The Insufficient Man-Hating of ‘Frozen’

Posted on | October 20, 2014 | 85 Comments

Dani Colman (@DirectorDaniC) is both a feminist and a good writer, a rare combination in an age when the repetition of gender-theory jargon and a hatred of Republicans are considered sufficient qualifications for any woman to be hailed as the Next Great Feminist Intellectual. While I was attempting to find another article, I instead stumbled onto Ms. Colman’s fascinating Medium.com essay, “The problem with false feminism (or why ‘Frozen’ left me cold).”

Now, in case you missed all the hooplah over Frozen, it’s the feminist propaganda cartoon that can make the nipples of a Bryn Mawr College Women’s Studies major become erect with ideological arousal. To read the orgasmic feminist praise for Frozen, you would imagine that the script was written by Katharine MacKinnon, based on a novel by Andrea Dworkin. The enthusiastic encomiums that feminists heaped on Frozen convinced me that Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak must have been hired as script consultants (see “Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual” if you didn’t get that joke). At last, it seemed, Disney had made a film in which patriarchal oppression and the male gaze had been replaced with androgynous egalitarianism.

What gay girls can get out of “Frozen”
— AfferEllen.com

A Queer Perspective on Disney’s Frozen
— Daily Kos

8 Ways Frozen Is
Disney’s Gayest Animated Film Yet
— Eric Diaz

When a conservative Mormon grandmother criticized Frozen as an example of “the gay agenda,” she was widely mocked, but even those who mocked her agreed: Frozen is gayer than the first four rows at a Melissa Etheridge concert. How gay is it? It’s gayer than a Bette Midler Fan Club fundraiser for the Tammy Baldwin re-election campaign.

Frozen‘s metaphysical gayness is not an opinion, but an objective fact. The difference between the conservative Mormon grandmother’s view of Frozen and the LGBT-friendly media’s interpretation of the film was simply a matter of whether you are (a) a liberal who thinks a gay/feminist propaganda cartoon for kiddies is a good thing or (b) a sane normal person who thinks this is a bad thing.

Yet Frozen wasn’t feminist enough for Dani Colman:

I have made absolutely no secret of how much I disliked Disney’s Frozen. I hated it. I spent most of the movie alternately facepalming, groaning, and checking my watch . . .
It was, therefore, a huge surprise to me just how many people loved Frozen. Not just loved, but slavered over it. Critics have been downright competitive in their effusiveness, calling it “the best Disney film since The Lion King”, and “a new Disney classic”. Bloggers and reviewers alike are lauding it as “feminist”, “revolutionary”, “subversive” and a hundred other buzzwords that make it sound as though Frozen has done for female characters what Brokeback Mountain did for gay cowboys. And after reading glowing review after glowing review, taking careful assessment of all the points made, and some very deep navel-gazing about my own thoughts on the subject, I find one question persists:
Were we even watching the same film?

You can read the whole thing, but notice what Colman says, just before listing a scoreboard of romantic endings in Disney films:

I’m now counting out every feature with a love story that ends in a happily ever after. A traditional, heterosexual happily ever after, I should qualify, though it’s not like Disney is likely to actually attempt a same-sex love story any time soon. Or ever. [Emphasis added]

And later:

I’ve heard the theory that Elsa’s “Let it Go” is subtly intended as a coming-out anthem of sorts, but there’s no confirmation from Disney of that, so I’m inclined to believe it’s one of those convenient Disney moments the LGBT community can adopt with pride whether Disney wants them to or not (something of which I wholeheartedly approve, by the way). And yes, Elsa doesn’t end up with a man of her own . . . but if not ending the film with a heterosexual romantic interest is supposed to automatically out Elsa as a lesbian, then frankly Disney’s just doing it wrong.

These are just short excerpts from a long essay — please, don’t think I’m trying to distort her meaning by selective quotation — but after reading the whole thing, I was like, “What exactly is she saying here?” While acknowledging the obvious significance of the heroine’s manlessness, Colman seemed to be expressing resentment that Frozen‘s message was neither gay enough nor feminist enough.

