Sarea Frederick
Television
Criticism
Blog 2
03/30/14
I
am sure if you have not already seen it you have at least heard of Disney’s new
movie, Frozen, that is still in box
offices today even though it is already out on DVD. It is said to be one of the
best movies Disney has ever come out with next to the movie Finding Nemo.
Why is this movie so popular? As it is
just another movie about princesses which Disney has made plenty of. Is it
because for once a knight in shining armor is not needed to rescue the damsel
in distress at the climax of the movie? Yes, probably. This movie is being
raved about by a multitude of sites like the New York Village Voice in saying things like, “…since Frozen stands
as the triumphant culmination of a decade-long process by Disney to revamp
their princesses for today’s audiences, and to offer girls stories as
legitimately empowering as the countless ones Hollywood makes for boys”
(Schager). While I do believe that Disney made a notable leap with the movie Frozen, there are still many instances
in the movie that undermine a woman’s ability to be independent and still gives
the message that a guy is necessary for happiness.
Now
this movie is definitely no Snow White
or Sleeping Beauty where these
princesses solely rely on their knight in shining armor to save the day. There
is no focus on a woman’s need to do domestic chores like there is in Snow White and Cinderella. Disney made a big step at the climax of the movie when Anna decides to
run towards her sister, Elsa, who is about to be killed by the evil Hans to
save her life and away from her “true love” Kristoff knowing that very well may
be the end of her life (Elsa freezes Anna’s heart accidentally and the only way
to thaw it is with an “act of true love”).
However, all I
could think about was that Kristoff was still a very intricate part in saving
the day. He rushed her back to the castle to Hans, who she thought was her true
love and could unfreeze her heart. He took Anna to his “family,” the gnomes who
told her how she could be saved but not before assuming Kristoff and Anna were
a couple. The biggest play on what unintelligent beings girls/women are is in
the development of the relationship between Hans and Anna. They meet at the
coronation and talk all night and decide after knowing each other for hours
they were to get married because they were so in love. The concept alone is so
ridiculous to any person and yet Anna is unintelligent enough to believe that
it is real love.
In one of the
final scenes Hans reveals his true intentions that he only asked Anna to marry
him for her rights to the throne because he had 12 brothers in his way for the
throne in his country and everyone knew that Elsa was not a social human being
and trying to court her would be impossible. He then leaves Anna in a room to
freeze and tells the rest of the castle Anna is dead but they said their
marriage vows before she passed. He then goes to find Else to kill her so he
can be the king of Arendelle (Frozen,
2013).
He is so
malicious in the above scene, and talks down to her like she is nothing more
than a silly, easily tricked, fragile girl.
Even
though Disney focused on the sisters saving each other they were still
incapable of doing it without a man’s help (Kristoff) and they are also easily
tricked and manipulated by the dominant gender as they show with the
development between Anna and Hans. As we discussed in class on March 3rd,
2014 on Representing Identity, Identity is, “The representation of social
groups on television that establishes the norms and expectations we have for particular
categories of identity” (Zimdars). Disney just could not push the norms and
traditions of gender to far for fear of upsetting their audiences members,
because in taking men completely out of the hero role in their movies would be completely
opposite of anything Disney has ever done. Like we have talked about in class
multiple times they are trying to push through the barrier of the typical women
role in media and they did make a great stride with Frozen, but they can not push too hard in fear of being rejected by
society.
The
problem I have with this is that these are the messages we are sending our
siblings and future children, that no matter how much we have progressed in the
decade Disney tried to cultivate a new princess image there are still
restraints that will probably always be there. According to the article, Images of Gender, Race, Age, and Sexual
Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films. “The accumulated experience
[of media exposure] contributes to the cultivation of a child’s values,
beliefs, dreams, and expectations, which shape the adult identity a child will
carry and modify through his or her life” (Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund,
Tanner p. 20). We are instilling the same beliefs in children that the “sexist”
early Disney movies carried when we watched them. The article goes on to state
that men are always portrayed as, “…the rational, ambitious, smart,
competitive, powerful, stable, violent, and tolerant characters” and that has
not changed at all with the movie Frozen.
