Elsa versus Frozen

Few things are more gratifying than breaking free from the restraints of society. 2013's Frozen, like The Lion King, is an exceptionally successful Disney movie for doing things that run contrary to Disney's usual morality. In this case, it's to show how satisfying it can be to reject society. Written and co-directed by Jennifer Lee, it's the natural next step following her work on Wreck-It Ralph. Frozen is a more genuine recontextualising of a villain. Unlike Ralph, Elsa actually does hurt people just by being herself. Elsa as a character, particularly with the song "Let It Go", is one of the most powerful things Disney has ever produced. Unfortunately, not everything about the movie works, especially in the final act in which the story's true villain, Hans, lacks sensible motivations and implies a deeply cynical attitude about human nature. But, in addition to Elsa, the film has many good qualities, including its art design and some of its supporting characters. Mostly I stand by my first review of the film from 2014, in which I talked about the differences between the Hans Christian Anderson story and the Disney film. To-day I'm going to elaborate a bit on my feelings and discuss some other things that have occurred to me in the intervening years.

The project was long in development before Jennifer Lee came aboard--in fact, she didn't join production until 2012, just a year before the film's release, which is hardly any time at all for an animated film like this. But considering how much Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen outshine Disney films from the previous few years, Lee is likely responsible for much of what makes Frozen work.

However, it wasn't Lee who decided to shift the story's focus to Elsa. According to an interview from 2013, it was the writing of the song "Let It Go" that led to the film's transformation.

Sung by [Idina] Menzel, the Tony Award winner for her role of Elphaba in “Wicked,” the song sheds a new light on Elsa.

“Up until then, Elsa was pretty much a straightforward villain,” says Lee. “We wanted to know more about her, what she would be like if she could be herself without fear. After that, she was much more complex, more interesting and sympathetic.”

The change required Lee to do some rewriting, which she was happy to do.

“Everything now hangs on the theme of the power of love versus the power of fear,” she said.

Does it, though? "Let It Go" could be seen as a song about rejecting fear but it's also a song about rejecting society. It's Elsa's parents, and her consideration for Anna, that led to the repression she's now dramatically letting go of. "Let It Go" is a rejection of love and fear. It has a lot in common with The Lover Speaks' "No More 'I Love You's", a song made famous when Annie Lennox covered it.

Lennox even seems to be making herself a sort of Disney villain in the video.

You could look further to see how the love versus fear dichotomy really isn't present in the film. It's Elsa's caution, substituting for Anna's absent fear, that compels her to forbid Anna's marriage to Hans. The accident that led to Anna's injury earlier in the film might have been prevented had she and Elsa been instilled with some fear regarding the use of Elsa's powers. The film does not successfully portray love and fear as opposites, instead they often work in tandem, which is certainly more realistic.

Recently, I finally gained access to Japanese Disney+. Despite the fact that I live in Japan, I had to use a VPN to access my Disney+ account because Disney in Japan had some kind of exclusive deal with the Japanese smart phone company Docomo. That seems to be over because I was able to load the site without my VPN. I can switch on the original English dialogue for the movie but all the titles and signage are in Japanese.

The Japanese title, Anna to Yuki no Jou, or "Anna and the Snow Queen", shows how the makers and distributors of the film originally thought audiences would interpret the story's focus. Anna is also voiced by Kristen Bell, the biggest star in the film. Sayaka Kanda, who voiced Anna in the Japanese version, was also a big star (she died last week in an apparent suicide). Anna is much more of the Disney princess mould--unwaveringly optimistic, usually cheerful, and inclined to perceive only the best qualities of people she meets. This is something the film lightly parodies in how quickly she ends up engaged to Hans.

It's not exactly fair to previous Disney princesses. None of them are explicitly shown to get engaged to their princes on the same day they met them, with the possible exception of Cinderella. But, as I argued in my Cinderella analysis, Cinderella's marriage is better interpreted as a political one than as a romantic one. Or rather, the romance for Cinderella is not in that she finds a man she absolutely adores, but in that she exchanges the prison of her family for the power and beauty of royal status. Which is arguably the same thing Hans is trying to do in Frozen.

Initially presented as a basically decent fellow, the movie drastically alters its tone for the character late in the story when Anna seeks him to heal her frozen heart by giving her "true love's kiss". He adopts a sadistic tone as he tells her she need then find someone who loves her and goes on, like a caricature of a Bond villain, to outline his plan to marry her and murder Elsa. On the face of it, this doesn't make any sense because we've seen him not only refrain from killing Elsa but also prevent other people from killing her. Maybe he figures that if Elsa dies the winter will be permanent but that's to ascribe motives which the movie makes no attempt to imply. It seems much more likely that Hans was rewritten at a date too late to modify material earlier in the film.

