frozen-movie-poster.jpg[/fimg]

[Vic Sage]

Disney's already working on the stage version, with those songwriters, Bobby and Kristen Lopez.

[metsmarathon]

i both liked it, and i didn't care for it, all at the same time.

i felt frequently like i had no idea who the actual protagonist of hte film was, and also who the antagonist was. it seemed more a story wherein a bunch of stuff happens, and there are people there too, some of whom influence and direct the outcome, but their roles are muddled.

i supose that in a more sophisticated film, that migt be a good thing. but in this one, it just felt unfocused. maybe i'm just not that good at watching movies...?

the troll-rocks, though they played an integral role in the whole mythology of the film, only seemed to detract from it. also, they scared minimm in the theater.

and i did hand-wring at the time that the whole pivotal let it go song was kinda saying, "move past your doubts and insecurities - you too can be sexed up, bitchy bad girl if that's what you really want"

but that all said, it's not bad, or mind-numbing, or stupid, or unclever. nor is it awash in (most of) the typical princess tropes. the only one that stands is that princesses must be dead sexy.

i loved olaf. and liked the dude with the reindeer whose name i forget. (them and the trolls were clear concessions to boys, who may have come to the movie thinking it more about snowmen and reindeer than two bratty girls)

anna is a good role model, for what limited use you may find movie role models to be, but the focus of the key song that all the girls are singing is elsa being an anti-role model - again, hand-wringing - and elsa never seems to have a reckoning where she truly and deeply apologizes for the trouble she caused.. its like, gee, you froze the whole damned kingdom, built a giant ice castle of isolationism, had your snow monsters nearly kill me, and, because of all this shit you started some jackass with a broadsword would have cut me to pieces if only i didn't turn to ice as a result of your magical snow-powers, but since i saved your life by attempting to sacrifice my own, we're cool now. was there any remorse, like, ever? and, after rewatching the movie in pre-K, minimm had a few nights of nightmares about being frozen by elsa.

so i guess, my final verdict is, kinda good, not bad, with warts, and it scared my kid a little.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Edgy MD wrote: Is there a girl in your life? Say, 6-14? Then this film has probably taken over your existence.

My little girl is too young and is enamored with Elmo anyway.

My six year old son tells me that the afterschool teachers made a "No Singing 'Let It Go'" rule.

Otherwise, I'm blissfully ignorant.

[Edgy MD]

metsmarathon wrote: iand i did hand-wring at the time that the whole pivotal let it go song was kinda saying, "move past your doubts and insecurities - you too can be sexed up, bitchy bad girl if that's what you really want"

This is the crux of thing, I think. It's thematically about female maturity, and how down we are with this song and with this film kind of depends on how we draw the line between sexed over and cold and mean and (literally) anti-social on one hand and self-possessed and free and artistic and liberated and in control of one's own sexuality on the other.

I don't know where I fall, and I guess not being a girl or the parent of girl liberates me from the challenge of the question, but I salute them for trying to throw that out there and living a little in the ambiguity.

[Vic Sage]

The ambiguity comes from the Snow Queen first being thought of as a villain, but evolving into a co-protagonist over the course of the story, as we learn its the "prince" who is the real villain of the piece, and as Elsa is ultimately redeemed by her sister's love. And I had no problem with that at all.

Elsa is a child torn by guilt over her powers and the danger they posed to everyone (particularly the little sister she almost kills because she can't control it). She is raised in total isolation, ruled by fear... her parents' fear, and then fear of herself, and never able to let herself be who she really is. How awful is that? How fucking awful? And when her people discover who she really is, she is forced to flee, once again facing complete isolation from her home, her people, from her sister. But at that moment, heartbroken, she is finally able to fully embrace her own power and sings a homage to that power. It has the same "girl power" energy of Elphaba's song "Defying Gravity" and struck the exact same cultural chord in the tween-girl marketplace that launched both works over the moon. And like Elphaba, she owes no one any apologies.

Elsa is a dangerous force of nature, and it is her own sense of responsibility that makes her isolate herself. Her actions later are in self-defense, but the injury to her sister is accidental, once again plucking the deep note of guilt she has always carried about endangering her baby sister. But make no mistake; while not a "villain", Elsa is not the hero either. Anna is the protagonist of the story. She makes the heroic quest, she acts out of pure love, and ultimately she redeems her sister, finally changing her sister's physical nature and saving the kingdom. And Elsa couldn't be happier about it.

The story spins alot of the standard hero/villain cliches around by first making us think that Elsa will be the hero, then seeming to make her the villain, before revealing the handsome prince to be the real villain. And the rebuffed little sister never gives up, rising to become a hero by loving her powerful sister in the face of nature's fury and thus, relieved of that burden of isolation, the snow queen becomes Anna's loving human big sister once again.

Disney has done alot worse by a lot better pre-existing fairy tales. By just using SNOW QUEEN as a jumping off point, and introducing a mature notion of ambiguity, they were able to create a really moving story of sisterhood for the modern tween girl audience and, as a result... cachiiiiing.... hit the jackpot.

[Edgy MD]

Vic Sage wrote: ...and introducing a mature notion of ambiguity... .

And an ambiguous notion of maturity.

It's interesting that Anna's falling-in-love song felt catchy but dumb and shallow and forced and jarringly different from the rest of the songs, and it turned out to be appropriately so, as her relationship turned out to be dumb and shallow and forced.

[Vic Sage]

yes, shoehorning in that love story was unnecessary but they do it all the time.

[RealityChuck]

Just got a chance to see it this weekend. This is one of Disney's best, partly because they way it subverted Disney tropes. It one of the few where the main antagonist wasn't a villain, and where the "true love's kiss" didn't resolve everything. The ending was very emotionally powerful, especially since it showed that the Disney ideal of true love didn't matter.

[metsmarathon]

"let it go" is still minimm's favorite song.

i'm a little surprised that he doesn't want to e anything frozen-themed for halloween, nor for his birthday.

[Ceetar]

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Players from the Boston Bruins visit Childrens Hospital in Frozen costumes.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Ceetar wrote:

If unscientific polling is any sort of reliable indicator, I'll take the "Under" here, and the "Over" on Annas.

[Guest cooby]

Mets � Willets Point wrote: Players from the Boston Bruins visit Childrens Hospital in Frozen costumes.