WHY I HATE FROZEN, by Asher Kahtan
I do believe that the topic of this polemic will remain
relatively safe for discussion. After a decade, much of the “hype”, as so many
dumbed-down idiots will term it, for Frozen (2013) will have dissipated like
steam. But I will get my feelings down, because of my experiences with my
younger siblings, and the times in which they have sat outside my bedroom door,
re-enacting “Do You Want to Build a Snowman”, inadvertently comparing me to
Elsa. A character I do not pretend to embody. Myself and Elsa are nothing
alike. We share almost nothing in common with each other – I do not even
possess ice powers. Elsa is too nice and too flawless and not believably human,
but there are moments where her characterisation falters. So, without further
ado, I shall compare Walt Disney’s annoying, irritating piece of toddler-ish
fluff with my own fiction – Nixvir and so on – to make my point about the
degradation of modern mainstream fiction.
This is of course nothing new: after all, J.R.R Tolkien
famously despised Dune, but for some reason he never cared to elaborate on why
he despised Frank Herbert’s works so much. Creators despise other creators, and
that is an essential part of life. In contrast to him, I shall elaborate my
reasons why I hate Disney’s work, in the fullest detail possible.
HOW TO REBUILD A SNOWMAN
Part of the reason I do not like Frozen is because of how
much it trivialises and absolutely fails to deconstruct in any meaningful way
the concept of a living, breathing snowman. Admittedly, this is something a lot
of American children’s media fail to accomplish, and to a lesser extent British
media (The Snowman in particular). Snowmen are depicted in the franchise as
being dependent upon their human makers to physically exist, thus implying that
they do not possess rights of their own and are not living beings in their own
right. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, the creators of Frozen, give no credence to
the thought of even remotely taking Olaf seriously as a character whatsoever.
He is just the “snowman who wants to melt for some unknown
r*t*rded reason”. He doesn’t really learn anything in the film and he doesn’t
really change as a character or impact the plot in any meaningful way, but, of
course, one could argue that he simply is not meant to. One could argue that he
is meant to be nothing more than a support to the human characters rather than
a fully-fledged, third-dimensional personality all his own. When he realises
that he is going to die due to the passing of his human slavedriver, he barely
even reacts to this. Does he let loose a barrage of icy tears? Does he regret
what he could have done with his life? Does he even express any sort of envy
for Anna for even having a love interest? No, he does none of these things: he
simply fades away without a fuss, while his “aunt” does all the grieving for
him.
Olaf also lacks any form of martial capability: he could
barely fight against the frost giant that Elsa conjures up towards the
conclusion of the third act (I shall use a FIVE-act structure in this case, NOT
a three-act structure, because of how I choose to judge it in comparison to
Shakespeare). Indeed, he gets tossed out without putting up much of a struggle.
Any time he even attempts to come across as more impressive than he really is,
he really comes across as pathetic.
In comparison to Frozen, I deconstruct the very concept of
snowmen. I examine how snowmen work in the fictional setting I create, and look
into the functions of what happens when they melt. Not even Chris Buck and
Jennifer Lee even bothered to go that far, and I know that. Any snowman like
the one in my stories would feel immensely offended by the idea of needing a
human to exist in a state of symbiosis, seeing as they do not particularly like
our species very much. Indeed, snowmen, unlike Olaf, who Frankenstinically
fawns before his creator as though she were his mother, do NOT and never have
worshipped their human makers, but acknowledge they depend on them to avoid
dying out. Furthermore, Erik and Olaf couldn’t be more different, which is part
and parcel to the reason why I am reluctant to pimp myself out to the corrupt
beasts that lie in the vile, turgid, stinking alleyways of Hollywood,
California.
The people of Hollywood have no respect for originality,
creativity or avante-garde integrity. They would turn Erik into an Olaf ripoff
in a desperate attempt to cash in on the success of Frozen, which is not what
he is: unlike that irritant, Erik is able to actually fight, in the
manner of a boxer, with his good old fisticuffs and his Queensberry rules.