As I say, Colman is a good writer, and she obviously put a huge amount of work into her analysis of Frozen, justifying her hatred of it. However, she cannot hate Frozen more than I hated American Beauty (except for a certain scene with Thora Birch, which I enjoyed in a very bad way) but I didn’t feel the need to rant endlessly against American Beauty. It is sufficient condemnation to say that American Beauty is an anti-bourgeois/anti-suburban movie; anyone who sees it and doesn’t recognize the movie’s core message — the normal life of a normal middle-class family is an unworthy life — just isn’t paying attention.

If I do not need more than a few sentences to explain why an evil movie is evil, what’s up with Colman’s multi-thousand-word reaction to Frozen? It seems that she felt feminists were too happy that it cleared a minimum threshold, as she concludes:

I don’t want Frozen to be good enough. I’ve spent more than enough words explaining why I think it spits in the face of what we should be thinking of as feminism, and how, like a schoolyard bully, it ennobles itself by mocking its predecessors. I don’t want to think that, when I perhaps have daughters some day, this is what I will be able to take them to see; still less do I want to think that the older, more progressive features will have been deemed irrelevant in favour of the new, Frozen-style model. I applaud the attempt to broaden the range of multi-faceted female characters in animation; I appreciate the intent of having two women in prominent roles instead of the usual one, but I want to see better. And the more effusive praise we heap on a movie that shouldn’t even be good enough, the less likely it is that better will ever happen.

Of Ms. Colman’s hypothetical future motherhood — “when I perhaps have daughters some day” — I’d wager $20 against that “perhaps.”

Like so many other feminists, Ms. Colman is eager to tell us what is appropriate for our children, and to denounce us for disagreeing, but she considers her time and talents far too precious to be squandered in the ordinary business of parenthood. The feminist contempt for motherhood is a variation on how progressive intellectuals, who have careers, hold a special contempt for those of us who merely have jobs.

The reason progressives are always proclaiming their devotion to “workers” is because progressives consider people who work actual jobs to be in need of the intelligentsia’s charitable sympathy. Feminists love to talk about “working mothers,” but feminists are generally neither workers nor mothers. It takes a Ph.D., faculty tenure and a six-figure salary to be able to advocate the interests of those grubby moms who are too dumb to know what’s good for them.

Once you see through the dishonest hypocrisy of the progressive intellectual’s pose, you consider their pity an insult to your dignity. What the liberal is saying to the (allegedly) oppressed is, “Oh, you poor thing! You need my help, because you can’t help yourself.”

To which anyone with a scintilla of self-respect must answer: “Fuck you. Hate me all you want, you arrogant snob, but I need no pity.”

Pitying a person is not the same as helping a person, and the liberal’s problem is that he doesn’t know why the difference matters. They would rather do “Fondue Sets for Namibia” — promoting some kind of do-gooder project to “help” a distant person whom they feel deserving of their liberal pity — than to actually do anything to help nearby people who are less exotically “oppressed.” If your car breaks down on the freeway three miles from the nearest exit, you’ll walk the entire distance, both ways, before a liberal stops to help. Liberals are without exception the most thoroughly selfish people on the planet.

#YesAllWomen are treated like they're broken if they don't want to have kids.

— Dani Colman (@DirectorDaniC) May 26, 2014

Which is to say, no, I don’t expect Dani Colman ever to take time away from her professional career to change diapers and read bedtime stories. She’s too busy explaining to the world “what we should be thinking of as feminism,” and I guess I was too dumb to figure out what she meant. Having spent a few months in a deep study of feminist theory (e.g., Natasha Distiller’s 2011 book Fixing Gender: Lesbian Mothers and the Oedipus Complex), obviously I know what I think of as feminism, but is it what I should be thinking?