Maybe at some point the problem for Anna was not about choosing between a good man and an evil man but a man for whom her affection grew naturally over time as opposed to a man who dazzled her with a meetcute. Which would have been a much subtler and worthier story. As it is, smashing the villain button on Hans late in the game looks like panic and results in a cynical implication--even though Hans may act like a reasonable person, underneath he's a complete psychopath. And it's true, psychopaths are known for their appealing facades, but this is a children's movie and Hans isn't merely charming. He's shown taking action out of apparent concern for Anna as well as the kingdom. This isn't so much of a "Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover" situation as it is a "You Should Never Trust Anyone" situation.

In their duet, Hans notably sings about finding a "place" rather than a person and we know he has 13 brothers ahead of him in the line of succession. There was nothing odd or even sinister about a prince seeking a marriage with a foreign princess in early modern Europe. In fact, that's why Elizabeth Stuart, the "Winter Queen", married Frederick of the Rhine. It was part of James I's project to forge peace between Catholics and Protestants. The idea that neither Elsa nor Anna wouldn't consider political motives in Hans' courtship is much stranger than the idea that they would. In fact, Hans would be completely in his rights to be surprised at Anna's interpretation of their relationship as "true love", even after an honestly amiable fraternisation.

Interestingly, Anna's dialogue with Hans seems to set up his perception of Elsa as a wanton killer.

HANS: What happened out there?

ANNA: Elsa struck me with her powers.

HANS: You said she'd never hurt you.

ANNA: I was wrong . . . She froze my heart and only an act of true love can save me.

Any reasonable person hearing this dialogue would interpret Anna's words to mean that Elsa had intentionally used lethal force against her. It's slightly unnatural for Anna to frame it this way, even accidentally, which hints at a writer's intention to unnaturally manipulate character development. Anna never amends her account, either, so right up to the point when Hans aims a killing blow at Elsa and Anna blocks it with her hand, he has good reason to think that Elsa attempted to murder Anna. All of this suggests that he was originally conceived as, at the very least, a more nuanced character. This might have been a film with no true villain at all.

But let's go back to "Let It Go". It makes a lot of sense that introducing the song to the film required rewrites. Even as it is, it implies some things that aren't really supported elsewhere in the story. Elsa comes back to the "conceal, don't feel" line we'd heard in an earlier song. But where does this come from? We see her father teaching the line to her like a mantra. Presumably it's so her powers won't get out of control. The trolls advise the family that Elsa should learn to control her power and it seems that Elsa's parents, out of love and fear, would rather just teach her to repress it. Then there's a line in "Let It Go"--"You'll never see me cry." Who is that directed towards? She's not repressing her emotions anymore. Possibly it's to announce that her feelings are now her private property, possibly it's to say that the joy she finds in her new freedom precludes any chance of tears. It seems, in any case, to imply that someone wanted to see her cry. Who? Instinctively, we think of the parents. The liberation of the song is so effective that it implies either real abuse or that Elsa's happiness is dependent on her freedom to exercise destructive behaviour.

Although Frozen is popular in Japan, students I've talked to about it don't seem to find the song particularly interesting. It turns out the Japanese lyrics are vastly different. Notably, there's no "let it go" in the Japanese "Let It Go". What is one repeated line in English becomes various lines in Japanese that are about Elsa revealing her true self and about her intention to live alone. Instead of saying "The cold never bothered me anyway" she says "I'm not cold". It makes her sound like she's in denial, like she's out of touch with reality, whereas the thrill in the English version is in the impression that she's getting in touch with reality for the first time in years.

She sings about freedom from right and wrong and about how she's one with the air and the sky. This is very Romantic, as in the English literary movement. It might have come from Byron's Manfred and that's why I think she's a Byronic or Satanic Heroine. It's better if you consider how likely it would be that she knows her storm would be doing some damage even before Anna points out Arendelle is frozen over. She's not stupid, she'd have to know kicking off winter in the middle of summer would have consequences.

The song has been read as queer-coded, which is not surprising for a song about repressing one's natural urges in order to please one's family. But there are some slightly sexual undertones to the song, too, especially in a line like "Your perfect girl is gone". That it's accompanied by a shot of Elsa wiggling her hips--a moment mocked in Frozen II--suggests that there's some sexual behaviour included on the menu of her new liberation. She's notably without a romantic partner in the film. Perhaps the implication is simply that she's indulging in her own sex appeal for her own pleasure. There's a certain courage in seeing oneself as sexually appealing. And, of course, it's vanity, adding another kind of bad it feels so good to be.

Frozen is available on Disney+.

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This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur
The Emperor's New Groove
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Lilo and Stitch
Treasure Planet
Brother Bear
Home on the Range
Chicken Little
Meet the Robinsons
Bolt
The Princess and the Frog
Tangled
Winnie the Pooh
Wreck-It Ralph