While I understand that standards of masculinity have shifted since the
Victorian era, I deliberately drew on old-fashioned Victorian masculinity to
make Erik different. Erik is thus intended by me to be taken seriously as a
character and not as some silly comic relief character in the manner that Olaf
is – I even explicitly refer to the reputation of snowmen in the World Oak as
“comic buffoons” to make this comparison. When I was a kid, of course, I
associated the aforementioned Scandinavian name not with an adorable snowman
but with a greedy and treacherous villain, viz. Count Olaf from the classic
book series A Series of Unfortunate Events and so when the film first came out,
it was hard for me to avoid this comparison. Erik is embodied, furthermore,
with the manners and powers of a knight from Arthurian legends, with some of
the extraordinary skills of a hero of Classical Greek myth. He encounters a
wide variety of gods, monsters and beings in his adventures, and not once is he
never made fun of.
He earns everyone’s respect in the Battle of Conevstall as
Macbeth did before him when he sliced McDonwald in half. He remains humble and
kindly even through his adventures, but he isn’t made fun of. Additionally,
unlike Olaf, Erik can read, as can all snowmen. All snowmen in my universe are
taught to read as soon as they’re old enough, no exceptions. Elsa didn’t even
want to bring Olaf to life, it just happened. In Nixvir, in contrast we learn
that Lord Nix gave snowmen life of his own accord, since he didn’t like that
they weren’t allowed to have life. Thus proving that my story is superior to
Frozen.
Another problem I have with a lot of snowman-related media
is that they melt after the story has ended, instead of coating themselves in
permafrost so they can stay in the mortal realm longer. Yes, I am aware that
Olaf is coated in permafrost in the second film, but the fact is that it is
Elsa who does this to him rather than himself. Therefore, unlike Erik or
Ragnar, Olaf has absolutely no independence of his own, despite sounding like a
fully-grown adult. He has the brain of a three-year-old, in contrast to Erik
and Ragnar who have the brains of somebody much older, and that is because they
change as they grow “older” – for the snowmen as mentioned do not age as humans
do – and this is another factor we see with, for example, Spud the scarecrow
from Bob the Builder, who, despite sounding like a very nasally adult, behaves
in a manner closer to a four-year-old, including requiring guidance, in
contrast to the Scarecrow of Oz who, despite being two days old at the time the
novel starts, is far more mature and thoughtful than even he cares to admit.
Another factor is that melting is often treated in stories
with snowmen as death. True, melting down by fire is one of the things that can
kill a snowman in my works, but the fact is that it is certainly treated as
decease in the Frozen franchise. The rules of what happens when snowmen melt,
whether there is a place they go to (which, incidentally, is NOT an afterlife,
despite what idiots think), is never expanded upon in the franchise. When Olaf
starts melting he says, “This is the best day of me life, and quite possibly
the last.”
The refusal of the creators to explain how the laws that
govern “snowlems” in the films is another example of what we shall call “sloppy
worldbuilding”, which we shall delve into without a minute’s delay.
SLOPPY WORLDBUILDING
Some say that J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World is very brittle
in terms of worldbuilding and that if you try to expand upon it, it collapses
like a house of cards. They also believe that its magic is far less developed
than in other fantasy series – a “soft magic” system pretending to be a “hard
magic” system. Well, I can assure you that I find Frozen’s worldbuilding to be
even sloppier than that of J.K. Rowling. The magic system is comparatively
better developed in her Harry Potter novels, since it at least requires very
bad doggy Latin and a wand in order to make it work. True, J.K. Rowling is
absolutely awful at mathematics, but she keeps churning out more lore for her
Wizarding World than even Tolkien did for Middle-earth.