So I poked Dani Colman on Twitter, hoping to elicit from her a clarification. And, wow, did she ever give me a clarification:

Let’s get this straight (pun so very much intended)
@rsmccain
I’m going to preface this by pointing out that you are a vocal, self-identified conservative, and I am a vocal, self-identified liberal, so we are going to disagree on certain key points without much chance of ever seeing eye-to-eye. So I’m not going to try to convince you of anything, and I’d appreciate your doing me the same courtesy.
With that said, please don’t patronise me. I’m a professional writer, a trained storyteller and a rather competent linguist, so please take me at my word when I say I’m quite aware of the subtext of my work, and I don’t appreciate the implication that I don’t actually know what I wrote.
So your issue seems to be that, by using the word “heterosexual” twice in a particular context, I am “problematising hereosexuality”. Frankly I’m not sure whether to respond academically, or from the standpoint of being a straight woman with a very satisfying sex life, but since I’ve written about my own sexuality in other forums I’ll stick to the academic.
Disney has a long history not of “problematising” homosexuality, but of effectively effacing it. This comes from a long-ago decision by Walt himself to appeal to the broadest possible demographic, and if you want to know more about that you can read it on my tumblr. At the time it was a perfectly rational decision and one that certainly played a role in Disney’s early near-monopoly on the family entertainment market, but times have most certainly changed. Homosexuality is increasingly de-stigmatised, and positive adult non-heterosexual role models are beginning to be visible in mainstream media. “Orange is the New Black”, for example, has received much justified praise for placing gay/lesbian, transgender, multi-racial and lower-class narratives on the same footing as the narrative of white, upper-class Piper. It isn’t about overpowering or replacing heterosexual narratives: it’s about increasing the number of non-heterosexual narratives to match. Equality, not subjugation.
In children/family entertainment, those role models don’t exist, and this is a problem because there is an irrefutable correlation between exposure to positive relatable role models as a child and mental health (of the I-don’t-hate-myself variety) as an adolescent. It’s like the theory that the characters in Winnie-the-Pooh are stand-ins for different mental health issues: a child with no knowledge of depression can still tell a parent they feel like Eeyore. A young adolescent struggling with his/her sexuality benefits enormously from positive portrayals of the full spectrum as a child, because even if the adolescent in question ultimately determines that s/he is straight, that decision can come from an unbiased and egalitarian understanding of all the possibilities.
Disney is the world’s largest provider of family entertainment — more than that, Disney has (until recently) been the textbook in the question of what and what “isn’t” appropriate for family entertainment. That means that if a child were to reach into a barrel of DVDs of animated movies and pick one at random (discounting the collected works of Ralph Bakshi because let’s not be idiots about this), that child would have literally no chance of picking one with a protagonist who isn’t a zero-on-the-Kinsey-scale heterosexual. Heterosexuality isn’t a problem, but that is. Heterosexuality isn’t just the norm in animated entertainment — it’s the only. And the two times in my “Frozen” essay that I use the word “heterosexual” are, in fact, to point out that that is the case. In the first, I qualify that my table of “happily-ever-afters” only includes heterosexual relationships because those are the only ones available to include. In the second, I draw attention to the fact that certain “Frozen” fans use Elsa’s lack of any relationship as indication that she is a lesbian, and I rather lament the fact that that seems to be the best Disney has to offer its LGBTQ fans.
So it’s really a stretch to say that I’m “problematising heterosexuality”. A feet-behind-the-ears, Cirque du Soleil contortionist stretch, if I’m honest, because at best I’m not really saying anything about it. I’m saying that it’s a sad, sad situation that the largest provider of family entertainment in the role has such a dearth of positive role models for LGBTQ families and children that even a slight deviation from the established and *very* heterosexual Disney model is lauded as a breakthrough. On an entirely personal level, I have absolutely no issue with heterosexuality, though it would probably say something about my self-esteem if I did. I do have an issue with non-heterosexual individuals not being able to enjoy the same ability to relate to beloved characters that I do. It’s not fair, and frankly it’s bullshit. Pointing out — twice — that the Disney model is exclusively heterosexual isn’t “problematising” anything except the fact that it’s exclusive.
Now, if I’m still complaining about heterosexual narratives when there’s actual equality in media, feel free to call me on it then.

