Frozen and the Disney Formula
Warning: spoilersIf Wreck-It Ralph was Disney's Atypical movie in the modern era, then Frozen is an offshoot of Disney's "typical movie", only where Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs. All the characters and tropes are there to see, but are done in such a way that sets it apart from anything before it in the Disney formula. For example...
- Love at First Sight: Downplayed and deconstructed. While not played as straight as say Enchanted or The Little Mermaid (1989), our hero, Anna, falls over the course of one day and night for a handsome prince of a small island nation who incidentally has 12 other siblings (Another first. Whoever heard of a prince with older brothers?) but who seems at first a standard Prince Charming for Anna to fall for, marry and get her Happily Ever After. However, when they bring it before the oldest relation Anna has left (Aloof Big Sister Queen Elsa), she very quickly makes it clear that she will not have her little sister go off marrying someone she just met. Just like how a real parent in our time would behave. It turns out that years of isolation and neglect (as Elsa was deliberately acting aloof in order to keep her powers controlled and secret) Anna underwent, during which she turned to paintings for socialization, made it so Anna Desperately Craves Affection and Thinks Like a Romance Novel and so confuses companionability with love. Hans, for his part, is a Manipulative Bastard and Gold Digger all too happy to exploit Anna's vulnerability.
- How Do I Shot Web?: The very reason for much of the plot hinges around a decision made around this. All Elsa and her parents wanted was to get her ice powers under control. A lesson in discipline which would normally be perfectly acceptable to work with. However, the lessons in discipline end up taking the form of repression, rather than a control that allows the powers to be used well, and prove futile as the powers only continue to grow, ultimately leading to a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. The Trolls warn that snow and ice was beautiful, but that fear would be the problem. Ultimately, that repression eventually goes out of control and leads to that fear they were trying to prevent. Furthermore, it is actually Elsa's own fear that becomes her greatest enemy, rather than other people's fear as she and her parents were mistakenly led to believe.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Olaf the snowman is the movie's true comic relief. He also carries with his many Visual Gag and fun jokes a much more serious side that makes him essential to understanding the plot. Olaf is first introduced inanimately, as a snowman created by two sisters having fun. And it is only after Elsa runs away that her recreating him gives him sentience. As this is when she embraces her powers, that gives Olaf a possibly darker meaning to his character: he's the living representation of childlike devotion shared between Elsa and Anna. It is something that surprises both of them to see him alive and moving around. However, that childlike devotion also hammers in perhaps the simplest of answers for the hardest of situations: Love is putting others first, even when you might hurt yourself doing it. Olaf's big scene is him helping Anna survive the cold by building a fire. Even if he'd hurt himself, that devotion is something that those who love each other would gladly show. And all it took was a simple snowman to bring that to light for our heroine.
- Prince Charming: While subverting this trope is nothing new, and the Lovable Rogue has replaced it as the popular male character type, Frozen decides to show the dangers of someone who can easily fake being the Endearingly Dorky Prince just trying to help and the danger of readily trusting people you just met and examining the nature of love (Grand Romantic Gesture vs Act of True Love).
- Conveniently an Orphan: This movie does NOT make light the loss of a parent. While other movies might talk about its impact on the characters, and a Missing Mom and Disappeared Dad are nothing new in Disney, this movie hits particularly hard by having the loss of BOTH parents at the same time. While their deaths aren't always referenced, their disappearance is like a final blow to the hope for unconditional love for Elsa who thought she had nobody else to talk to about her power. Perhaps as Elsa got older, her parents might have found other ways to encourage her power growth, but as it was, they both died leaving two very devastated daughters who would one day have to come to terms with the secret that was hidden between them.
