“the Snow Queen” and “Frozen”

Don’t worry.  This is not going to turn into a My Little Pony blog.

A long time back I heard Disney people worrying aloud that they were having trouble making “the Snow Queen” acceptable to modern audiences.  So naturally I assumed they were making it revoltingly feminist and politically correct.  And in due course it came out, the feminists loved it, pronouncing it the first feminist Disney movie.  Also, people complained “Frozen” did not much resemble “the Snow Queen”.  So naturally I assumed Disney had murdered a perfectly good fairy tale to make it PC.

So I watched it so I could tell you how evil Disney was.

Nope.  It was the original fairy tale that was feminist in mythic proportion, and Disney had to murder it to avoid scandalizing their audience.

In  “the Snow Queen”, the original fairy tale, the heroine’s first love interest turns evil, and is abducted by the Snow Queen.  The heroine then goes forth to rescue the first love interest from the Snow Queen, and his own evil.

In “Frozen”, the Disney movie, the snow queen is the beloved sister of the heroine.  The Snow Queen flees her kingdom, her sister, and herself, turning evil, and casting a spell of eternal winter on her kingdom.   The heroine then goes forth to rescue her sister, the Snow Queen, from herself, to cure her, and thereby save her beloved sister, and save the kingdom from eternal winter.  Subsequently her first love interest turns evil.

 

In  “the Snow Queen”, the heroine, in the course of pursuing McGuffin boy, her first love interest, is abducted by the second love interest, little Robber Girl, who holds a knife to the heroine’s throat.  Second love interest then takes the heroine to bed, and they sleep wrapped around each other, beside Robber Girl’s talking reindeer.

Robber girl is incredibly alpha, narcissistic, psychopathic, violent, carries a sharp knife, her behavior is completely inappropriate at all times and is all round completely counter stereotypical for a female.  And did I mention she is a robber.

In the morning she and the talking reindeer assist the heroine to find the Snow Queen and love interest number one.

It seems that Disney found narcissistic knife wielding psychopathic Robber Girl a bit much, so made love interest number two male instead of female, beta instead of alpha, peaceable and wishy washy instead of violent.  And he does not court ladies by holding a sharp knife to their throats.

So, in “Frozen”, the Disney movie, the heroine, in the course of pursing McGuffin girl, her beloved sister, meets the the second love interest, Mr wishy washy beta nice guy.  He attempts to rob the shopkeeper, but is just too nice and insufficiently violent.  He and the heroine then wander in the snowstorm created by the Snow Queen.  They find shelter together, and sleep in the same place, the heroine an arms length from the second love interest, and the talking reindeer an arms length from him on the other side.

In the morning he and the talking reindeer assist the heroine to find the Snow Queen.

 

In  “the Snow Queen” she confronts the Snow Queen.  In addition to the fact that love interest number one has turned evil, his heart has been frozen by the snow queen.  The Heroine’s love, however, cures everything.  The Snow Queen yields.  The end.

In “Frozen” she and nice guy love interest confront the Snow Queen, who freezes the heroine’s heart.  Nice guy love interest number two sends her back to love interest number one, who turns evil.  The Snow Queen, horrified by what she has done to her sister, shows up.  Evil love interest number one attempts to kill the Snow Queen and the heroine to make himself king and end the eternal winter, but the heroine cures her sister of evil, and cures her own frozen heart, by her sisterly love.  The Snow Queen, cured of evil, now finds that she can unfreeze what she has frozen, so her powers no longer terrify her subjects.  Nice guy beta male love interest number two politely asks permission to kiss the heroine,  Heroine grants permission, then sucker punches first love interest turned evil, causing him to fall into the sea.  The people, relieved that their queen is no longer casting eternal winter, cheer their queen.  The end.

 

After having read the original fairy tale, the only revoltingly feminist part of the Disney movie was that sucker punch.  A girl cannot punch a man hard enough to make him fall into the sea like that.  Since love interest number one is Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic, realistically he would punch her back without worrying about hitting a girl.

