My love/hate relationship with Frozen

I have had a very...conflicting relationship with Frozen. When it came out I paid little to no attention to it, as I had no interest in it whatsoever. This initial disinterest wasn't anything personal against Frozen, I felt the exact same way about Tangled, How To Train Your Dragon, and Wreck-it-Ralph. And then tumblr fell head over heels in love with the movie and I was seeing gifs and edits all over the place. I listened to Let it Go and enjoyed it, but I still didn't go see the movie. Meanwhile, tumblr's love affair with Frozen was only gaining momentum and pretty soon I started to dislike the movie even though I hadn't seen it, purely because everybody else loved it so much. Finally I decided to watch the movie online. I came away with the opinion that it was all right. Pretty and with a cute story, but not the Disney miracle that everybody was saying it was.

Within the week that I watched Frozen, I also watched Tangled, HTTYD, and Wreck-it-Ralph, all for the first time, and after each one I realized: I liked all of those movies a lot better than Frozen. Then I started to actually think more deeply about Frozen and realized why I thought it was just ok.



On my tumblr I have discussed the reasons I think Frozen is flawed, ad nauseum. There's a variety of reasons that range from the lack of character development to the poor plot to the lackluster aesops the film is trying to deliver. Looking at the movie's story objectively, I can say that it's an average at best Disney film.

And despite the fact that I have analyzed the film to its bare bones, despite the fact that I straight up enjoy reading Frozen hate, I find myself being tempted to like the film based on two things mainly: the pretty characters and the songs. I don't really want to like the film because like I said, I don't consider the story to be anything particularly special.

I'll cut myself some slack for liking the songs. They were written to be catchy and they do their job well. I'll admit that I sing songs from Frozen almost everyday because I think they're good songs. Plus, I love listening to and singing them in Chinese and Japanese as well.

The problem I have with myself is that I think the reason I still hold onto a sliver of liking for Frozen is because of Anna and Elsa's characters. First of all, they're pretty. There's no denying that fact. I'd even take the leap and say Elsa is one of the prettiest Disney girls ever put on screen. And that's my problem. I shouldn't like characters or the movie just because the characters are attractive, and yet, I'd say that's what draws about 90% of Frozen fans. They see this movie with two pretty girl lead characters, that's already going to bring in a crowd. Add on some cute character quirks, emotional baggage and a sprinkling of depression and anxiety, and now you've got two attractive young female leads, one who is awkwardly cute but desperately lonely, the other who is elegantly beautiful but secretly a tortured and troubled soul.

And there you are. That's the perfect recipe for characters that young people (especially tumblr users) are going to eat right up. Young people are either going to love Anna because "omg, she's not a perfect princess, she's clumsy and silly and just like me!" or they're going to love Elsa because "omg she's lonely and misunderstood just like me I feel such a kinship to her."

I didn't feel a connection to Anna or Elsa. I'm not awkwardly cute like Anna. I don't have the emotional problems Elsa has. But I still have to grudgingly admit that I like their characters, because media has made out the tortured soul (like Elsa) to be cool. And that's not right. I have a huge problem with people who go around saying they have a mental illness just because they think it'll make them cooler. Mental illness is not cool. It doesn't make people cool if they have it, and it's not something you should want to have. And yet to me at least, Frozen is propagating that idea. It makes people think, "Wow, Elsa is so beautifully troubled." No. Depression and anxiety are not beautiful. Romanticizing mental illness is a huge problem in fiction, and even I, somebody who recognizes that, can still fall for the trap, because Disney just knows how to make their characters so that you can't resist them even if you can see their flaws.

That's where my love/hate relationship with Frozen comes from. It's partially a love/hate relationship with myself. I see the problems, but I still fall for it, and I can't help but feel like that mindset I have is something that I've developed thanks to stereotypes the media promotes. Maybe if I read some more Frozen hate I'll eventually get over this.