This week, I re-watched one of my favorite Disney movies--Frozen. Frozen was released in 2013 as an untraditional princess movie: the main characters were two princesses sisters. The story of Frozen was inspired by “The Snow Queen” written by Hans Christian Anderson; the film directors were Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, who also directed Frozen II. Some of the voice casts are Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa; Kristen Bell cast Anna; Jonathan Groff cast the male character, Kristoff, who was also Anna’s boyfriend; and Josh Gad, the little snowman Olaf. The box office for the rollout domestic is $400,738,009; the international box office is $880,064,273. The lifetime Gross is $400,953,009; ranked 39 domestically. The review I read was from the website of Roger Ebert again; but the author is Christy Lemire, who has reviewed films for The Associated Press for 14 years. The title of the review is Frozen, she mainly talked about that while the movie was an innovative Disney movie that was for all audiences, not just little girls, but the overall plot was familiar. She commented that “The animated, 3-D adventure wants to enliven and subvert the conventions of typical Disney princess movies while simultaneously remaining true to their aesthetic trappings for maximum merchandising potential”, but she viewed that the loyalty of friendship in the film was building on the fact that there were potential suitors and other lovely creatures.
For me, the main gender message this film conveyed is that girls could transform into an independent woman with the support of sisterhood, while men are an option in their lives. When Elsa was a teenager talking about her power with her parents, she said “I’m scared. It’s getting stronger.” and when her father tried to comfort her, she took back her hands and stepped back (09:26). There was an incident that on the day Elsa was crowned queen, she showed her power because she was angry about Anna getting engaged with a man that Anna just met. When others condemned Elsa for the mess, Anna stepped up and defended Elsa saying that it was her fault because she pushed her, and it was her responsibility to find her back(30:03 ). And at 33:17 Elsa sang the famous “Let It Go” and released her power but also hid from the kingdom since everyone now knows her power. It was Anna who took a long journey trying to convince Elsa to go back and even saved her from the sword at the last second of her life at 1:26:16. This screenshot down below is when Anna stepped in front of Elsa as she turned into ice.
The “true love” of sisterhood melted Elsa’s heart and she opened herself again. After rewatching Frozen, I realized that instead of focusing on Elsa, Anna is another independent woman figure that we can pay attention to. The reason why I am annotating this film is that our group mates want to do a comparison of old Disney movies with the new ones, and Frozen is the best transformation of Disney princesses. The princess is now not saved by the prince, but by her sister. By the way, Elsa has no boyfriend yet. This innovative Disney film taught us many new gender norms compared to the old ones.
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