Frozen II: Dams, Aboriginal Peoples, & Addressing Historical Injustices (Holiday Post #4)
[Spoiler alert for those who have not seen Disney's Frozen, Moana, or Frozen II.]
Many people have low expectations of sequels films. If a first film produced by a large entertainment corporation makes money, it's expected that they will ride the wave of popularity and make a sequel to continue to reap rewards from renewed interest.
I had low expectations of Frozen II, released in late November of 2019. The first film (released November 27, 2013) seemed too centered on the narcissistic adventures of a firstborn daughter with special powers (what first-born doesn't feel they have special powers?) who feels she had to repress those powers and be a "good girl." In the end, she and her younger sister are redeemed by love, with help from a snowman, a reindeer, and a woodsman who grew up as an orphan, raised by trolls (some of whom, for some reason, turn out to be Jewish in spirit (as some noted), as demonstrated in the song, "She's a Bit of a Fixer-Upper").
The first installment was cute, young girls were enthralled, many Frozen-themed back-packs and lunch-bags were sold, and children and families who might have invested their time better reading good age-appropriate books probably spent far too much time watching and re-watching another Disney film, contributing to their revenue-stream. Although it received some criticism about the erasure of indigenous people (see below), it was a financial success for Disney.
But three years after the release of the first Frozen, and three years before the release of Frozen II, Disney released Moana (November 23, 2016), and it seemed there had been a slight change in creative strategy at Disney. With Moana, it seemed Disney's creative team had actually been given permission to ask bigger questions and address larger issues than how repressed talented first-born princess-daughters sometimes feel (although Moana includes its own share of this theme as well).
Moana was about the inhabitants of an island who were beginning to see the effects of a widespread ecological disaster triggered because a demigod had stolen the heart of a goddess who was something like Mother-Nature, presumably intending to help humankind, but with unintended consequences. The heart of the goddess has to be restored, but due to the harsh consequences of the stealing of her heart, the goddess appears at first not as a lush and beautiful woman, but as a lava-monster, a goddess of wrath.
[Disney image via BusinessInsider]
I gave a presentation at the Southwest meeting of the Conference on Christianity in Literature in which I discussed Moana's meeting with the lava-monster as a combination between the Emmaus story (finding Christ in the stranger) and the admonition to love one's enemies. Moana finds the goddess to whom the heart must be restored in what she had presumed was her enemy, an ugly manifestation of nature's fury.
In this way, Moana became a kind of fable about healing an ecosystem harmed by the recklessness and greed of capitalism, healing the earth, and restoring some kind of balance with nature.
So perhaps the stakes were raised for the creative team behind Frozen II. But in many ways, it seems they rose to the challenges. Besides the treatment of widespread and increasing ecological disaster in Moana, what other questions and issues face humanity at this moment in history?
One of these involves how to address and heal injustices against descendants of slaves or aboriginal peoples.
Another (in recent decades) involves global economic deceptions pulled off when developing countries were promised great economic benefits from the building of new structures such as dams, paid for by loans arranged by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Developing nations later found that the real beneficiaries of such projects turned out to be corporations seeking to profit from such things as mining and manufacturing in these countries, while the poor nations themselves were saddled with debts they found hard or impossible to repay. (For more information on this practice and examples, see the Guardian article here; for information on how China is involved in similar practices in Laos and Ecuador, see here [Laos] and here [Ecuador].)
Dams themselves create a great deal of violence in an ecosystem, so sometimes new dams are built in ways that allow living things time to migrate to higher ground, but even so, a dam always radically alters a landscape. In some places, systems have to be built to allow fish new ways to get upstream and spawn such as salmon gates and ladders, which are often found to be failing.
Some of the improvements to relevance and plotting in Frozen II came from controversy swirling around the first film, accused of practicing a kind of white-washing or erasure of indigenous Sámi culture, using a Sámi song and referencing reindeer-herders, but otherwise neglecting the indigenous culture's history. Disney resolved to make improvements in Frozen II (see article here).
In fact, the creative team's embrace of a better approach was so significant that the former queen of the fictional land of Arendelle in the film turns out to have been an aboriginal woman who saved, and later married, the father of the girls Ana and Elsa. The importance of memory, and healing wounds of the past, are central to the plot. The film includes fictional indigenous people in significant ways in the plot.
Younger sister Ana gets a much greater sense of agency in Frozen II, it seems, because instead of merely falling badly in love, trying to save her sister, and being a victim, she is a character who makes important decisions, takes significant risks, and ends up being the new queen.