OK, briefly to reply:

“Equality”? Ma’am, the most recent federal government research indicates that heterosexuals outnumber the gay/bisexual population more than 40-to-1 (97.7% heterosexual vs. 2.3% gay/bisexual) in the United States. What should “equality” of representation look like, under such circumstances? The combined membership of Southern Baptist churches probably exceeds the total LGBT population of the United States, but how many Southern Baptists are employed in Hollywood or at the major broadcast TV networks? On what basis, really, should we impose quotas in the media?
Your offering of the “young adolescent struggling with his/her sexuality” as a presumed object of pity — “We must have more gay characters, so teenagers feel better about themselves!” — bears a near-zero resemblance to most actual gay teenagers I have known. At least three guys I went to high school with died of AIDS. Only if “struggling” is a synonym for “enthusiastically pursuing” could it be said that those dudes ever struggled with their sexuality. And don’t even get me started on the lesbians I knew in college. The idea that every homosexual is a helpless victim who is just one slur away from suicide is one of the most ridiculous myths that liberals have ever created, and they’ve created quite a few. But why even mention global warming?
Is there “a dearth of positive role models” in the media for, say, hillbilly children? I mean, Disney hasn’t produced any movies about Princess Shonda who lives in a double-wide trailer and marries the King of Long-Haul Truckers. Exactly what kind of character qualifies as a representative role model for any particular child, and how close must the representation be before we assume the child can identify with such a character? I’m not Jewish, but I love Mel Brooks movies. I’m not British, but I love James Bond movies. The assumption that gay people can only relate to overtly gay characters in media is a theory that suffers from a shortage of factual proof. Common sense and anecdotal evidence suggest otherwise.
Your emphatic description of yourself as “a straight woman with a very satisfying sex life” is rather at odds with what struck me, in your critique of Frozen, as your emetic aversion to screen depictions of heterosexual romance. Given your overtly anti-heterosexual tone in criticizing Frozen, what are we to make of your assurance that you “have absolutely no issue with heterosexuality,” and that your “self-esteem” would be at stake if you did? You insist that your criticism arises from a disinterested concern for “actual equality in media.” You have no direct personal interest in the representation of homosexuals. However, as a philanthropic humanitarian, you feel that they are victims of unfair bias. OK. As mystifying as your attitude is, I accept that you are sincere both in your (personal) heterosexual satisfaction and your (political) gay sympathy.

Have I been reading too much feminist theory? Have I misconstrued the meaning of what I have read? Or is it the case that for Dani Colman, as for many other women who call themselves “feminists,” this label means whatever any woman wants it to mean?

It does often seem thus. Whatever any woman is angry about, that’s “feminism.” If she gets stopped for speeding, the speed limit is a manifestation of patriarchal oppression. If her checking account is overdrawn, male supremacy is to blame. Sexism explains why her thighs look so fat, and if the service is too slow at Starbucks, that’s misogyny. Also, if a woman’s anti-male political principles seem to be at odds with her own very satisfying heterosexual life, it’s just right-wing hate when you sarcastically point out the contradiction.

An infinitely elastic definition cannot actually define anything. Feminism either is a definite political philosophy, or it is not.

But if intellectual coherence and consistent political principle are important to you, you cannot be a liberal. You can be a Marxist feminist or a lesbian feminist, but “liberal feminism” — what does that mean?

There I was, reading Dani Colman’s critique of Frozen and thinking, “Wow, she’s a hard-core feminist.” I figured her idea of an acceptable Disney cartoon would be to turn Monster into a musical comedy with Aileen Wuornos as the romantic protagonist. And yet somehow I totally misread Ms. Colman who, in fact, is so enthusiastically heterosexual that she could never be one of those pathetic lesbian weirdos like Lauren Morelli. While Ms. Colman has endless pity for helpless queers, she “absolutely” isn’t one of them.

Why would anybody want liberals to like them? It’s a mystery to me.