- The High Queen/God Save Us from the Queen!: Both tropes are heavily played with. Funny enough, this distinction is perhaps a real first for Disney: creating a movie based around a queen who's not intentionally evil and given a LOT more screentime to develop the idea. God Save Us from the Queen! is subverted. Queen Elsa shuns her sister, the young Princess Anna, forbids her marriage to Prince Charming and subsequently leaves the kingdom in an Endless Winter, and curses Anna when the good-hearted princess journeys to help Elsa and save the kingdom... but freezing the kingdom and Anna's heart were accidents, she's justifiably concerned about how quickly Anna and Hans are moving (see Love at First Sight entry above), and because her powers are emotion-based, she tries to prevent Power Incontinence and defy God Save Us from the Queen! by becoming an Emotionless Girl. Her fear of failing to be "perfect" is what leads to her God Save Us from the Queen!-seeming actions. Initially, out of respect and possibly curiosity, the kingdom embraces the coming of the queen and shows her the respect of The High Queen, seeing it as a chance to get to know her better, finally have the bloodline come out in public again. And while shocked by their queen's other talent, it's the leadership who first starts calling out for blood when the snow doesn't stop. In some ways, it's a realistic look at how such a power might color the way leadership looks at a queen and how a queen might become a target for subterfuge. And, once that power is finally brought under control, it can safely return from one extreme to the other.
- True Love's Kiss: Played at, hinted at, built up to, changed around, and ultimately NOT played out as a crucial element in the plot resolution of the movie. Because Grand Pabbie was vague about the "act" of true love, the characters assume the answer is a True Love's Kiss. After apparent Prince Charming Hans shows his true colors, Anna realizes that her true love is really Kristoff and rushes to him, hoping their kiss will be one. However, seeing her sister in danger right before she can reach him, she sacrifices her life instead to save Elsa just as the curse takes full effect and Anna freezes to death. Anna's sacrifice is an act of True Love. In a storytelling rarity, it is not an act of love between a man and a woman that saves the day, but one of just-as-strong familial love and sisterly love.
Elsa's dress style and ideas of sexuality
As the queen of her parent's kingdom, Elsa is very covered up and feels confined due to her role and powers. Once she runs away and creates her own ice palace out in the wilderness, her outfit changes. As the Snow Queen, she is much less covered up and declares that she is free of social expectations.- The imagery calls upon the idea of the sexually liberated woman to add to the notion that she's casting away all manner of shame, particularly shame related to her feelings and her body (contributing to some interpretations that the ice powers are a metaphor for homosexuality). On the other hand, the choice has been criticized for its implications that in order to be free, you also need to "get hot", as if girls need to wrestle with beauty ideals even more. It may be contributing to the idea that, the more sexual and sexually active you are, the more comfortable you are with yourself, which in turn has dismissive implications of people like celibates or asexuals who either abstain from sex or are not interested in it. note Whether this is the case or not is up to interpretation.
- Disney is acknowledging that a woman in a sexy dress can be sympathetic - usually, that sort of attire would usually be reserved for villainesses. She is simply starting to act more like she naturally is (which includes being a young adult), and potentially overcompensating (see also the whole "living by herself in the wilderness" bit), perhaps calling to mind some child starlet that was bound by Contractual Purity for most of her adolescence and then "acts out" upon reaching adulthood. That a story shows something as a way doesn't mean it's treated as the only way. As a counterpoint, we have Anna, who very much fits into the "pure-hearted, sweet, innocent princess" archetype whose main strength is her devotion to family and loved ones and willingness to help them overcome their inner demons and is modestly dressed, but with the distinction that this doesn't need to make her a useless distressed damsel (her status - rather realistically - changes; sometimes she's rescued, sometimes she's rescuing someone else, and sometimes she rescues herself), or be synonymous with painfully naive notions of men solving all her problems (which she grows out of, and were rooted in deeper problems anyway). It's not like Elsa's dress is extraordinarily raunchy, anyway, and the main point that is being made is that she would rather endure solitude than having to conceal her 'true self' any longer; putting on a masquerade every day can simply break a person.
- Elsa's modest revelation of skin (lower neckline, transparent sleeves, knee-high slit in her skirt) is less about sexuality than about no longer feeling the need to insulate herself from physical contact with the world around her. As queen, she covered most of her skin not out of modesty but out of fear.
Doors are a major theme
Warning: spoilersOpen doors and closed doors (or gates) are present throughout the movie as a clue to the mindset of our heroes. They exist in several song lyrics and visuals.
- First and most prominently, Elsa keeps a locked door between herself and Anna throughout "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?" This sets up the relationship between the sisters and becomes an issue for Anna for, well, basically her whole life up to the end of the movie.
