Frozen: The Anatomy of a Gaze

Scott Garbacz — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 14:00:00 +0000

The first song composed for (but ultimately cut from) the recent Disney blockbuster Frozen explicitly engages with Disney's presentation of female characters. In the song, entitled "We Know Better," young princesses Elsa and Anna lay out a laundry list of objections to the traditional idea of a "Disney Princess." The film's two heroes refuse to be the sort of princess who "always knows her place," insist that a real princess “laughs and snorts milk out her nose," and maintain their right to mention “underwear.” Though whimsical, the film sets out its heroines' priorities: the only things they take seriously are their sisterly friendship and the political demands of ruling the realm. In climactic two-part harmony, the girls promise to "take care of our people and they will love / Me and you." If films like Tangled and Brave taught Disney that their princesses can (quite profitably) take center stage without dressing up as boys, Frozen insists that its female leads will be more concerned with national policy than with the clothes they wear.

The film's feminist aims were reflected in early reviews. NPR discussed the film's hit single, and the message of empowerment that many tweens heard in its lyrics. Social media exploded with a list of "7 Moments that Made Frozen the Most Progressive Disney Movie Ever." On the other hand, Frozen came under fire for perpetuating some of the worst tropes of the very "Disney Princess" genre it mocks. From critiques of Elsa's embodiment of Disney's Madonna-whore dichotomy to concern over the ridiculous gender dimorphism of its CGI character-models, the movie collected criticism as well as praise from feminists. Frozen was often compared unfavorably to Lilo & Stitch, a movie with its own fascinating treatment of social narratives.

In this post, however, I'm not particularly interested in praising or condemning Frozen so much as in understanding how it works. In particular, I want to draw attention to a visual contradiction that I see energizing much of Frozen. On the one hand, the the film claims to be a reversal of what we expect from a Disney film. On the other hand, in its meticulous computer animation actually displays a deep reliance on the sorts of traditional, emotional-powerful images created by Disney and other culture-makers over the years.

Take, for instance, the following freeze-frame, an image featured in various promotional materials, including (as seen below) Disney.com's website for the film:

Image credit: Disney.com

This image is particularly powerful because, in its essence, we have already seen it a million times in previous fantasy films and cartoons (though never, perhaps, executed with such icy beauty or complexity.) A young protagonist gazes upon an exotic, striking location, while the viewer's gaze is drawn along the explorer's eyeline through careful image composition. At the top of the image is a distant, female beauty, more of an icon than a person; Elsa's face is an indistinguishable blur, looking over her elegantly-clad shoulder as her dress swirls about her.

Such an image announces its continuity with previous riffs on the same motif, such as the scene where Prince Phillip hacks his way towards his future wife's magical castle in Sleeping Beauty, or the scene where Alladin's titular hero looks out at the city of Agrabah while dreaming of the life lead by its princess, Jasmine. Indeed, the parallels from the former seem particularly striking. Frozen is the first "ultra-widescreen" Disney fairytale since Sleeping Beauty, and Eyvind Earle's detailed, decorative background work on Sleeping Beauty stands as a predecessor for the elaborately ornate (yet often-threatening) nature of Frozen's arctic scenes.

The two protagonists' red, flowing capes are also suspiciously similar. Image credit: Evensi.com

If Frozen shares much in common with Sleeping Beauty, it also follows T.S. Eliot's dictum that "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." The most obvious shift is one in the characters' gender and motivation. Where Prince Phillip seeks merely to rescue his love and obtain the obligatory "happy ever after" of marriage, Anna's goals are doubled--even doubled against each other. She seeks to be reunited with her sister and thereby restore their family bond, but she also wants to save the realm from her sister's magic, a political task that places the two of them in a (potentially) adversarial relationship. Within this freeze-frame, then, it is fitting that Anna herself is duplicated. While Elsa's body faces away from the reader and seems ready to confront Anna, her reflected gaze points vaguely to the right of the image, her mouth slightly open in uncertainty. This doubling might also be seen to echo Anna's larger character-arc, in which she longs to be the heroic masculine figure capable of saving the realm from Elsa's sorcery, but also wants to be the beautiful ingenue, "Fetchingly draped against the wall / The picture of sophisticated grace." Anna is no prince charming--but she sure can dress for the role.