Frozen’s worldbuilding, by contrast, is built on
sloppily-defined magic principles. There are even less explanations present in
the canon for how magic is supposed to function and even the expansions present
in the sequel make things more complicated. I do not particularly care for the
magical lore they added but I cannot judge since I stopped watching Frozen as
my siblings came of age. Mind you, I saw snippets of it as they watched it,
although not very clearly. Since I discussed snowmen earlier, there is also the
fact that Elsa, in one special, just acquires the ability to sneeze out
miniature, armless snowmen for absolutely no reason at all. We are given no
explanation why she can do this, nor are we given any implication that she
always had the ability to do this, otherwise the castle would have been overrun
by them years ago and she would have found out her “godly” ability to create
life much sooner, irrespective of whether she was a child. Thus, we have to say
that the rules of magic go unexplained in the entire franchise, and these
“snowgies” as they are termed, do not occur afterwards. Thus proving my point
that Frozen’s magic is even more sloppily defined than Harry Potter’s.
In my world, there is always a pantheon of gods looking out
for those beneath them. Frozen’s world does not have this, and yet,
unbelievably, Elsa becomes a goddess herself. In my world, you cannot become a
god without special permission from the higher-ups, and even then it does not
happen often. The gods can give supernatural skills, but if they feel that
their skills have been abused, they can also take them away. But a god also
cannot abandon their duties. The threshold between both worlds is largely unpassable.
Bringing into mind another of my problems with the
franchise: the lack of detailed politics. More recently, in the spirit of
another idiot writer from across the pond who can’t even be bothered to get off
his fat, owlish arse to finish a book (I sometimes sing “Michael, finish de
book, hallelujah”), I ask you this: “What was Elsa’s tax policy?” In all
seriousness, what was her tax policy? How did she treat trolls and other
minorities? In at least one of the specials, there are revealed to be Jews in
Arendelle, who appear to be doing rather well for themselves, even though the
films are supposedly set in a time wherein most Jews were persecuted in Europe
and subject to racist abuse. Yet, despite this, Olaf is able to whimsically
sashay into their domicile and greet them with a “Shalom” and not so much as a
“Chag Sameach.” Still, it is a relief they didn’t include any Jewish
stereotypes.
As far as Jewish stereotypes are concerned in regards to
American media, I absolutely detest them, since they portray a disgraceful
image of the Jewish people, and that fool Woody Allen hasn’t done the wider
diaspora much favours, because his characters do nothing but rant on and on and
on to the point where it becomes insufferable – “I can’t do this, I can’t do
that, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” Don’t get me started on Adam Sandler,
another Jew whose filmography has done more harm to the assembly than Woody
Allen and every single non-practicing Jew. Even the stereotype of the “Jewish
princess”, a stereotype I worshipped before, is something I am starting to
detest with every passing day. The Jews are not idiotic ramblers, nor are they
sexually repressed, nor hook-nosed, nor evil: the ones I have interacted with
are simply ordinary, middle-class people with ordinary middle-class problems.
Anyway, my worldbuilding is different. Yes, I have stolen
ideas from every book I’ve ever read, every film I’ve ever watched, and every
play I’ve ever been to, but I was able to include most of these filched ideas
as references and parodies, which are fair game under copyright law.
Nevertheless, I pull from a wide array of sources, including Greek mythology,
and favourite books – including the Narnia series, a book series nobody even
bothers to physically read, much less listen to, anymore. In fact, I’d describe
the World Oak as “Narnia on steroids”. So what if I decided to focus solely on
Greek and Norse mythology, let alone British folklore as source material? What
is the mythology of the Slavic peoples compared to the hallowed mythology of
Greece and Rome? Frozen, much like other American works I’ve seen, does not
even remotely draw upon Greek mythology, even consciously. The bishop does not
speak Latin, he speaks Old Norse, but that is only as part of a prayer.
Returning to my perspective on how politics is represented
in Frozen, the franchise appears to forget that Elsa cannot be bothered to do
even remotely half of her duties as queen, viz. providing an heir to the
kingdom that House Arendelle may survive upon her inevitable demise,
negotiating supplies (and yes, I do know that she runs her kingdom in a
bureaucratic manner in the novels, but I will not count that) and ensuring
trade – she cuts off relations with a trade partner for an unrealistically
petty reason which does not accord with real-life economics. There is also the
fact that she selfishly abandons her duties to whimsically skip about having
ascended beyond the petty lot of mortals to become a god among them. All
without producing an heir to her throne! She even states in one novel that she
has no interest in romance. This does not take into account the fact that she
is the Queen, and she MUST provide an heir and enter wedlock or House
Arendelle’s line is finished!