Not all critics were satisfied, or expected to be (as shown here in an article printed a week before the release of Frozen II); others found much to unpack, as shown here in a Slate article by Inkoo Kang, published in November). We should remember that Disney's creative team is creating a fable of sorts. Kang writes,
"Frozen 2 is an American movie written and directed by Americans for a largely American audience, so it’s probably inevitable that some portion of the audience will see the Northuldra as stand-ins for Native Americans and Elsa and Anna’s multiracial Arendelle as present-day America."
Kang is not at all fully convinced, but in the film's favor, near the end, she writes,
"It’s admirable that Buck and Lee even attempted a storyline like this, and even though it could’ve used a little more thinking through, introducing the concept of nationalist mythmaking to children—particularly in a “princess movie” that the general public has no expectations for other than to sell even more Elsa and Olaf dolls this holiday season—is commendable."
What impresses me is that, more than with Pocahontas and other, older Disney films, the creative team and the corporation in general are at least beginning to respond to valid concerns of the public regarding the implications of their films and the need to be both more fair, and more engaged with the pressing questions and issues of our time. Moana and Frozen II give us some evidence that the mega-corporation, Disney, is actually paying attention and making some worthwhile changes in the way it shapes its fables for children.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All six of my holiday posts:
Twelfth Night & Epiphany, Malvolio & the Cecils, and Antonio & Essex (Holiday Post #6)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/twelfth-night-epiphany-malvolio-cecils.html
Rise of Skywalker, Oedipus, & George Eliot: Saved by Heroes or Collective? (Holiday Post #5)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/rise-of-skywalker-oedipus-george-eliot.html
Frozen II: Dams, Aboriginal Peoples, & Addressing Historical Injustices (Holiday Post #4)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/frozen-ii-dams-aboriginal-peoples.html
Wonder Woman, Paul Ricœur, & Refusing the Second Naïveté (Holiday Post #3)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/wonder-woman-paul-ricur-refusing-second.html
Much Ado & the "Jade's Trick"— as coitus interruptus? (Holiday Post #2)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/much-ado-and-jades-trick-as-coitus.html
Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor—J.B. Cabell (Holiday Post #1)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/hamlet-had-uncle-comedy-of-honorby.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
Many people have low expectations of sequels films. If a first film produced by a large entertainment corporation makes money, it's expected that they will ride the wave of popularity and make a sequel to continue to reap rewards from renewed interest.
I had low expectations of Frozen II, released in late November of 2019. The first film (released November 27, 2013) seemed too centered on the narcissistic adventures of a firstborn daughter with special powers (what first-born doesn't feel they have special powers?) who feels she had to repress those powers and be a "good girl." In the end, she and her younger sister are redeemed by love, with help from a snowman, a reindeer, and a woodsman who grew up as an orphan, raised by trolls (some of whom, for some reason, turn out to be Jewish in spirit (as some noted), as demonstrated in the song, "She's a Bit of a Fixer-Upper").
The first installment was cute, young girls were enthralled, many Frozen-themed back-packs and lunch-bags were sold, and children and families who might have invested their time better reading good age-appropriate books probably spent far too much time watching and re-watching another Disney film, contributing to their revenue-stream. Although it received some criticism about the erasure of indigenous people (see below), it was a financial success for Disney.
But three years after the release of the first Frozen, and three years before the release of Frozen II, Disney released Moana (November 23, 2016), and it seemed there had been a slight change in creative strategy at Disney. With Moana, it seemed Disney's creative team had actually been given permission to ask bigger questions and address larger issues than how repressed talented first-born princess-daughters sometimes feel (although Moana includes its own share of this theme as well).
Moana was about the inhabitants of an island who were beginning to see the effects of a widespread ecological disaster triggered because a demigod had stolen the heart of a goddess who was something like Mother-Nature, presumably intending to help humankind, but with unintended consequences. The heart of the goddess has to be restored, but due to the harsh consequences of the stealing of her heart, the goddess appears at first not as a lush and beautiful woman, but as a lava-monster, a goddess of wrath.
[Disney image via BusinessInsider]
I gave a presentation at the Southwest meeting of the Conference on Christianity in Literature in which I discussed Moana's meeting with the lava-monster as a combination between the Emmaus story (finding Christ in the stranger) and the admonition to love one's enemies. Moana finds the goddess to whom the heart must be restored in what she had presumed was her enemy, an ugly manifestation of nature's fury.