So all up the major change that Disney made to the fairy tale is that it now teaches little princesses to choose the nice guy.  Not that they will.  And it no longer teaches them that they can cure bad boys of badness.  Not that they will stop trying.  The only bad things about the movie is that it teaches boys that nice boys can get the girl.  They can’t.  And it teaches girls that they can punch boys.  They can only punch nice boys.  Punching bad boys is seriously inadvisable.

Not sure what makes the movie feminist.  I suppose that the Snow Queen has really cool supervillain magic powers, that the heroine saves the day, rather than love interest one or love interest two, and that the kingdom has a queen, not a king.  Which is, as feminism, goes, fairly harmless.

The Snow Queen shows every fault stereotypical of women in power. She is fearful, emotional, irrational, unreasonable, changeable, unpredictable, flighty, and bitchy.  At the end the people love her, but this appears to be because she stops freezing them.  In the final scene, where people are cheering her return as queen, and she is entertaining them with her display of (quite dangerous) magic powers, she is still wearing her sexy super villain costume, rather than her crown and scepter.

Still, a queen in sexy supervillain costume with supervillain powers is a lot more appropriate than little robber girl with her sharp knife.

If you wanted to convey a fully realistic message, you could make a porn of the original fairy tale, in which the heroine successfully thaws love interest number one’s frozen heart, but totally fails to cure love interest number one of evil.  In the grand finale, evil love interest number one does the heroine and the snow queen, while knife wielding love interest number two and evil love interest number one do the heroine.  Evil love interest number one then ignores the heroine to (cautiously) hit on knife wielding love interest number two.

But, on the whole, congrats to Disney for fooling the feminists into cheering.

44 Responses to ““the Snow Queen” and “Frozen””

  1. I also note that a kingdom having a female monarch isn’t necessarily a contradiction to patriarchy either.

  2. […] cleverness of the Disney storywriters.  (Insightful reviews of Frozen by antiliberals can be found here and here, but really, these movies are a lot of fun, and you should just go see them.) […]

  3. […] to be notoriously under attack for insufficient leftism, for example Disney, and often their movies contain subtle hints of less than total capitulation  But even they are tending to outsource their real production to off the radar contractors, while […]

  4. oscar says:

    “The only bad things about the movie is that it teaches boys that nice boys can get the girl. They can’t.”

    Granted a single example doesn’t form a new rule nor disbar an old one, but just for laboratory purposes…

    I’m pretty much what you’d call a beta “nice guy”, and good-looking women have been throwing themselves at me my entire life. I mean, a LOT. I’ve almost never had to seduce a woman because they nearly always make a bee-line for me first. And I’m not very handsome. Not alpha, not particularly good-looking (though not ugly), yet up to my ears in high-quality women. Go figure. If I don’t “get the girl” (as in a particular love interest), I turn around and there are three equally-nice candidates waiting in line. What’s my secret? I don’t have one, beats the hell out of me. Maybe pheromones? I can’t tell.

    • Anthony says:

      Oscar – you are alpha, you just don’t realize it. Alpha isn’t (always) the frat-boy douche or the high-powered jerk. Alpha is the guy who displays self-confidence and who ends up controlling the social environment by force of character. It’s entirely possible to be “nice”, in the sense of polite, reasonable, and even somewhat giving, and still be alpha. As long as the niceness feels (to others) like it’s coming from a position of strength, it’s alpha.

  5. […] and ironically, given Mann’s litigiousness, they’re probably on solid ground. Also, Jim watches Disney movies so you don’t have to. Spoiler alerts… I […]

  6. Another Norwegian says:

    Next time, you should do an image search on the characters, before you classify somebody as Alpha and Beta, because Alpha is what women falls for, and in this case it seem the young women of tumblr quite like the Kristoff character.

    https://www.google.no/search?q=anna+kristoff&tbm=isch

    What I also find funny, is that these tumblr girls discuss genetics quite a lot, as to how Anna and Kristoff’s children will look like.

