Memory is Fluid and Fluid is Memory

Elsa and Anna and the others return for a robust fantasy adventure in 2019's Frozen II. I love this kind of story, a story about a band of adventurers heading out into a fairy tale world of magic and danger. Certainly the influence of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies is, as usual, apparent as it is in any European-style fantasy film or television series of the past twenty years. But Frozen II certainly has its own visual splendour from the autumnal tundra of the northern frontier to Elsa's glorious new costume and ice horse. How dearly I wish this movie were better written. But its screenplay is sadly a confused mess--the intention to tackle big ideas, both in terms of a personal journey and in terms of sociological consciousness, is clearly there but on both fronts an apparent inability to settle on the message results in an insubstantial tale. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez do the best job one could expect with the music under the circumstances. To be sure, topping "Let It Go" was likely an impossible task but a lack of clear vision from the writers and directors seems to have left them without direction throughout production.

A documentary series on the making of Frozen II was filmed and, watching a bit of it, I was surprised to see how many of the issues I had with the film were recognised quite candidly by the filmmakers throughout the production. At one of several meetings discussing the ongoing problems with "Show Yourself," the sequel's ostensive answer to "Let It Go", directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee described listening to an early recording of he song. Buck said, "To me it wasn't adding up . . . It's not emotionally adding up, I'm not feeling anything. And then I turn on 'Let It Go' and--I feel it, I'm into it. I turn this on again and I go, *makes fatigued noise*." Ideas about what the song meant, along with just what Elsa (Idina Menzel) was pursuing, seem to have been continually shifting throughout the production. This is quite a contrast to the first film in which "Let It Go", written early on, crystallised a narrative motivation for the staff.

After conceptualising the song as Elsa meeting herself, the songwriters went to a meeting where Buck and Lee proposed that the hook rather be "coming home", necessitating either scrapping the song or significantly modifying it. Wondering what the mysterious voice might then be, Anderson-Lopez joked, "'Oh, a singing glacier!' Who doesn't have that problem?" She makes a sharp point; anyone can identify with "Let It Go" while "Show Yourself" is kind of alien.

The final decision to make the voice that of Elsa and Anna's mother, Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood), ties the song to the sociological plot because it's revealed Iduna belonged to the Northuldran people. This doesn't elevate the song to the level of "Let It Go" by a long shot but it makes the continued allusions to self-discovery and returning home slightly more interesting for being less at the fore. But these things can't compete with the catharsis inherent in "Let It Go".

The most effective character in the film is actually Olaf (Josh Gad) whose earnest manner and dippy jokes are effective enough to make it really touching when it seems like he's died. He's given some interesting lines attempting to give resonance to the film's themes--proposing the idea that water has memory and informing the group that the forest is a place of transformation. Water is usually interpreted in academic analysis as symbolising change, being fluid, so the idea of water having memory is a potentially interesting paradox. Instead, though, water functions as irrefutable security footage as it reveals the true reasons for the conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra. Elsa and Anna's grandfather, Runeard (Jeremy Sisto), had feared the magic of Northuldra, saying it made them feel powerful and "entitled" and thus a threat to the kingdom. Elsa indignantly says he's wrong, magic doesn't work that way, perhaps forgetting that her own magic nearly wiped out Arendelle in the first movie when she had a moment of feeling empowered and entitled.

Therein lies one of the big contradictions between the two films. In the first film, the environmental threat posed by the magic meant the source of the magic--Elsa--had to be stopped. In the second film, the environmental threat posed by the magic means that the source of the magic had to be appeased.

Part of the reason that the plot doesn't make sense may have to do with it being influenced by the real political issues relating to the Sami people. The film's plot revolves around a dam built by the people of Arendelle as an apparent gesture of friendship to the Northuldrans that instead turns out to be one that somehow harms and enrages the magic of the forest. It's implied that this is the true reason Runeard had for building the dam but how he knew the dam would have this effect, and why the Northuldrans only see it as negative after its construction, is never explained. In reality, the Virdnejavr Dam built in Norway in the early '80s was responsible for the flooding of a Sami village. Well, that's clear enough. Why couldn't we have a scene of a Northuldran village being flooded? Why not depict how the dam negatively impacted agriculture or hunting and gathering? This is a problem that would have been clear to the studio had this film been developed in the '30s or '40s when America was a more agricultural country and even city slickers in Hollywood had some appreciation for harvesting crops. You can see it Melody Time, Fun and Fancy Free, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad. Even when modern Disney tried to go back to a farm setting with Home on the Range, they produced a move so meta and divorced from a real sense of the reality of farm life, it generally sabotaged the film's effectiveness.