In this way, Moana became a kind of fable about healing an ecosystem harmed by the recklessness and greed of capitalism, healing the earth, and restoring some kind of balance with nature.
So perhaps the stakes were raised for the creative team behind Frozen II. But in many ways, it seems they rose to the challenges. Besides the treatment of widespread and increasing ecological disaster in Moana, what other questions and issues face humanity at this moment in history?
One of these involves how to address and heal injustices against descendants of slaves or aboriginal peoples.
Another (in recent decades) involves global economic deceptions pulled off when developing countries were promised great economic benefits from the building of new structures such as dams, paid for by loans arranged by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Developing nations later found that the real beneficiaries of such projects turned out to be corporations seeking to profit from such things as mining and manufacturing in these countries, while the poor nations themselves were saddled with debts they found hard or impossible to repay. (For more information on this practice and examples, see the Guardian article here; for information on how China is involved in similar practices in Laos and Ecuador, see here [Laos] and here [Ecuador].)
Dams themselves create a great deal of violence in an ecosystem, so sometimes new dams are built in ways that allow living things time to migrate to higher ground, but even so, a dam always radically alters a landscape. In some places, systems have to be built to allow fish new ways to get upstream and spawn such as salmon gates and ladders, which are often found to be failing.
Some of the improvements to relevance and plotting in Frozen II came from controversy swirling around the first film, accused of practicing a kind of white-washing or erasure of indigenous Sámi culture, using a Sámi song and referencing reindeer-herders, but otherwise neglecting the indigenous culture's history. Disney resolved to make improvements in Frozen II (see article here).
In fact, the creative team's embrace of a better approach was so significant that the former queen of the fictional land of Arendelle in the film turns out to have been an aboriginal woman who saved, and later married, the father of the girls Ana and Elsa. The importance of memory, and healing wounds of the past, are central to the plot. The film includes fictional indigenous people in significant ways in the plot.
Younger sister Ana gets a much greater sense of agency in Frozen II, it seems, because instead of merely falling badly in love, trying to save her sister, and being a victim, she is a character who makes important decisions, takes significant risks, and ends up being the new queen.
Not all critics were satisfied, or expected to be (as shown here in an article printed a week before the release of Frozen II); others found much to unpack, as shown here in a Slate article by Inkoo Kang, published in November). We should remember that Disney's creative team is creating a fable of sorts. Kang writes,
"Frozen 2 is an American movie written and directed by Americans for a largely American audience, so it’s probably inevitable that some portion of the audience will see the Northuldra as stand-ins for Native Americans and Elsa and Anna’s multiracial Arendelle as present-day America."
Kang is not at all fully convinced, but in the film's favor, near the end, she writes,
"It’s admirable that Buck and Lee even attempted a storyline like this, and even though it could’ve used a little more thinking through, introducing the concept of nationalist mythmaking to children—particularly in a “princess movie” that the general public has no expectations for other than to sell even more Elsa and Olaf dolls this holiday season—is commendable."
What impresses me is that, more than with Pocahontas and other, older Disney films, the creative team and the corporation in general are at least beginning to respond to valid concerns of the public regarding the implications of their films and the need to be both more fair, and more engaged with the pressing questions and issues of our time. Moana and Frozen II give us some evidence that the mega-corporation, Disney, is actually paying attention and making some worthwhile changes in the way it shapes its fables for children.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All six of my holiday posts:
Twelfth Night & Epiphany, Malvolio & the Cecils, and Antonio & Essex (Holiday Post #6)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/twelfth-night-epiphany-malvolio-cecils.html
Rise of Skywalker, Oedipus, & George Eliot: Saved by Heroes or Collective? (Holiday Post #5)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/rise-of-skywalker-oedipus-george-eliot.html
Frozen II: Dams, Aboriginal Peoples, & Addressing Historical Injustices (Holiday Post #4)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/frozen-ii-dams-aboriginal-peoples.html
Wonder Woman, Paul Ricœur, & Refusing the Second Naïveté (Holiday Post #3)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/wonder-woman-paul-ricur-refusing-second.html
Much Ado & the "Jade's Trick"— as coitus interruptus? (Holiday Post #2)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/much-ado-and-jades-trick-as-coitus.html
Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor—J.B. Cabell (Holiday Post #1)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/hamlet-had-uncle-comedy-of-honorby.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
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