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

85 Responses to “The Insufficient Man-Hating of ‘Frozen’”

Flyover Pilgrim
October 20th, 2014 @ 3:14 pm

“Let it Go” seems to have been written solely for the special effects of that scene, and so that Idina Menzel could yell her way through, what the writers hoped it to be, a very popular song.

I enjoyed the movie until that song. Nowadays, people seem to be most impressed with women yelling songs, instead of singing them. I hate the trend.

After the song, all I could see was the misshapen faces and bodies of the female protagonists. Ick.

Menzel yelled through that song. I suspect that’s what she’s done on Broadway (I never wished to see “Wicked” and have not) and thus established her modern musical credentials.

The best part of the movie was the reindeer. I forget its name.
Flyover Pilgrim
October 20th, 2014 @ 3:16 pm

Incredibles. One of the best, if not the best, animated films ever made.
Ebola Dog Barkley May Live! | Regular Right Guy
October 20th, 2014 @ 3:36 pm

[…] The Insufficient Man-Hating of ‘Frozen’ […]
K-Bob
October 20th, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

Figures. According to Hollywood, now Pro sports, and Feminism, 90% of the population is homosexual. The rest of us are no-good, hateful, fringe dwellers.
concern00
October 20th, 2014 @ 4:17 pm

It’s good being a hater.
Mm
October 20th, 2014 @ 4:36 pm

I agree – one of RSM’s best posts, ever, and that’s saying something!
K-Bob
October 20th, 2014 @ 4:59 pm

We’re the oppressed minority
The Insufficient Man-Hating of ‘Frozen’ | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
October 20th, 2014 @ 6:56 pm

[…] The Insufficient Man-Hating of ‘Frozen’. For crying out loud feminists…it’s a cartoon. […]
Adobe_Walls
October 20th, 2014 @ 7:27 pm

I would add only a leftist who defines their humanity solely by their sexual orientation. Surely Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn are not the only characters in Lord of the Rings that women and girls can identify or empathize with.
Mike G.
October 20th, 2014 @ 7:51 pm

Ok, that piece by Lindsey(?) was worth a look just for the graphics. You’re right…it was hilarious.
From Hope And Change To Fear And Loathing | The Lonely Conservative
October 20th, 2014 @ 8:25 pm

[…] A new Politico poll out this week found that a big majority of Americans believe things “feel like they are out of control right now” in the United States. It took six years but Americans have finally gone from “Hope and Change” to “Fear and Loathing.” (I checked to make sure Stacy didn’t already use that line, but keeping up with the feminists is keeping him busy.) […]
Weedlord BonerHitler
October 20th, 2014 @ 9:42 pm

Well, McCain himself said “”Frozen‘s metaphysical gayness is not an opinion, but an objective fact.” He doesn’t clarify this, which is disappointing, because I was curious as to which “Frozen = gay” theory he subscribes to. The most popular is that Elsa’s secret = lesbianism. The other is that there is some sort of incestuous “love story” between the sisters. Both views are, in my opinion, a bit mistaken. But without that clarification, we are just left with “Frozen is gay agitprop, don’t question it.”

Once again, you’re being a bit too hard on the film and the characters, I think. “Let It Go” functions in exactly the same was as “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. It’s a big, happy song that a character sings after leaving home and feeling excited about the world before and danger presents itself.

As for Anna, she’s exactly like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker, your claims that there is some essential difference between her and every other adventure hero are unbelievably hair-splitting. She leaves home not on some whim, but because a situation beyond her control has struck from the blue — she clearly believes that if she doesn’t find Elsa immediately, her sister might vanish for good. She doesn’t THINK there’s going to be too much danger, as she’s a spoiled princess who lives in what is normally a very safe and friendly kingdom, but even if she knew that there were wolves and evil snowmen out there, she’d still go because the idea of losing her sister forever is unbearable to her.