Speaking as someone who lives in a town filled with rice fields where most of the kids are Disney fans, there's still a great big audience for that kind of story, if Disney just had the will to scout the proper talent for writing it.

So the sociological story fails to have an impact because it's meaningless while the journey of personal discovery is sabotaged by indecision on the part of the filmmakers. The main problem is that Jennifer Lee had run out of juice by this point. For Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, and Zootopia, she brought to the table the fairly old but good idea of recontextualising a story to make the villain into the hero. Frozen II, for whatever reason, decided to move away from this. By casting the people of Arendelle as villains, arguably it attempts to do the opposite--turning presumed heroes into villains. But maybe it's easier to turn a villain into a hero than a hero into a villain. When you do the former, the process involves giving plausible motives to the character while some may feel the latter involves depriving the character of plausible motives. But the point of the recontextualised villain stories of the '70s, at least the good ones, wasn't to do a hero/villain switcheroo but to show that everyone has plausible motives.

Maybe making villains into heroes was the idea behind making Elsa and Anna's parents so heroic in the sequel. But sidestepping the emotional repression they enforced on Elsa seems like a betrayal of the very heart of the first film. The second film acts like none of that happened.

But, damn, Frozen II sure is pretty. It's available on Disney+.

...

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
Frozen
Big Hero 6
Zootopia
Moana
Ralph Breaks the Internet

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+.

...

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

Letting Fewer Things Go

2019's Frozen II lacks the courage and thematic simplicity of its predecessor but it's not a bad film. Parts of it are quite lovely.

I always felt Frozen was "of the Devil's party without knowing it," that the runaway success of the song "Let It Go" meant the biggest aspect of the film's impact was opposite to the message Disney insists on constantly promoting. "Let It Go" is a song about personal liberation, about finding strength when you cease to be burdened by constant concern for others, but it's ultimately a film about family coming together. Frozen II is an attempt to make the quest for Elsa's personal liberation harmonise with Disney's mission about promoting family. The film never quite squares that circle nor does it confront the issue with as much boldness as the first film.

Character conflicts are front and centre in the first film; Elsa (Idina Menzel) and her sister, Anna (Kristen Bell), live separately in the same castle after Elsa accidentally injures Anna with her powers. The idea of Elsa inevitably causing harm just by being her natural self is an extremely potent idea with dramatic potential, one that makes her liberation more interesting for how dangerous it is. Her liberation feels good but the alienation and isolation that seems to be the price of it aren't quite so nice. But some would say that's what it is to be an artist--in fact, David Lynch said it in an interview recently with The Guardian; "You gotta be selfish, it's a terrible thing."

Frozen II's plot is much more muddled, almost on the level of "The taxation of trade routes is in dispute" muddled. A dead grandfather for Elsa and Anna is introduced in flashback and a backstory for their parents--the role the parents played in Elsa's repression isn't addressed. Instead, a somewhat confusing story is presented about the slaughter of Elsa and Anna's people at he hands of a tribal, hunter-gatherer people, the story very quickly becoming obvious as an allegory about histories about native peoples being rewritten and distorted by white colonialists. The potential minefield around this issue is probably one of the things that led to the film getting so many rewrites.

Elsa's still not in complete control of her powers but it's never talked about as a real danger--it's even used for comic effect in her first appearance in the film. It makes sense that this crucial aspect of the first film would be downplayed considering how hostile the media environment is now for stories about toxic people who find acceptance or redemption.

One aspect of "Let It Go" the film embraces is a sense of adventure and wanderlust, exemplified by Elsa's song "Into the Unknown," which was nice, especially since the desire for adventure has been condemned by some in the media in recent years as inherently corrupt and male. This leads to a plot about elemental spirits and a burning salamander that's interesting but never as intimate as anything in the first film.

Visually the film is wonderful, reminding me of Skyrim and the werewolf land in World of Warcraft with its green and grey moorlands. I liked how Olaf's comment about water having memory, presented as a joke, takes on a deeper meaning as the film progresses. I loved Elsa's horse and how she takes her hair down as a sign that this is the next step in her process of liberation but it's not nearly as satisfying as when she just takes down her braid in the first film.

Twitter Sonnet #1308

In spiral cuts the bottles fit the box.
Disarming pacts occurred with branching trusts.
Eleven teams partook of lurid socks.
A sunken boat in grace profoundly rusts.
Behind a deck the cards were suited best.
Perhaps a second boat could pull the fish.
Recumbent fleets arrayed in ten abreast.
A choosy flood conveys a foamy wish.
The floating eyes return the dream to ice.
A ceiling cracked the woods to spill a tree.
Beneath sequestered lakes we planted rice.
The swimming eyes returned the yacht to sea.
A cloud of birds recorded air above.
The gauntlet never torments like the glove.