Frozen fever has reached new heights.
Disney has announced that a seven-minute mini-sequel to the film will be shown in cinemas before screenings of their new live-action film, Cinderella.
Now the highest-earning animated film of all time, Frozen has racked up a huge list of successes. It has won two Academy Awards, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, the soundtrack has sold over a million copies and the DVD became Amazon’s best-selling children’s film of all time before it was even released.
Its appeal spreads beyond awards and record-breaking facts. Just look at the number of ‘Let It Go’ cover versions on YouTube, the sales figures for Elsa dressing-up costumes, the number of Frozen-related Twitter hashtags – and the list could go on. All of this is enough to lead one Guardian writer to brand the film ‘a generational touchstone’.
The snow queen
Frozen is loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. It tells the story of two princess sisters, Anna and Elsa (voiced by Kirsten Bell and Idina Menzel). Elsa has magical powers that allow her to create snow, but life for the sisters is not one long game of building snowmen. Elsa’s uncontrollable icy outbursts also make her dangerous, especially to Anna.
The girls’ parents decide to lock Elsa away in their castle and keep her powers secret from their subjects. She is told: ‘Don’t let them in, don't let them see / Be the good girl you always have to be / Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.’
Eventually, afraid of hurting someone, she runs away, leaving the kingdom in eternal winter. However, Anna decides to risk everything and sets out to find her. It is her unconditional love for Elsa and her determination that they will be reconciled that become the driving force of the story. As the review in the February 2014 edition of en rightly says: ‘Ultimately [the sisters show] show the power of sacrificial love in what is not your usual Disney dénouement.’
Let it go?
Much ink has been spilled over what has allowed this modern day fairytale to achieve cultural domination. Is it that this is a good old-fashioned Disney film, or that its ending is unconventional? Could it simply be the catchy sing-along songs? Perhaps the film succeeds because it shows real darkness and yet doesn’t have a conventional ‘baddie’. Is it that Elsa is so easy to relate to? Or is it all down to the film’s concluding message?
The catchy song ‘Let It Go’ seems to be the film’s mantra: ‘Let it go, let it go / Can’t hold it back anymore.’
If this is the case then it is a film about freedom – both the freedom to be our true selves and the freedom that comes from escaping all of our responsibilities. We need to forget our fears, to ‘test the limits and break through’. With Elsa, we should embrace a world of no restraints: ‘No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free!’
This is how Elsa’s isolation begins, but it is not how the film ends. What she finally learns is that she is happier – and freer – when she is reunited with Anna and returns to take her place in the castle. Despite the ecstatic release of a song like ‘Let It Go’, the film’s conclusion is that, through loving family relationships, it is possible for us to find a way to control our dangerous powers and harness them for good.
God’s family
The love that wins the day and thaws the winter in Frozen is the sacrificial love of two sisters for one another. It is not, as we might have come to expect from princess stories, the love of a handsome prince for a helpless princess. In fact, the film openly mocks the idea of love at first sight. ‘Love’s true kiss’, which saves the day in many other Disney fairytales, turns out to be useless. Frozen takes the traditional Disney narrative and turns it upside down, putting the female characters in the driving seat and showing the love of siblings to be far more powerful than romantic infatuation.
In John 15.13, Jesus says: ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one's friends.’ However, he also reminds us that we find this love by choosing to live in relationship with God through Jesus. ‘Now remain in my love’, he reminds us. It is in this context that he commands us to love each other. Through the sacrificial love of Jesus we are called to join God’s family, where we can find real freedom from fear and the capacity to truly love others. And that certainly isn’t something to let go of.