One thing is certain. In aligning the viewer with Anna, Frozen both re-creates and revises one of Disney's most oft-repeated images. Whether this hybridity represents a feminist deconstruction of a powerful gender stereotype or a hypocritical "feminist" gesture in a story mired by inherited images and old forms is a philosophical question beyond the scope of this blog. That such a question might emerge from a single freeze-frame in a popular Disney film, however, is a testament to the power and complexity of images, even those images that flash momentarily on the screen in one of the year's many blockbuster entertainments.

A New Kind of Castle: Disney, Feminism, and Romance

clsloan — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:25:04 +0000

In 1937, Disney's endearingly helpless Snow White cooked, cleaned and sang her way into the hearts of seven protective men and then slept her way into a happily ever after. Giving due props for the breathtaking animation, Snow White's reliance on heroic male figures to solve all of the naïve princess's problems will naturally prompt eye-rolling from feminists still riding the ripples of wave two. Before unleashing angst and anger at Disney, don't we have to acknowledge that Snow White is surely a far cry from the hardworking grit and psychologically complexity of Tiana, the heroine of Disney's most recent “princess” movie? Even though Tiana has a song sequence that basically accompanies her cleaning up an old mill, she's inspired by her own ambition instead of by the saccharine goodness of her squishy heart. Disney has certainly attempted to respond to cultural shifts in how America understands gender roles and romantic relationships. The question is: have these changes been sufficient?

There are several controversies surrounding The Princess and the Frog (2009), and I think two of them are particularly arresting. The lighthearted manner with which the writers treat “voodoo” elides the religion's cultural history and uses it as a near synonym for dangerous magic. In addition, Tiana, Disney's first black princesss, spends a decent chunk of her own movie as a frog. Disney's endeavor to be more “culturally responsible” sort of falls flat in a few places, and the ongoing obsession with Barbie-shaped women who wind up married irked, especially after the breakthrough promised by Lilo and Stitch (2002). While I'm in no position to comment on whether or not Lilo and Stitch successfully and sensitively creates a culturally-conscious Hawai'i (and would be quite interested in the thoughts of others), I do think that the movie's treatment of gender leaves all other Disney movies in the dust. I say all in order to not-so-subtly prompt disagreement, but after roughly a day of brainstorming, I can't think of one other animated Disney film that includes so many female characters and passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. I even harbor a suspicion that Lilo and Stitch tactfully comments on what I'll call the “Prince-Charming-Cure”: the Disney deployment of romance as a deus ex machina for all of life's problems.

Snow White and Aurora are saved with a kiss, Ariel's happy ending relies on getting a strange man to smooch her after three days in his company, and Belle liberates herself by falling in love with her captor. The Lilo and Stitch version of Prince Charming, on the other hand, swoops in right when all appears lost, when Nani has lost every chance of finding employment and it looks as though their small family is about to be split up. Instead of fixing the issue, though, he can do little beside give the sisters a brief reprieve from their troubles by going surfing with them. This simultaneously undermines the Prince-Charming-Cure while emphasizing the importance of relationships. Any one connection can never magically fix all your problems, but it can certainly help you work your own way through them. Let's get symbolic, shall we? While Prince Charming might carry Snow White away to his castle in the sky, a veritable heaven attainable only by fairytale romance, the sandcastle David helps Lilo and Nani build has more real-world relevance. It might be temporary, but at least it's comforting.

viz. - Disney Princess

Frozen: The Anatomy of a Gaze

A New Kind of Castle: Disney, Feminism, and Romance