I say this because a former queen of the country from which
I originate, Queen Elizabeth I, died without even bothering to marry or produce
an heir and thus the lineage of House Tudor died with her. This forms part of
the reason why I detest portrayals of homosexual royalty in adult fiction, viz.
Hazbin Hotel and its portrayal of the daughter of Old Scratch himself. I have
never been able to comprehend how on earth Carlotta expects to produce an heir,
but she has to produce an heir in order for House Morningstar to continue its
illustrious demonic lineage. Even if the uneducated Miss Medrano knew this,
there are chances that she would scoff at my analysis. This is the reason why
the king holds the ball in Disney’s 1950 film Cinderella. You may believe that
he just wants to see his grandchildren before he dies, but what the king really
wants is reassurance that his lineage will continue ad infinitum. It is not the
joy of being a parent as he claims, but what he wants is reassurance that his
legacy will continue, that it will not be tarnished by the passages of time,
which scatter legacies to the four winds and leave standing neither great
monuments nor the memories of those who made them!
In my fiction, while the issue of producing heirs is never
brought up, it is most definitely there. Thus, the World Oak, thankfully, will
continue to remain frozen in time ad infinitum. The inhabitants of that world
will always use steam trains and horse-drawn carriages and there will always be
a rigid class structure which continues perpetually. This is because I created
a world which would be kinder and gentler than the one in which we live, but
more old-fashioned and technologically and societally backwards. This is
because I have always been in love with the customs of the past to an extent.
The World Oak is the way the world should be, but not the way it is.
I was disillusioned with the world I saw around me, so I
created a world which would be more clear-cut. Yes, my world is brittle, but at
least it is not as brittle as the world in which Arendelle and its environs
exist! The townspeople and the castle staff are not developed in any
significant way any more than Olaf himself is. They are flat, one-dimensional
characters who simply exist as props for the main protagonists.
CHARACTERISATION
As I mentioned before, Elsa as a character is not believably
human. No human being can be as nice, as loving and as kindly as her… not in
reality that is. Yet despite this, in the original film, all she does is sit
around and whine “I can’t!” without even making an attempt to alleviate the
consequences of her ill-timed actions. The animation style provides her with
almost pristine fingernails, as though everything about her is perfect, but I
can tell that she is not so. A YouTuber I expressed some devotion to, Voxis
Productions, believes of course that the real reason that she was imprisoned in
the palace by her parents isn’t because she has ice magic that threatens human
life but because she is a hormonal lesbian. Turrell further cites that she
cures her sister “with the power of incestuous love!”
Now compare this with Prospero, the magician of William
Shakespeare’s classic The Tempest. Prospero is fully rounded as a character and
he is not benevolent in the slightest: he is a slave holder, he forces a boy
his daughter has fallen in love with to work for him because he is convinced
that the lad is a spy, and he is angry and bitter especially considering that
his brother betrayed him in union with a local king. Despite this, he has his
sympathetic qualities: he treats his daughter very well, and he genuinely has
her best interests at heart, he at least wished to civilise Caliban and it was
simply the cryptozoological creature’s own fault that he tried to molest
Miranda, and he is nice enough to free Ariel after his fifteen years of
service. Indeed, he treats Ariel far better than Sycorax, his predecessor, ever
did – all she did was imprison him in a tree for no reason at all.
I also compare this with Erik’s lover Oriel. Admittedly, I
gave Oriel a character arc of her own: she is aware that the typical love for
jewellery made her selfish and uncaring and so she strives to be kind and
loving to all as a way to redeem herself. Erik also has his own character arc,
as he realises the consequences of Ragnar’s mad rage. Even Ragnar has a
character arc of his own, as he realises how much the World Oak hates him. All
of these examples listed above, as well as anything by the immortal Bard, prove
superior to Elsa and Anna, whose relationship does not replicate anything
expressed by siblings in the real world. Even as children, their relationship
is far better than the one I had with my own siblings when WE were children.