Hans is competitive in a sense that he is competing for Anna to get to the
throne faster. He outsmarts Anna by tricking her that he was really in love
with her, and is clearly rational enough to know that you could not possibly
fall in love and want to marry someone within hours as he rudely throws in her
face at the end of the movie. He is also very violent leave Anna to die and
seeking out Else to kill her. Kristoff is also shown as the rational one who
tells Anna that she is crazy for wanting to marry a man she just met, he is
ambitious in his very masculine job of a mountain man who mines ice, and he is
very smart and tolerant of the fact that Anna is in love with another man.
Anna and Elsa are both depicted as the
complete opposite of these qualities as I have already talked about briefly.
They really fail at their attempt to cultivate a Disney princess to match our
society today with Elsa’s character. She is completely incapable of controlling
her powers to create ice and snow throughout the entire movie until the end
this includes injuring Anna when she is younger and creating a giant snow storm
over Ardenelle in the middle of summer which gets worst based on her emotions much
like a hormone-ridden pre-menstrual female. Anytime she gets upset, fearful, or
angry she has no control over her powers, including when she froze Anna’s heart
and sets the snowstorm on Ardenelle.
In the video above it proves all of the
points I made in just one scene of the movie. Elsa is so unaware of her powers
she did not even know that she had started the ice storm; she has a flashback
of hurting Anna when she was younger and she loses control of her powers three
times in that one scene which led to freezing Anna’s heart. Not only can she
not control these powers she has no idea how to reverse them once the incidents
occur.
Women
are very much still portrayed as emotional, unintelligent, incapable, weak, and
fragile characters in this movie, which is why I question where the progression
is short of maybe tweaking the typical princess story line. The message they
are giving to young girls is still the same and the fact that this movie is
being celebrated as if we have moved mountains and progressed so much startles
me because it is such a small progression and people are satisfied with it
which inevitably means the desire of company’s like Disney to push the limits
even further are going to be at least partially diminished.
Work Cited
Buck, Chris, dir. Frozen:Hans
Betrays Anna (Movie Scene). Dir. Jennifer Lee, and . Disney , 2013.
Film. 29 Mar 2014.
MrHDmovieclips, . Frozen-Anna Saves
Elza Clip . 2014. video. Youtube.comWeb. 29 Mar 2014.
Prince Hans of The Southern Isles, . Frozen:Hans
Betrays Anna (Movie Scene). 2014. video. YoutubeWeb.
29 Mar 2014.
Schager, Nick . "The Triumph of
Frozen, the First Disney Princess Movie About Girls Rather Than
for Them." New York Village Voice. (2014): n. page. Web. 29 Mar.
2014. <http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-02-05/film/frozen-the-best-disney-princess-movie/>.
Skyde67, . Elsa Hits Anna Freezes
Heart (Spoiler Alert). 2014. video. YoutubeWeb. 29 Mar 2014.
TANRISEVER, Aytekin. Frozen Anna
meets Hans Elsa's Coronation. 2014. video. YoutubeWeb.
29 Mar 2014.
Towbin, Mia, Shelley Haddock, Toni
Zimmerman, Lori Lund, Lori Lund, and Lori Lund. "Images
of Fender, Race, Age, and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated
Films." Journal of Feminist Family Therapy. (2008): 1-44. Web. 29
Mar. 2014.
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1300/J086v15n04_02>.
Zimdars, Melissa. "Representing
Identity." 3 03 2014. Address.
I agree that it is only small progress. There is a lot of a debate around about the Disney princesses and how they are portraying things to young children. I think Disney needs to take a larger step to make it more realistic. There is also controversy about this movie how it may be portraying a person coming out of the closet and revealing that they are gay. It would be interesting to look more into how Disney princesses are portraying our society along with this controversy.
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