WHY I HATE FROZEN

 

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.

So much for helping Cinderelly.

My life? You really don’t want to know about my life… Jesus, me throat’s dry. I need a fucking drink. Ah, thank you. Well, I do say it meself, as true as me name’s Charlie. You must think I’m taking in too much, but let me tell you, I never even asked to become a bloody horse. There I was, minding me own fucking business, in the house. Buttons, the family’s aging manservant, had laid out the traps as usual and me and me mates were trying to avoid the bloody things. Anyways, before we knew it we wuz caught in one of them traps. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here before you if we hadn’t been caught in that fucking trap.

Anyways, as I was saying, I saw her coming down the stairs and brushing the steps, with a chain around her ankles. It had a padlock on it, I fink. I mean, she’s rather odd, but she talks like Pallas Athena in the stage plays. She’s just… nice… But if I were human, she could try on my galoshes anytime. She was beautiful, bloofer like you wouldn’t believe, what with her golden hair falling down her back and her thin white nose. Me mouth waters at the thought of thinkin’ about her, believe me, guv’nor. Believe me, she was miserable in that shabby dress and shit and that headdress, um, babushka-think. I just cared about the traps. She notices me and she lets me loose from that trap, and we heard summat outside. We got outside and I saw her, a half-naked Welsh tart with wings… Bugger me, am I boring youse?

Then I’ll go on. I sees the Welsh tart, I does, and she notices me, and then she points her hand at me. If you think this is a fairy tale, you can think again, pal. It’s a horror novel. Can you even imagine the pain that that transformation caused me? Well, just imagine the horror of knowing you’re being transformed, followed by the unbearable, indescribable pain as your body’s molecular structure is warped beyond what should normally be possible. It’s almost like a human turning into a werewolf, except much worse.

When the transformation was done, we tried practicing our limbs, which was very painful, ‘cos we hadn’t been fucking introduced to them before. We’re mice, not fucking horses! Then the transformation of the pumpkin begins. I’ve heard reports that she had a magic tree, or the power of the birds at her disposal. Utter bollocks, if you ask me. The pumpkin grows really fucking big, beyond what should even be possible, until it’s turned into some kind of rotund carriage with bloody great golden wheels. You can bleedin’ tell it used to be a vegetable, because of the way it’s shaped, and there’s something fuckin’ unnatural about the whole thing. How’s anyone going to fail to notice anything suspicious, I hears you ask? I dunno, and I don’t fucking care.

If I recall correctly, they even ‘ad some bloody lizard on the premises that got turned into a footman. I have no soddin’ idea why he wuz even there to be honest, since this climate isn’t one where you’d normally expect to find lizards. I suspect he was some sort of family pet. I also remember there was a rat that got turned into a coachman, but I’m not even fucking sure because I can barely remember that damned fucking event. Even if there was a rat, I have no idea why he was even there, but I suppose it don’t bloody matter anyway.

So anyways, the scantily-clad slag then produces another dress for the girl, a pretty white one, which leaves her titties exposed to the elements (well, the upper ‘alf of ‘em, anyways) with shoes made not of glass but of fur (which makes it so fucking worse – for us but not for them bloody fucking humans. I mean can you even imagine the pain of seein’ shoes made of the fur of our own fucking kind?) and I can still hears her voice in me head to this day:

“It’s whimsy!” She does a little twirl in the garish new skirt she’s now clad in, sparing absolutely no thought whatsoever for the absolute horror we’ve just found ourselves in. Like all them young human maidens, she’s so taken in by the joy of the moment that she’s just stuck in her own little world. She has on some long white gloves, covering the lower-half of her arms. I dunno why human females even dress like that, but whatever it is I thinks she looks absolutely ridiculous. I can barely see due to the pain and discomfort of the whole entire thing.

Then the half-naked Welsh tart responds in her Welshy voice: “Yes, but like all whimsies, I’m afraid this can’t last forever. Go off in your silly frock, but be back home by twelve o’clock.”

And that’s that. Afterwards, we gets harnessed to the carriage, and it’s hard for me. I try to fight but the magic’s too strong, and the excruciatin’ pain is hampering me legs. So the pumpkin and its footman, we goes on to this bloody great castle, with walls so finely polished you’d think it were made of polished marble, where we waits, in the unimaginable torment of the night for what feels like fucking hours. I champ me bit, feeling the cold metal around me mouth, and I crane me new neck, which is very painful, towards the left, to look at me friends, who are all waiting for summat. You can’t even begin to imagine it.

Gimme another fucking drink, there’s a good lad. Thank’ee. Anyways, as I was saying, we waits and waits and waits, all feeling the pain, wonderin’ when it’s gonna end, and then all of a sudden, we ‘ears the bell. Dong. Dong. Dong. The chimes o’ midnight. And there she comes, the naïve little bitch who let us be transformed without giving so much as two shits about what we’d feel, without our consent. She’s still dressed in the same gown as when she went up them stairs, yes, but she’s missing a bloody shoe. Then the coachman whips our backs, which makes the pain so much worse and then, before I knows it, we’s racing down the lane for some bloody reason, trying to keep up and me legs are fucking killing me.

But the worst is yet to come, ‘cos I’m in for a bigger world of pain, because I feel meself shrinking back to me original form, and it’s even more painful than the transformation into the horse. Me mates were all as shocked as me, and our figures shrank back, and then the pumpkin kicks her out and then shrinks back, and then she’s left standing, in her normal dress.

Me friends all died from the trauma, except for me. I was all that was left and I let the horror sink over me. If that tart could inflict such a painful transformation onto me, what else could she do? So now, I’m here, in this ‘ere pub, drinkin’ away me every last mouse-sized coin, drowning me sorrows in beer and smokin’ me fagpoles. After that incident, I joined the Anti-Magic League, the activists that are dedicated to nobly stamping out the cause of magic. Causing the end of fairy godparents, of whimsical maidens, all of it. What thanks do we get for it? Nummat. Zilch. Nada. Anyways, I hopes you never encounters any of them. If you understand, you can maybe joins us too. Now, I’ll fucking drink: to the end of all fairytale fantasies, including the Tooth Faerie.