Children in the real world fight, children in the real world rib each other and
children in the real world mock and insult each other. The fact that no
traditional sibling rivalry exists at all in Elsa and Anna’s relationship is
therefore unrealistic and ill-researched.
The treatment of children by Disney in these films is
reminiscent of an old-fashioned idea of the innocence of children which dates
back to the age of Queen Victoria and even earlier. This is a problem with a
lot of children in media: from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snowman to that
Norwegian author whose name I fail to recall, to little Cosette in Hugo’s Les
Miserables, all the way up to the television adaptation of Frosty the Snowman
which features some references to the events of the original song but entirely
fabricates events that are not present within its lyrics. Children, especially
in media set at around winter, are always represented as dainty little cherubs
who get into innocent snowball fights and hang about with living snowmen
without a care in the by-our-lady world.
However, I do not claim that it is harmonious in all
children’s stories, but that is because I have not read all of them. I have
never, for example, read Enid Blyton’s Famous Five novels – I was never brought
up on them – but have read Lewis’ Narnia books. I was also not really allowed
to watch any media whose target demographic was young girls because I was
mocked and bullied by my siblings for displaying any interest in media aimed
at, for example, little girls or five-year-olds. Since then, I have come to
detest Dora the Explorer and all that crap and I sometimes parody it in private
(“Can you say ‘gimp mask’? Say ‘gimp mask’!”). I did, however, grow up on Alice
in Wonderland, which I do not believe to aimed exclusively at little girls and
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials as well, and just because a book has a
little girl as a central character does NOT mean that a work is aimed
exclusively at little girls or that it should be enjoyed by little girls.
Harry Potter’s portrayal of children, for example, is
coherent and believable simply because it portrays the aggression and tribalism
present within the infantile psyche – Harry vs Malfoy, Harry vs Dudley, and
even the golden trio launch into arguments from time to time, even as they grow
up. So too do the Horrid Henry novels, the Mortal Engines novels (whose main
characters are adolescents), The Railway Children, the Psammead novels, et
cetera. I could go on all day about this stuff, but at the end of the day, the
fact remains that children in the Frozen franchise are unrealistically
represented. As a great man once said, “Real children don’t go hoppity-skip
unless they are on drugs.”
Both protagonists are depicted as possessing something of an
infantile psyche which, in the real world, would probably have them sent to
Bedlam. Their parents made poor choices for them, which in the real world would
probably instil within them poor psychological development and may thus explain
their somewhat arrested perception on things in their environment. To have them
as adults and yet still behaving as though they were big kids at heart feels
unrealistic to me. I understand they wish to make up for lost time, but it
appears odd.
CONCLUSION
What is Frozen compared to Oz, Moby Dick, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
and all the other works of American fiction that came before? What even is it
compared to British franchises, including my own series? My series is far
better, and the same could be said for every single work of literature
published prior to the 1900s. Those were the good days, when originality was
truly cherished, when Hollywood did not exist, before Walt Disney knocked P.L.
Travers, A.A. Milne, and so many others into the darkness of obscurity. Both
authors are honoured in their native land, but not outside it, and it is all
because of the brainwashing and the gaslighting that that company has engaged
with for the last century.
I can imagine what people will ask: “What are you doing
ranting about a children’s franchise made for little girls and babies? Aren’t
you taking this seriously?” This is because I believe that being marketed to
children has badly damaged animation more than it has helped, no matter what
Aardman or Steve Box would think. Regardless of cultural origins, I do believe
that adults SHOULD be allowed to create animation aimed only at adults. I
believe that what is necessary for children is safeguarding, and this is a
lesson that many parents refuse to learn. Nixvir is better than Frozen in
several ways – its worldbuilding is more complicated and thought through, the
plot is more mature and epic, drawing upon Homer and Virgil, the characters are
better and more developed, et cetera.
