Friday, December 13, 2013

Frozen, Family Rules and Wounds

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see/Be the good girl you always have to be/Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know,” (“Let It Go”, Frozen, 2013).


As a 90s child, I learned a fair number of life lessons from Disney movies. Try to do the right thing, treat people with respect and dignity, don’t trust that one uncle who is named after his most distinguishing characteristic and literally has a different color palate than the rest of the family.

To be totally fair, Scar did look super evil.

Obviously, not all of these lessons translate very well to adult life. 

When you watch a Disney movie, one that came out as an adult, those lessons and messages can hit you in ways you never expect. For instance, Frozen is easily one of the best Disney movies in years. It is smartly written, funny, does not rely on a romantic plot line to provide happiness and the songs are beautiful.

But that quote above, where Elsa leaves her kingdom, and fear, behind to embrace who she really is, is both beautiful and terrible. It’s beautiful because that is a lesson we should be teaching our children. I don’t mean that in the very modern way where we lead children to believe that they’re the best and brightest and most important person in the world. I mean that in a more inclusive way. A way that says that almost no one notices an individual snowflake in a storm, but those individual snowflakes are what make the snowstorm so fantastic.

It’s terrible because those lessons, and rules, that Elsa mentions is one a lot of children grow up with. It’s a lesson I grew up with. Children should be seen and not heard. Children should always be good. Negative emotions can never be shown. Those lessons teach children that there is one way to be a child, one way to be a person, and deviating form that path is disastrous.

See "All Victorian Novels Featuring a Female Protagonist"
That’s not true. Frozen ends by showing that embracing who you are, the negative and the positive, is better than hiding. It teaches that there are secrets and hurts we all have that need to be brought into the light of day. Finally, it shows that recovering from those hurts is a process. It is a process that takes time, and loved ones, as the wound heal.

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