    Why the film has become like an obsession for young girls, should also tell us something, as they are to young to have been brainwashed. It could be as simple as it is all white, something that is rarely seen in the multicult propaganda that passes for children films and cartoons these days.

    I also find this Frozen clip hilarious.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hMAnj7bA38

    • jim says:

      He is the love interest that gets the girl – in spite of being beta. Thus, he gets preselection, which makes girls like him.

      And, indeed makes girls generally more tolerant of beta characteristics, which is a good thing.

  7. Dan says:

    What I take away is that this is one more barometer of the deep mistrust by many people of their own society and its institutions.

    Other examples:

    (1) Massive ongoing gun sales in what is already the most armed nation on Earth.

    (2) Flight from the public schools, and from the cities.

    (3) Rebellion against Common Core.

    (4) Retreat from the malls, civic organizations, and other ‘commons.’

    (5) Lower trust in politicians, media and the like.

    • Anthony says:

      Going off topic, I wonder if the rebellion against Common Core among various rightist critics wasn’t fomented by a particularly devious supporter of Common Core. Think about it – what better way to keep the teachers’ unions from opposing Common Core than to get all the groups that the teachers’ unions hate (often for good reasons) to oppose it?

      Common core is complicated enough that you could sell almost any group anywhere on the ideological spectrum on opposing it – there’s something for everyone to hate. It wouldn’t take that much for someone who was working on getting Common Core adopted to put together right-wing reasons to oppose it, and “leak” them to various right-wing groups – all it takes is *some* understanding of what the right actually believes, and why. A technocratic moderate ought to be able to figure it out.

      • jim says:

        Progressives are incapable of that: They cannot, dare not, think themselves into the shoes of their opponents, for to do so would involve the deliberate commission of thought crimes.

  8. Alrenous says:

    The massive plot hole that is the entire beginning killed this for me. Elsa freezes her sister’s brain and has to be kept away from her or the spell that unfroze it will shatter. There’s a whole song about how, since Anna can’t remember the accident and presumably can’t be told either, she’s not the least bit afraid of her sister. Then, it’s forgotten and everything is fine; only the white lock remains, reminding anyone paying attention that it was forgotten any time Anna is onscreen.

    That said the beta is a very realistic beta. He saves Anna’s life repeatedly…in each case, the threat was her own foolishness and shortsightedness. Of course it’s not useful in modern marketplaces but Saving Her Life is PUA tip #1. Don’t need to bother with all that roissy shit, just save her life a couple times and you’re golden. Once she comes down off that rush the relationship is over, but the movie ends long before that’ll happen.
    Has his ride ruined the instant he gives a hot chick the benefit of the doubt.
    In the finale, accomplishes exactly squat.

    I would really like to see a movie that’s unrealistic in ways that would be cool instead of harmful.

    Parents, noting that Elsa almost killed Anna…don’t throw a fit. (Realistically we’re looking at nuclear overreaction.) They blame themselves, the same way if you let your two-year-old at the matches, you blame yourself.

    They still have to keep Elsa away. But, seeing that Anna is really upset about this, they realize it was a mistake and relent. Turns out the troll was wrong too. Take That, authority.

    See also: didn’t actually die. Apparently not as risky as it seems. But perhaps have a troll on retainer? If pragmatism kills your plot points you’re a bad writer.

    When Anna comes to make friends again at Elsa’s sweet ice pad…they actually manage basic communication and come to agreement on the facts. Of course this kills the true love resolution – they can’t know that, so they’re going to have Elsa figure out how to un-winter the kingdom and then stay in the mountains. Work the original resolution back in after this and you get a plot that’s actually worth a damn.

    • jim says:

      Underlying fairy tale is that love redeems evil – which is a terribly bad moral when applied to love interests, rather better when applied to family members.

      If Elsa acts sensibly, no evil to redeem. She has to become the monster that people think she is.

