By: Chimedum O.
Frozen, one of the latest films in Disney’s animated canon, has received rave reviews and myriad awards. The obvious questions are why and how, but that will be touched on shortly.Frozen in and off itself is, at first glance, a cute movie if not mind-blowing. It opens with a song in the traditional Disney way, then introduces the characters and gives some inklings of the conflict: Queen Elsa versus herself and Princess Anna versus Elsa, who is also her sister. The side characters, two of which are love interests, two of which are non-human comic relief characters, and one of which is a secondary antagonist, are interesting enough, and the trying-to-be-revolutionary themes introduced are well-intentioned if poorly executed and heavy-handed.
Wherein lies the problem. Many have said that Disney’s Frozen is so very feminist because of how it focuses on the sisterly bond between Elsa and Anna rather than romance. The subversion of the ‘love at first sight’ as well as the ‘true love’s kiss saves all’ trope adds to this opinion that Frozen is oh-so-progressive and an inspiration to girls everywhere.
But it isn’t; the thin veneer of feminism hides obvious flaws. The aforementioned ‘sisterly bonding’ only takes up a small part of the movie, because the majority of Frozen isn’t Elsa and Anna bonding – in fact, many of their interactions are Elsa pushing Anna away – it’s Anna and Kristoff. The subversion of the ‘love at first sight’ trope is subverted itself! Anna still ends up with a boyfriend, if not a husband, after knowing the guy in question for two days as opposed to a few hours. Considering that the movie spends so much time hammering the ‘you cannot marry someone you just met’ message into Anna’s and the viewers’ heads, it’s an odd conclusion to reach.
Also, most of the characters, even the minor ones, are male. We’ve got two female characters: Elsa and Anna, three if you count their unnamed mother and four if you count the female troll, Bulda. The males in the movie – Hans, Kristoff, the Duke of Weselton, Olaf, Oaken, Sven, the troll king Cliff, and the unnamed father of Elsa and Anna – vastly outnumber them. The real world is roughly fifty percent female; why isn’t this statistic reflected in such a ‘feminist’ movie?
Aside from the faux-feminism, the character designs for Anna, Elsa, and their mother are ridiculously lazy. Pre-makeover (“Let it Go”) Elsa is essentially a blond version of her mother. Anna and Elsa are strangely similar to each other in appearance, even if they are siblings; they also look uncannily similar to Tangled’s Rapunzel. The big-eyed-and-button-nosed white princess formula has worked again. It is likely that Disney will stick to this instead of branching into more diversity – not just of facial structure and features, but of race/ethnicity, having one token minority princess (so far non-white princesses include Mulan, Tiana, Jasmine, and Pocahontas) for every two white princesses if at all. Although Frozen is based off a Danish fairytale (“The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen), if Disney is able to make talking snowmen and cyrokinetics possible in Frozen, having people of colour as main characters couldn’t possibly be so far-fetched, now could it?
Overall, Frozen isn’t bad; the storyline is all right, some of the songs are wonderful, the plot twist is surprising, and the animation is gorgeous despite the lazy, generically-pretty designs of the princesses. But although it’s not bad, Frozen is extremely problematic – in both the disparity between its message and the presentation of said message, and the lack of people of colour that has become a staple of not just Disney (unfortunately) but most media.
2.5 /5 Stars.