- Anna begins "For The First Time in Forever" by singing, "The window is open; so's that door / I didn't know they did that anymore!" It's the first thing she notices about the coronation day. During the same song, Elsa's face betrays her fear and trepidation as she opens a door and commands the guards to open the gates. Having hidden herself behind a door for years whenever she felt the need, for the first time, she cannot do so. The door has been her security blanket; for Anna, however, the door has been a barrier.
- "Love is an Open Door" is therefore only a natural feeling for Anna. She loves her sister and an open door to Elsa's room would've been a delight for her; still not having that in her life, she turns to Hans. Anna and Hans run happily through the palace and fling several doors open on the way. However, there are hints that it's not going to turn out well for Anna; one is when they find themselves in the stables and Anna teases Hans by only opening up half a door at a time (the kind that horses have so they can stick their necks out but not leave their stall.) It shows that Anna, subconsciously, isn't ready to let Hans all the way into her life, even if she thinks she is.
- When Elsa releases her powers at the ball, she is standing next to the ballroom door - which is closed. With Anna and all the guests watching her on one side and the closed door on the other, she feels trapped.
- During "Let It Go", Elsa claims to feel freer now than ever before, but also sings, "Turn away and slam the door!" and literally does that, to the audience, at the end of the song. She might be telling us how free she is, but the door says otherwise; she still isn't ready to stop keeping closed doors between her and everyone else.
- When Anna arrives at Elsa's ice palace, she hesitates to knock. Knocking on Elsa's door has never gotten her anywhere before, but the ice doors open immediately. ("That's a first," she muses, and it is.) Elsa's ice and snow creations tend to be manifestations of her subconscious. The ice spikes at the ball represent her desire to keep her defenses up. Olaf is her warm and huggable side. Marshmallow is her anger and fear. The ice doors? Elsa may have closed them, but they open magically for Anna. Rather like the music in "Do You Want To Build a Snowman?" suggesting that Elsa actually does want to build a snowman, the open ice doors mean Elsa really does want to let Anna into her life.
- "Life's Too Short" was cut from the movie, mainly because it referred to other plot points that were cut (a prophecy, and Anna getting married rather than merely engaged) but it got the story to the same point: Anna getting zapped in the heart with ice powers. During the song, which was recorded and storyboarded, Anna offends Elsa by offering Elsa her gloves, but tries to defuse the situation. She only loses her temper when Elsa conjures up an ice door and moves to throw Anna out to the other side of it. Anna sings, "There it is! The door you love to slam in my face!" and from then on her attitude toward Elsa is anger, rather than reconciliation. Even in ultimately non-canon settings, doors are present as a symbol.
- The final product instead had a reprise of "For The First Time in Forever," which Anna begins by pleading with Elsa, "Please don't slam the door." The closed door isn't literal here, but it's still on her mind.
- Ultimately, had Hans's plan to let Anna die succeeded, it wouldn't have been the lack of warmth that did her in; it would've been the locked door he put her behind. The fire was only putting off the inevitable; the locked door was meant to keep anyone away from her that could save her.
- And in the end - after everyone is saved and Elsa's powers are under control - what does Anna think to tell Elsa? That she loves the open gates. Elsa promises to never close them again. Anna really, really likes open doors, since a closed one is what she spent a lot of childhood time talking to, wishing it would open, and Elsa no longer needs them closed to feel secure.
Elsa's ice magic and her subconscious
Warning: spoilersElsa’s ice magic – whether it’s Power Incontinence or a purposeful creation – always reflects her subconscious thoughts and desires. Often she doesn’t know she means it, but there is a rhyme and reason for everything she does.From beginning to end, Elsa’s magic is reflective of her inner feelings, even – and often especially – when Elsa doesn’t realize it.
- Everything Elsa accidentally freezes are all things that cause her anxiety.
- Several times – such as while looking out the window or while distraught over the loss of her parents – she freezes the inside of her room. It’s a subtle way of showing that she didn’t really want to be in there.
- Both the coronation orb and scepter, as well as the candlestick and jar she practices on, make her nervous that her powers will be revealed.