      However the nuclear overreaction by parents was foolish. Should not Elsa be getting training and advice in using her powers, so that she does not accidentally nuke the kingdom? The early part of the film implies that magical royalty is pretty normal in their kingdom. Don’t they have magic books in the castle library to tutor her with? Failing that, they could retain the troll shaman as tutor.

      Of course if Elsa knew how to control her powers, or was interested in learning, then no problem for the heroine to solve.

      • Alrenous says:

        I’m a huge fan of the twist. Storge as at least as much true love as eros.

        which is a terribly bad moral when applied to love interests, rather better when applied to family members.

        I’m relieved to confirm it’s not due to one of my pathologies.

        if Elsa knew how to control her powers, or was interested in learning

        Interested in learning, but can’t. Plot becomes an allegorical exploration of consciousness.

        Elsa’s magick is technology if technology were personal instead of impersonal. It’s technology that judges the user and only obeys if it approves. You can’t just look up how the tech works.

        Elsa would have to grapple with her inner world instead of just being saved by Anna.

        I repeat: plot worth a damn.

        In the real world, every external/independent validator of success is impersonal. However, real success is personal. It’s entirely possible to be showered with indicators of success and be a total, utter, miserable loser. Or the reverse, thus, the need for plots worth a damn.

        Or: Elsa tries PUA on the magick, but the magick’s inside her brain. It can’t be fooled.

        Or: Planescape: Torment: the movie.

      • oscar says:

        The weird thing is that at the beginning, Elsa quite obviously CAN control her powers, expertly. The accident happens because Anna is over-excited, not because of Elsa’s lack of control. It’s only after she is consumed with guilt and regret, amplified by her parents and the Troll King misunderstanding what really happened, that she starts to lose control. She keeps referring to “this storm inside of me” which is presumably caused by her swirl of emotions: guilt, anger, isolation. If she could have put them aside she could have gone back to controlling her powers: (e.g. in the Let It Go sequence she sets aside her guilt and shame and instantly becomes a master architect and dress designer; she only loses control again when Anna shows up and inadvertently shames her by telling her she destroyed the kingdom). At the end Anna’s sacrifice purges her of her guilt and shame and anger, and once again, she immediately becomes a world-class skating-rink designer. There’s something in all that.

        • Alrenous says:

          “There’s something[…]”
          Men have to earn adulthood, emancipation, general value-to-society-ness. Women have it handed to them and only have to not flush it down the toilet.

  9. jaimeastorga2000 says:

    “Don’t worry. This is not going to turn into a My Little Pony blog.”

    I would actually be interested in hearing your thoughts on My Little Pony, if any.

  10. Contaminated NEET says:

    We need a name for this plan, got any ideas? Offshore Privilege, Inc.?

    This is a great idea, but a name that blatant is an invitation to crush you and your clients. How do you communicate what you do to your clients when it’s forbidden?

    • Thales says:

      You don’t have to communicate that, per se, just competency like any other normative (i.e. masculine) venture — it’s a black box so far as clients are concerned.

      Note, this only applies to companies and sectors subject to such Cathedral scrutiny, so the entrepreneur adds value by picking the correct ventures to outsource.

      • James James says:

        You don’t *need* to communicate it, but it might help as part of your pitch as long as you didn’t draw the attention of outsiders.

        But companies will start to realise this for themselves; they already have to some extent. High-profile company gets criticised for paying their cleaners too little? Outsource to a cleaning company. Criticised for paying their top earner 100 times what they pay their lowest earner? To the extent possible, split the company.

  11. Handle says:

    The movie is said to be ‘feminist’ for two reasons.