Harry Potter? Well-trained? In pretty much every Harry Potter book, Harry disregards the advice of his friends and adults and rushes off into some sort of incredibly dangerous situation having no idea how to succeed. He enters the Chamber of Secrets knowing there’s a nigh-unkillable basilisk down there, and he’d have been killed if Fawkes the Phoenix hadn’t showed up to save the day. He rushes into the Ministry of Magic in the middle of the night with his underage friends, knowing full well that it might be a trap — which it is — because the possibility that Sirius might be in mortal danger is too much to bear. In the final books, instead of getting together with the remaining good adult wizards, he and his two friends go off alone, into the wilderness, to search for “Hallows” that might or might not exist. The only time Harry is “prepared” for anything is in his final confrontation with Voldemort, when he suspects he knows some hidden secret about the Elder Wand that guarantees his enemy’s defeat. He’s right, of course, but it’s literally the first time in seven books that he’s prepared, confident, and able to win with no help from anyone else.

Compared to Harry Potter, who continually runs into the jaws of Hell, Anna thinks she’s going on a 2-day hiking trip across a chilly but otherwise stable countryside.

Come on, dude. You thought it’d be fun to paint Anna as some sort of aberrant idiot because it would be some sort of thumb in the eye of feminists who like Frozen, but your claims do not hold up to scrutiny.
Weedlord BonerHitler
October 20th, 2014 @ 9:44 pm

Sven. I like Sven, too.
Weedlord BonerHitler
October 20th, 2014 @ 9:51 pm

Seconded. They say a sequel is in the works, and I am wary because matching the genius of The Incredibles is a tall order.
Adobe_Walls
October 20th, 2014 @ 9:55 pm

”She doesn’t THINK there’s going to be too much danger, as she’s a spoiled princess ”
kinda like this?
Julie Pascal
October 20th, 2014 @ 10:30 pm

I guess I never over thought Oedipus… all it is is the trope of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The bit where he and his Mom get it on was because ancient audiences had low tastes, just like modern ones, and the audience was supposed to be horrified. Only in our very weird unbalanced minds was this anything symbolic about some deeper human reality.

But that was the story in Frozen… the parents misunderstood the rock-trolls and thereby actually created the problem they were trying to prevent.
spunknik
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:11 pm

Was thinking exactly the same thing. His rebuttal buried her.
Weedlord BonerHitler
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:13 pm

No, not really. This cartoon child you present presumably lives in a modern, corrupt world that is filled to the brim with thugs, gangstas, rapists, drug addicts, Muslim terrorists, pedophiles, deranged idiots, and such. Princess Anna, on the other hand, lives in a medieval fairytale world, in a peaceful kingdom where she is adored by her people. It’s a world of magic and friendly singing trolls. There are no roaming gangs of street thugs in Arendelle to mug and rape her. The only danger she faces on her journey, apart from those posed by her sister, is wolves.

Wolves. Yes, you must always be wary of wolves, as they are fierce hunters.

Look, I think it would be cool if Disney started making hardcore, gritty cartoons where girls have to carry guns and pepper spray in order to survive whatever crumbling urban hellscape they inhabit. But Frozen is an old-fashioned innocent Disney production, apparently you guys do not like these anymore?
spunknik
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:25 pm

I liked your allusion to “exotic” oppression because I’ve observed the same phenomenon.

I remember the day after Saddam Hussein was executed, I was reading some leftist blog. One of the commenters declared that he had looked deeply inside himself and “all he felt was sadness”. Right. 150,000 people die each day, including children, but the single death that caused him sadness that day was that of a brutal dictator.

It’s almost as if leftists try to outdo each other in the amount of exotic sympathy they can muster. It feeds their narcissism to know that their pity and benevolence is so great that it applies even to evil people in far away lands. They’re able to hide their selfishness from themselves by proclaiming their pity at the farthest extremes.