- At the ball, Anna pushes her into creating a fearsome wall of icicles around her, but they’re pointed at the entire crowd, not just at Anna. Later, she accidentally freezes the fountain, which startles her as she backs away from the crowd, and just as accidentally sends a blast of ice at the Duke of Weselton, who is chasing her.
- When fleeing, she appears to be (and feels) trapped by the fjord, and without meaning to, she freezes the water. The whole fjord and kingdom eventually freeze over, because the kingdom’s whole population was outside the castle while she fled, and that’s what she was running from. Elsa’s weather doesn’t necessarily have to spread that far, but it does in this case.
- When attacked by the Duke’s guards, she stops the first arrow cold in a wall of ice, without even meaning to.
- She of course freezes her shackles while in prison, as well as the whole cell, but when she realizes the kingdom is not in friendly hands (she’s in prison, but Anna is not back, so the order must have come from someone foreign to Arendelle), the whole castle becomes dangerously filled with ice.
- Just as important is what she doesn’t freeze. While fleeing the ball and castle, she grips her cape and throws open a pair of doors, all with her ungloved hand, but these don’t freeze. They’re not a source of anxiety to her. Neither, of course, does she freeze the remaining glove itself, as the gloves have a psychosomatic effect on her. She could do magic through them if she thought about it, as she can use her feet while wearing shoes, but the gloves are deeply ingrained in her mind as a coping mechanism, and all her accidental ice blasts come from her ungloved left hand.
- Things Elsa creates on purpose still act on her subconscious desires.
- Olaf is created just as she sings “Can’t hold it back anymore!” Olaf likes warm hugs (just as Elsa said he did when she was little) and is irrepressibly kind and cheerful. It’s not her magic that she Elsa really wants to let people see, it’s that warm and loving side of her that she’s had to hide (especially from Anna) for years.
- The ice castle lets Anna in just for the knocking, showing that Elsa truly wants to let Anna in no matter how much she insists otherwise.
- Marshmallow was created to throw Anna and Kristoff out of the castle, and with remarkable aim, he chucks the two of them onto the ice stair instead of down into the chasm, which would’ve been frighteningly easy. Obviously, Elsa doesn’t want either of them dead, and Marshmallow does just what Elsa wants, even if not specifically told to.
- Fighting the Duke’s guards, it might seem like just plain luck for one that he is only pinned to the wall instead of impaled, but Elsa doesn’t want him dead either, just neutralized and maybe fearing for his life a little given the slowly growing ice spike headed for his throat. She’s not a killer, even with her back to the figurative wall.
- Elsa’s weather follows her state of mind.
- It’s snowing at the beginning of “Let It Go” while Elsa sings angsty lyrics, such as “the wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.” When the mood of the song shifts and Elsa’s mood improves - just as she sings “Well, now they know! Let it go! Let it go!” - the snow stops.
- Anna accidentally sets off an Elsa-blizzard while pleading for her to come back, but unlike the one that buried Arendelle, this one swirls around Elsa only. Her source of anxiety is now herself. She sings “No escape from the storm inside of me,” on learning that she can’t be free in her ice castle like she thought she could. The blizzard surrounds her and separates her from Anna as a physical manifestation of her fear.
- Finally, back in Arendelle, a new Elsa-blizzard gets worse and worse as Elsa’s fear becomes all-consuming – but when Hans convinces her that Anna is dead, the wind ceases and the snow hangs in the air; everything has stopped in place, because Elsa’s entire world has stopped in place, having (apparently) lost the only thing that truly matters to her. Fear created the blizzard, and there’s no more fear, just frozen emptiness – so there’s no blizzard, just the world, frozen in place.
- Luckily, everything goes right in the end. While Anna is an ice statue, the snowflakes are as stock-still as Anna is. When Elsa sees Anna, thawed out, the snowflakes begin to move, just a little. They don’t fall again, because Elsa’s not afraid. They don’t rise until Elsa starts to comprehend the power of love. They dance around, uncertainly, while Elsa tries to make sense of everything; then, when Olaf reveals that “an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart,” and the meaning starts to dawn on Elsa, the snowflakes begin to rise back into the air even before she consciously begins to undo the spell.
