Disney’s “Frozen” is the studio’s biggest hit since “Toy Story 3” and is about to hit the list of the top-25 highest-grossing films of all time. (It’s taken in $360 million in the US already.) But is it just a heartwarming parable of sisterhood with knockout songs, or does it have a deeper meaning? Here are seven theories of what “Frozen” is really all about.
Puberty
“‘Frozen’ uses the idea of magic powers as a metaphor for coming of age, a time when feelings are raw, unpredictable, terrifying and new,” writes Britt Hayes at ScreenCrush. Elsa, the sister with the magical power to whip up a snowstorm, has been told to conceal her supernatural ability from everyone, but “the more she suppresses it, the worse it comes out . . . All of this is, again, merely allegory for a young woman’s coming of age — the inexplicable new feelings and our sudden appeal to the opposite sex, both of which could be described as having ‘powers.’ ‘Frozen’ is a (much, much) gentler version of ‘Carrie.’ ”
Coming out
“Is Elsa gay? I think there’s certainly a valid queer reading to be found in the film,” says Devin Faraci at Badass Digest. “It isn’t like she has a girlfriend — or any romance at all — but the idea that she was born different (it’s explicitly specified that she was born this way, not cursed) and that her difference makes her not a ‘good girl’ (a phrase repeated) lends itself to that interpretation.”
“Teems with gay themes,” agrees R. Kurt Osenlund at Slant magazine. “Disney’s gayest animated movie yet,” says Eric Diaz at Topless Robotmovie, who adds, “Queen Elsa’s big number, the Oscar-nominated ‘Let It Go,’ is pretty much the gay kid’s coming-out anthem for a generation. Seriously, expect a whole gaggle of musical-theater kids to belt this number out in audition after audition . . . for like, the next 30 years.”
Christianity
Frozen “might be the most Christian movie I have seen this year,” opines Collin Garbarino, assistant history professor at Houston Baptist University, at “Elsa has broken relationships, and she has guilt, and she pushes people away — and her sister is sort of like a Christ figure who pursues her. Anna comes and pursues, and when she pursues her, she has to die. And then she’s resurrected, which kind of proves the strength of her love, and it brings reconciliation, and Elsa is saved because her sister dies.”
Garbarino also compares the movie to Dante’s “Inferno” (noting that the bottom of hell is ice, not fire, in the Italian classic) and gave an interview about Christian themes in “Frozen.” Meanwhile, adds Nancy French at Rare.us, “Frozen uses Anna’s quick engagement to demonstrate exactly what is wrong with the ubiquitous ‘listen to your heart’ advice found in traditional Disney movies . . . While ‘don’t follow your heart’ lunchboxes might not sell well at Walmart, it’s actually a biblical principle.
“Proverbs 4:23 tells us to ‘guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.’”
“Jeremiah 17:9 tells us ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?’ ”
Slut power
During Elsa’s big number “Let It Go,” “I looked over at my partner in the theater and audibly gasped,” writes Elizabeth Wallace at Redbook. Elsa loosens “her blond hair as if in precoital pounce. Her regal coronation outfit (long gown with long black sleeves — stunning and stately) morphs into a snowflake of a dress: a Tiffany Blue, tight-fitting gown with a long slit in the skirt, dramatically highlighting what appears to be her 18-inch waist sandwiched between perfect perky breasts and womanly hips . . . Elsa has transitioned seamlessly from a girl literally hiding her power under gloves, to a bare-shouldered vixen proudly broadcasting all of her nubile assets . . . It’s no accident that the movie conflates the way Elsa embraces her magical powers with her transformation into a hyperfeminized object. I’m all for sexual power, but does that need to be telegraphed with a skintight, slit dress that highlights unrealistic waist sizes, and t - ts and hips that seem to exist primarily on a Victoria’s Secret runway or after a trip to the cosmetic surgeon?”
Climate Change
“Subtle references to contemporary fears and issues establish ‘Frozen’ as a definitive snapshot of the current global climate debates,” writes University of Texas student Coleman Tharpe at EnergyAtTheMovies.com. “Prince Hans represents small island nations threatened by rising seas struggling for a voice in climate-change debates. The Duke of Weselton symbolizes economically developed nations struggling to retain global leadership in the face of rapidly shifting energy markets. Queen Elsa and her chilling powers personify the worst-case scenarios of severe climate change. And, like the real world, the high-stakes negotiations are tinged with some misunderstandings, suspicion, corruption, and the risk of failure.”
A blogger at the Bay Area film site StandByForMindControl.com chimes in, “In case you missed it, the message here is CLIMATE CHANGE IS BAD. In Disney-land this can be corrected through love (and cap & trade) and loyalty and strong female characters, like perhaps Hillary Clinton? The latter I am wholly in favor of, unless we’re actually talking about Hillary Clinton.”
Sexism
“Frozen” “is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale in which a girl rescues her male friend, but the film writers changed the story to make main character Anna need a man’s help,” complains Bitch magazine. “On top of that, the film’s head animator said that it was hard to animate two female characters in the same scene because they both had to look pretty. Also Anna looks really similar to Rapunzel from ‘Tangled,’ showcasing once again Disney’s lack of diversity around race and beauty.”
Noting that Anna’s eyes are bigger than her wrists, Slate’s Amanda Marcotte says at that the movie is all about “signaling to the audience that an inherent part of being female is to be as small and diminutive as possible, and impossibly so . . . [‘Frozen’ is] sending the troubling message that to be lovable, it’s best to take up almost no space at all. Shrink your bones down, if you can.”
Racism
Angry bloggers at the This Could Have Been Frozen site at Tumblr complain that Disney can’t stop making movies about white girls. Moreover, Scandinavian Sami people are upset that their ethnicity isn’t acknowledged in the movie.
“There are a lot of us (Sami) who don’t like it. A lot (A LOT) of Sami have spoken out about the bad job it did representing us,” writes another Tumblr poster that Kristoff is never called Sami in the movie. “Also, not all of us are white. Yeah, a lot of us are, but [People of Color] Sami need better representation, and at our roots Sami weren’t white . . . Sami aren’t really seen as ‘proper’ white by a lot of sh - - ty bigoted people.”
Also, the trolls are “awkwardly kind of racist,” writes Deborah Pless.