Personally, I don’t think the songs for Frozen are that annoying or crazy, even on continuous loop. (However, I’m one of those people that can listen to the same songs on repeat for weeks on end, even though I don’t tend to read or watch anything more than once.) The main problem I see with the songs is how their lyrics can potentially teach children that it’s okay to alienate their friends and family (for instance, there’s one part that goes, “turn away and slam the door, I don’t care what they’re going to say”). I get the feeling that many people like the song just for lines like those, but in the overall scheme of life, a theme that promotes isolation is not beneficial to anyone, even the listener themselves. Certainly, one could say that the songs are actually about empowerment and freedom, but with the way the lyrics are presented, the songs mostly comes across as unfriendly, uncaring, and even estranging to me. Perhaps the songs were originally intended to be antagonistic (if Frozen was supposed to have been based on the story of the Snow Queen) so that’s why they’re so negative on some levels, but if the storyline had been changed halfway through production, then do the songs really need to retain so much negativity?

Actually, even as a woman, I don’t fully understand how Frozen is considered “empowering.” I can see they were trying to change the theme for once (that only came across at the very end, but barely), but overall, the film seemed to be making fun of women. =/ To me, it seemed like they were saying girls can’t come up with any good plans (even if they had been secluded in a castle, they should have at least read some books about the outside world? or what were they wasting their time on, and should that really be in any Disney film?), they can only escape from whatever is bothering them, and they are completely incompetent when given positions of power. Even if you try to negate all of the above with the end of the film, there were just some things that were so egregiously and painfully problematic in the storyline that it’s too difficult to ignore, even barring logic.

1. So Elsa has a frightening ice power, and that’s it? Pardon me for sounding harsh, but does this mean she’s not going to learn how to overcome her difficulties and learn to control it, even though she’s supposed to become a queen someday? For someone that’s supposed to be more privileged than the others in their country, she certainly didn’t act according to her station. Also, her parents never thought to let her out of the castle into the wild where she could learn to control her powers with help of the trolls? Sure, we can chalk some of Elsa’s behaviors up to bad parenting, but that doesn’t mean Elsa can’t try to think for herself after her parents left. After all, she made all of those snowmen inside the castle and that takes imagination. Did she just shut off her mind after Anna got hurt once? She never even thought to try to make it up to Anna somehow, someday? No matter how I look at it, Elsa does not appear to be an inspiration as an empowered or empowering person. If anything, she’s channeling how being a helpless queen is acceptable, even in her society where men would try to kill her just for a throne. None of it makes any sense! ><

2. Anna sees the first guy she likes and wants to marry him. Love at first sight is not unprecedented in the Disney films, but Elsa does get the chance to veto the guy, so everything is still okay by modern standards. However, right after Anna makes her announcement, Elsa decides to run away? Sorry to all the Elsa fans, but no matter how I look at it, her behavior was NOT consistent with that of an older sibling, no matter what kind of justification one comes up with. One simply does NOT leave their younger sister alone with the guy that you just vetoed. Would you leave your kid brother or sister alone to be taken advantage of by some random stranger, even if you thought you were in danger of being hated by said sibling (or even your entire kingdom) for your ice powers? I was even beginning to think the story was written by people that had never been older siblings in their life. Not only did Elsa running away from her kingdom make her look irresponsible, it also showed how well she could make bad decisions. Escape is not the way to show how someone, male or female, is empowered at all. To make matters worse, they had to send an army just to bring her back, rather than letting her come to her senses on her own. Only if Elsa returned of her own free will once she realizes that she’s being irresponsible will there be growth as a character, and none of that was presented at all.

3. As for Anna, she does learn gradually, but too little and not fast enough. She was correct in thinking her sister shouldn’t have run off without her, but to pursue her irresponsible sister, she left her kingdom to some random stranger that she had just met. Wait… what…? This shows a lack of good decision-making skills as well. (By the way, who had been taking care of the kingdom before Elsa ascended to the throne? Was this ever really addressed in the story? Why didn’t that person/group of people try to seize the throne for himself/herself/themselves, since that’s the trend with most of the other Disney stories, and that actually does make sense? The stories that instantly come to mind would be Robin Hood (Prince John, who attempted to usurp the throne but failed) and The Lion King (Scar, who actually did take over Pride Rock). However, we can cut Anna some slack because she loves the guy she just met (there is something to being blind when you’re in love, and thus you could make bad decisions based on that), and also because her heart was in the right place when she went after her only remaining family member. She just made a bad decision about who should be watching her kingdom while she went to bring Elsa back (she could have left her kingdom to her friends in the court instead). All things considered, Anna probably grew the most as a character, or rather, was the only one who actually showed any real progress. She actually learned her lessons, and would have died for them, if it wasn’t that the spells were merciful towards her. A female protagonist like her in most of the other stories (Snow White doesn’t count, because she was saved by the Prince), however, would probably already really be dead, so I say, she didn’t really learn fast enough. Anna took a leap of faith like Mulan did, entered a realm she was not familiar with, and came back having learned how to survive. However, unlike Mulan who would have been killed if it wasn’t that she had created her own chance to survive via “a life for a life,” Anna hadn’t created that kind of second chance for herself, so I think the animation artists that wrote the story and made that merciful spell were just being really kind to her to make up for the fact that she wasn’t learning fast enough.

Overall, there were so many problems with this story that I couldn’t keep up with them all, but these were the ones that made me really wonder if Frozen was truly a Disney film. What happened to all the morals and thoughtful social commentaries Disney usually imparts to their viewers, young and old alike? Were they simply removed for the sake of “special effects?” In that case, I’d rather they remove all of the “special effects” from their current films and bring back the storylines that teach what really matters in life. It really worries me that millions of young girls, if they do emulate Frozen, might copy those “slam the door, don’t need to care about anyone,” or “in your face” types of attitudes which are only going to hurt them in the long run until they realize Elsa is actually a terrible role model.

As for whether or not I'm going to continue to listen to the Frozen songs, I think I'll wait to see if Frozen 2 is better than Frozen before deciding to "let it go" completely. ^^0