    1. We are told that almost all of the in-house team was female, script writers, animators, directors, whatever.

    Of course, a lot of the work was ‘outsourced’, or ‘partnered’ (Robert Lopez helped write ‘Let it Go’) but we aren’t supposed to think about that. In the future, companies will maintain their disparate impact balances by contracting out their most disparately-impacting work, just as corporations ‘comply’ with environmental regulations by outsourcing their dirtiest work so that the pollution occurs elsewhere. This could be a huge money-making opportunity for some company who can get a bunch of privileged-class people to work offshore in Bermuda or someplace so that the Human Resources departments of US organization have sufficient plausible deniability about personnel selection for ‘formal’ employees. We need a name for this plan, got any ideas? Offshore Privilege, Inc.?

    Anyway, the all-female crew is supposed to be evidence that women in general can do anything a man can do in the workplace and with just as much capability and success. The ‘evidentiary’ feminist implication of this feminist fact is supposed to be that whenever women aren’t getting paid equally to men, or are not equally represented in any field, then that is the result of the privileged patriarchy rape culture. Or something.

    2. The other feminist message – or so the feminists tell us – is the message to girls that they should embrace their feminine emotionalism as a strength instead of a liability and a characteristic they must be always trying to suppress and control (i.e. especially in the workplace, where they are going to look foolish to men anytime they lose it). That’s what ‘Let it Go’ is about – ’embracing the gift’ instead of constantly being nervous and anxious about it, and being let loose from all ‘oppressive social restrictions of your childhood’, imposed, for example, by her father constantly reminding her that she ‘must control it’, with all the sexual restraint undertones that implies.

    Also, it is never a female character, some village resident perhaps, that expresses any fear or concern or condemnation. It is always men who are trying to oppress her, capture her, and throw her in prison. That’s the patriarchy for you.

    3. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the troll matchmaker song, ‘Fixer Upper’, what with the redemptive power of True Love. The message is that a girl shouldn’t hold out for Mr. Right, and she should settle for weirdo disappointing beta, and forgive their inadequacies, because true love can bring out their best. Not a horrible message.

    • jim says:

      The other feminist message – or so the feminists tell us – is the message to girls that they should embrace their feminine emotionalism as a strength instead of a liability and a characteristic they must be always trying to suppress and control

      On the other hand, whenever the snow queen gets upset, which is most of the time, she loses control of her powers, and does ugly hurtful stuff, like wrecking her own beautiful palace or casting eternal winter on the kingdom. Letting it go damn near killed her sister. The storm and the giant snow golem monster are her ugly frightening dangerous emotions made manifest in the exterior world, and damned good reasons for the patriarchy to restrain her. Remember evil love interest number one’s advice “Don’t be the monster they think you are”. After which she damn near kills herself by wrecking her own palace.

    • Alan J. Perrick says:

      Reason number 2 is the best reason. From what I got based on “Jim”‘s article’s summary, the story uses the female “love interest” as an allegory for the protagonist’s own lustful urges… And use of a female character rather than a male lover makes this more clear.

      3 from “Handle” is also a good reason…

    • josh says:

      I thought the Snow Queen’s secret=gay and danger comes from holding it in or something.

      • josh says:

        This is not my interpretation, but what I understand to be the “Frozen is leftist” interpretation.

  12. Thales says:

    Had no reason to watch it, but found the Honest Trailer quite amusing.

  13. Alfred says:

    I enjoyed it because it emphasized familial sentiments and dropped the cliched naive concept of romance that Disney usually portrays. When I heard the feminists were claiming it, I thought “Did you see the same movie I saw?”

  14. Erik says:

    You could totally do a My Little Pony blog with some inspiration from My Nationalist Pony. What’s that saying about having all the right enemies?

    • Helmuth says:

      Mind blowing.

    • B says:

      “Cons: Possible Homer-sexual.”

      I seriously can’t picture Lord Romer or any other reactionary hero watching MLP or something like that. Unlike of course Roald Dahl, St Exupery or Hans Christian Andersen. Maybe the medium determines the message. If the future of the Dark Enlightenment involves homos watching rainbow ponies frolicking around, then there is no future in it, don’t care if they hate the Cathedral or not. Like they say, you build a thousand bridges, nobody calls you a bridge builder…

      The New Sincerity thing sounds mildly interesting, though.

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