But when you ask them to get out their checkbook, they somehow find themselves otherwise occupied. After all, the new iPhone just came out.
Adobe_Walls
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:26 pm

The connection to the fairy tale world presented by Disney and the cartoon I posted is this. For the child in my cartoon an equally fantastic fairy land must be constructed for her thrive if not survive.
Adobe_Walls
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:29 pm

Actually the problem is that they have concluded or more likely been taught that it is not for them or anyone else to judge evil. In short they are sociopaths.
SouthOhioGipper
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:30 pm

Since when are homosexuals entitled to equal representation in pop fiction, disney movies, videogames, etc?
PCachu
October 20th, 2014 @ 11:53 pm

“They already did, it was called ‘The Incredibles'” is the correct answer to the question “When are they going to make a good Fantastic Four movie”.
Essential Feminist Quotes: ‘Access to a Sexuality Autonomous from the Male’ : The Other McCain
October 21st, 2014 @ 12:02 am

[…] So now, according to feminists, playing videogames are making us all misogynists? Isn’t this tantamount to an admission by feminists that Disney’s Frozen is a plot to turn our daughters into lesbians? […]
TravisJSays
October 21st, 2014 @ 1:05 am

Does she get paid by the word? man, does she go on.
Thatch
October 21st, 2014 @ 2:18 am

Well, they did have that whole beastiality thing going with Beauty and the Beast so to some extent she does have a point. It has to sting a bit when “animal lovers” have more positive role models in Disney films than homosexuals.

But even as a kid I just assumed that all musicals were a form of gay propaganda. Everyone knew those were for gay boys and little girls. Looked at from that perspective there really weren’t many Disney movies for boys at all. Soundtracks were OK, but the characters dropping emotional trou and bursting into song was obviously not something a heterosexual boy would have much interest in witnessing. We had to get our entertainment from Marvel, or some of the Warner Brothers stuff instead of Disney.

Of course, if one were to go all the way down the rabbit hole to crazy and consider carrots a phallus…
Weedlord BonerHitler
October 21st, 2014 @ 11:07 am

Umm… that’s real interesting, but it tells me nothing. Be more specific, please. What foolish delusions of “open-mindedness” have these neglectful fools instilled in their helpless offspring?
Lucifer2620
October 22nd, 2014 @ 10:08 am

I actually correspond with Dani often, and she is most definitely straight. I find it humorous you are judging her based off of one thing she wrote and her photograph. Also, Frozen was a horrible movie.
Eidolon
October 22nd, 2014 @ 2:03 pm

We’re not going to agree on this, so one more reply.

I racked my brain and I can’t come up with another character that runs off as stupidly as Anna does. There are a few ways in which her behavior is uniquely dumb, relative to any other example I can think of:

1. She isn’t even equipped for the ideal scenario. I can’t think of any hero who runs off on a specific quest without even having the stuff he’d need in the ideal situation (no enemies, no roadblocks). Generally they know the terrain, know how to live off the land, know the natives, know where the towns and traders are, etc. to at least feed themselves, and have the gear to survive the current climate. This is particularly egregious because…

2. She has the means to be equipped but does not use them. She could bring people (I can sort of forgive this as she might not trust them to treat her sister well), she could bring supplies, etc. but she doesn’t. Generally when a hero runs off half-cocked it’s because they have no choice. They usually prepare as much as they can given the constraints; in this case there are no strong constraints since Elsa is presumably on foot and Anna will be on horseback, plus she’s the acting queen and can get whatever she needs as fast as possible. There are many heroes who head off into the wilderness without the stuff they need, but I can’t think of an example where they only had to ask for the stuff and it would’ve been given to them. The only situation where this might happen is where the hero is being portrayed as impetuous, which leads to…

3. The movie doesn’t think Anna is being dumb. This is a big problem because she is being dumb. Harry Potter is both better prepared and also viewed as being too impetuous for his own good, by contrast. The books/movies don’t see him as a tactical genius or anything, it’s clear we’re meant to take the idea that he’s not that great at this from the proceedings. Hermione’s preparedness shows him up time and again. His being lucky is a big part of the story, as I understand it. That’s his whole thing, though — his luck in surviving, his luck in being super-powerful, his luck in succeeding against his enemy. It’s all unlikely, but accomplishing unlikely things is sort of part of his character. He’s special. That brings us to…

4. Heroes have skills, and Anna has none. Every heroic character I can think of has some reason to think he can accomplish his quest. Even Bilbo has Gandalf’s approval and stories of his ancestors; Harry has prophesy and magical powers; the Narnia kids have prophesy and aid from all the inhabitants. What makes a 20-year-old woman think she can go out into the snow-covered woods without proper cold-weather gear, on an indefinitely-long quest to find one person in a huge wood which she would have to know is full of wolves, alone? Idiocy is what I call that. Even if Elsa has only a short lead, there’s no way to know how fast she can travel with her super-powers, what direction she’s headed, or how to find her. She also is never portrayed as knowing anything about riding horses or the woods she’s going into. If she thinks she’s “going on a 2-day hiking trip” she’s a complete moron. Which she is.

To the extent this sequence of the film has any point at all, it’s a) you go girl, you save your sister your own self! and b) don’t trust strange men. But a) is stupid because she’s doing the worst job of this possible, and b) is totally undercut by the fact that in order to find Elsa she does in fact trust another strange man, one she’s known even less time than the one she left the kingdom with. My point is that she shows exceptionally poor judgment throughout this part of the film, but the film doesn’t see it that way. She’s sort of criticized for leaving the kingdom with a man she’s known for a day, but she’s rewarded for wandering off into the woods with no plan like and idiot and trusting a man she met 5 seconds ago with her life repeatedly. This is what I mean when I say the movie is utterly incoherent. It doesn’t have any idea what it’s trying to say about anything.

Just to address a point above about the troll thing, it’s not the case that the parents end up causing the problem they were warned about by the trolls. Two things about the trolls.

1. The dad says what he’s going to do right in front of the troll and the latter approves. It’s not the case that the wise troll knew what would happen and the stupid dad didn’t understand it. The troll gave at least tacit approval to the dad’s plan, so it really was the best plan the dad could’ve done as far as he knew.

2. Basically nothing the troll says is true anyway. Fear doesn’t trigger the ice powers; nothing specific really does, because they don’t represent anything internal and don’t work the way the movie says they do. They trigger more or less randomly throughout the film, usually more for a cool visual image or for plot convenience than owing to any emotional state. They don’t trigger when her parents are leaving and she’s really visibly scared, for example, but they do afterward when she’s sad (implying that they have to do with isolation or depression or something, even though that’s not how they’re supposed to work); they trigger when she’s alone, despite not being scared because no one can see; it’s all over the place. And in the end “love” fixes her powers, despite that not being the problem, and despite her loving her sister just as much at the beginning as at the end. No themes, no ideas (that make sense), the movie is just crap.
dicentra
October 25th, 2014 @ 10:22 pm

Frilled Lizards do it best.
dicentra
October 25th, 2014 @ 10:26 pm

And like attracts like.

They envy the free rein that psychopaths like Castro and Hussein have, they admire their larger-than-life presences, and they would totally step into those monsters shoes given the chance.
dicentra
October 25th, 2014 @ 10:32 pm

Wow.

At no point did I see a gay subtext in “Let It Go” or in Elsa’s non paired-up-ness. There’s definitely a “making things worse by trying to avoid trouble” trope going on, as well as “freakish freak with heart of gold rejected by the mainstream.”

Both are established tropes, maybe even archetypes, which means they cannot be claimed exclusively by the gay community or anyone else.

I can also see why Out and Proud people would relate to Elsa’s decision to take off her gloves and just be frosty already. That ice castle, however, was a metaphor for pain and social isolation, something many different “odd” types experience.

Elsa’s continued loneliness means that happily ever after doesn’t include everything you could possibly want. As queen, she’s still going to be peerless and lonely, ineligible to marry any but a neighboring prince.

The gay community can try to claim Elsa for themselves but that’s pretty selfish. Archetypes are meant to be universal, not particular.

Cripes, I hate our society.
FMJRA 2.0: I Can’t Breathe Anymore : The Other McCain
October 26th, 2014 @ 2:32 pm

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Bob Belvedere
October 26th, 2014 @ 7:32 pm

Show off.
The Bedrock of Feminism | James Russell Ament
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