Another Disney Aside: The Aesthetics of Frozen

As I sit here on Saturday morning, the first day of my long birthday weekend, as I like to think of it, I am dreading going back to work on Tuesday for a completely novel reason.  Yesterday evening I took my girls to see Disney's Frozen.  I had been avoiding it deliberately--first because of the snowman, Olaf.  Second, because I had heard about a certain plot twist, whereby the initial love interest is revealed to be the bad guy.  I don't like when films--or books--trick the viewer/reader in cruel ways.  But in the course of a Facebook exchange, I became intrigued enough to resolve to see the film.  It sounded interesting.  So when I was "surprised" with a cake on Thursday by my co-workers (it's an office ritual, and I'm not one to scoff at an opportunity to stop working), I mentioned that I was thinking of taking of Friday afternoon (my actual birthday) and bringing my girls to see Frozen.  We chatted about it a bit.  My boss, who is a very sweet person, and a former dance major/instructor, mentioned that when she saw it with her teenaged daughter, she didn't know it was a musical.  She said the songs were awesome.

Therein lies the difficulty.  *sigh*  I didn't think the songs were awesome--or even very good--with one notable exception.  "Frozen Heart"--the ice-cutters song.  And the other thing that people defend for one reason or another (and I think it's because everyone secretly knows that the film would have been better off without) is the other element I couldn't stand--the snowman, Olaf, whom I knew would be a problem for me just from the previews.  Defending Olaf is a lot like defending Jar-Jar Binks, but Olaf has a better backstory.

So as I think about Tuesday (long weekend), I think about being asked what I thought of how I liked the movie, and what I will say, and how I can say it without bringing judgment upon myself as the snob with the English Ph.D. who can't enjoy anything.  I can't help remembering a fellow English major I was dating at the time remarking, "Oh, so you're saying that you want your animated films to be more realistic?"  He should have known better, but in a way that mirrors what you see all over the internet when someone applies analytical skills to pop culture-- "Are you kidding? Shut up and enjoy the film."  (Only spelled worse.)  I had similar successes trying to get students to analyze or evaluate Disney films and children's literature.  No one quite sees the point.

Here, for a change, I am not actually dealing with analysis, but evaluation.  Because I believe (and it's an unpopular belief) that it is possible to set criteria and judge whether something is a good or a bad work of art, a successful or (artistically) unsuccessful film, book,whatever.  And in fact, I'm not a culture snob.  I love children's media in particular, and bought "What Does the Fox Say?" from the iTunes store, whatever judgment that might bring upon me.  So what did I think of Frozen?  Well, taken as a whole, I didn't particularly like it.  And I wanted to.  But at the end of the day, the elements that were pleasing, and what the writers of the story were attempting to do broke down for me because of the elements that simply got in the way or did not contribute to the overall purpose of the film.  And the purpose of the film was to tell a story and convey ideas, not merely to entertain.

There were very strong elements in the movie.  I enjoyed the story.  The dynamic between the sisters was interesting, and the character development--though not as strong as in Tangled (in part because Tangled had fewer characters to develop)--was better than one expects from a fairy tale.  The twist was fine--the way it was executed struck me as overly dramatic.  Surely, Hans knew he would betray her before he leaned in for the kiss, and the kiss--having nothing to do with true love--wouldn't have worked anyway.  I liked that Ana saved herself and her sister.  And I liked Christof.

The animation was, at times, stunning, though I had to keep reminding myself that the sisters were not the new Strawberry Shortcake, because their exaggerated eyes and top-heavy movements reminded me strongly of that animation.  But the ice was lovely, particularly in the opening sequence.

In fact, the opening sequence--with the ice cutting--was my favorite part of the film.  Just as we get past the odd chanting--Lion King in Scandinavia?? (I'm assuming there's some reason for the chant, but it didn't set the tone well)--we see (and hear) boots crunching across the ice--which we see from below.  And then the saw pierces the ice.  The motion of the saw forms the rhythm for the sone "Frozen Heart"--also the best song in the film.  When my husband (who did not see the film, but who enjoyed Tangled along with the rest of us) saw this sequence, he said, "Now, we need a good work song."  And that's what "Frozen Heart" is, in spite of it being, as one YouTube commenter so eloquently said, "the whole freakin' movie."  Men's voices chant a vague legend about a frozen heart while describing the danger and wonder of ice.  The music itself has folk elements to it, including a stringed instrument that reminds me of the Swedish nykelharpa, an instrument I discovered by listening to Vicki Swan and Johnny Dyer on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast, because several of their songs had a stringed instrument that was low enough to be a cello, but was clearly (to my son, who plays one) not a cello.  This song--the song that opened the action of th film--clearly set the stage for the action, and also established the setting, both musically and thematically.  All without being distracting and calling undue attention to itself as a musical number.

Unfortunately, the other songs did not follow suit, and that is my largest problem with the film--well, that and Olaf.  The other songs in the film were, quite simply, pop.  They were a cross between Beyoncé and Evita--clearly meant to facilitate the movement of Frozen to Broadway and other stage venues, and also to be sold on CD and through iTunes and other digital music vendors.  And that was the problem.  The music was not part of the whole--it was thrown on top.  So when people say that it is catchy when you listen to it repeatedly at the request of your children, but that it nearly put them to sleep as part of the film, they are simply confirming:  the music did not belong in the film.  Particularly after the stage was set--by the amazing work-song, "Frozen Heart."  Someone at Disney knows that the folk elements integrated well with the Scandinavian setting, but let's fact is: pop sells.  In ways that folk music does not.  Every dance recital for the next two years, and several Olympic ice skating routines, will feature music from Disney's Frozen, cementing everyone's impression that the film is wonderful and amazing.  Which it would have been, had the disparate parts--the parts, like Olaf, designed to appeal to the most base sense of humor, and the soundtrack, meant to stand alone--held together better.

The good news is that I'm not alone.  Far and few between there are people who acknowledge the problem, however much their children may have enjoyed it--and I don't think that it's a problem to teach my children that a good work of art is a unified work of art.  At a birthday party on Saturday, shortly after strating this post, I spoke to the mother of my daughter's friend.  They are Korean, and she has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, and when my daughter mentioned seeing the film, we talked, and she--cautiously, it seemed--volunteered when I did not gush about the film that the music didn't really seem to fit, and said many of the things I have said here.  But she, too, knew that it would not be a popular opinion.

Meanwhile, here's what a nykelharpa can do, first folk:

And then more of a classical fusion: