Frozen: Let's Take a Deep Breath Already

So if you've been on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest lately, you've likely caught sight of this picture, which is racing through my social networks like wildfire.  It shows the newly crowned Queen Elsa letting Princess Anna know that there is no way she will give her blessing for a marriage to Prince Hans, whom Anna has met that afternoon.  Disney has long come under fire for its numerous princesses, the age of said princesses, quick marriages, questionable story lines, appearance, and the treatment of the women in those roles.

Frozen is being hailed as Disney's first truly girl power princess movie, surpassing Tangled, which previously held the throne.  Having a 4 year old daughter, I have seen nearly all the princess movies, and the ones we haven't watched together, we have certainly read. 

I grew up on Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, and loved them both.  Cinderella was the girl I looked up to the most, and what I took away from it was that if you were kind, even in the face of cruelty, and you worked hard, eventually good things would come of it.  I have learned that isn't necessarily true, but I did have a wise friend once tell me, "It's better to regret doing something nice than something nasty." And I agree with that.

I have taken great joy in watching Tangled with my daughter numerous times, and we saw Frozen three times in the theater.  She and her friends in preschool love playing at being Anna and Elsa and singing Let it Go loudly and in endearing pre-school voices.

My impression of Frozen when I saw it the first time was that I was watching Tangled On Ice, as I dubbed it.  A beautiful princess has been basically locked in a castle her entire life, she runs away (not to see floating lights, but to chase after her sister who has also run away after being locked in a room for most of her life), meets a hunky dude with some street smarts, he helps her on her journey, they fall in love, return to the palace and uncover their secrets, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Are there other princesses who run away?  Sure.  Jasmine takes off to the marketplace to avoid marriage and meets Aladdin, a street smart urchin with the heart of a prince.  Mulan runs off and joins the army in her father's place and wins the heart of a warrior.  Ariel makes a deal with the Sea Witch and foresakes her family to win Prince Eric's heart.  Rapunzel runs away from the tower with the help of Flynn Rider, who has snuck in and gets smacked around with a frying pan a bit.  This isn't much in the way of a new formula.  Anna, in my estimation, takes her place in a long line of women who run away, find men, and win their happily ever after.

I have read many essays which condemn The Beast for his refusal to allow Belle out of the castle.  His own selfish need for love to re-transform him into a prince are at the heart of his decision to keep her prisoner, and he is in fact ghastly towards her, softening over time due to a combination of advice from his servants and from Belle's TLC.  Elsa's parents likewise confine her to her bedroom and perhaps a parlor elsewhere in the castle.  This is presumably 'for her own good', she is dangerous, she is not in control of her powers, she has injured her innocent sister.  Yet somehow, we see this acceptable because Elsa won't let Anna marry Hans and because Anna eventually sacrifices herself to save her sister, not hook up with a man.  And given Anna's glee when the castle windows and doors are thrown open, the gates opened wide, and she steps into the sun, I have to wonder if she wasn't kept inside the entire time as well, for no particular reason I can fathom.  Forgive me, but as far as I can see, a prisoner is a prisoner.

Disney didn't write these stories.  In some cases, they've re-written the endings of these stories.  The most egregious is in the case of The Little Mermaid.  I grew up watching Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater, and she sticks to the original plot of the fairy tales.  The Little Mermaid most definitely does not get a happy ending.  Rapunzel eventually gets a happy ending, but only after giving birth on her own in a desert, and after her prince, who has been blinded after being pushed from the tower by the witch, manages to stumble upon her as she's hanging around in the desert, which didn't seem like much of a plan.  But in Disney's ending of Rapunzel, he winds up dead for a while.  I'm not sure which is the better ending on that one.  But read these stories in their original forms.  The Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, and other story tellers wrote of children being abandoned in the woods to be eaten by a witch, children freezing to death, women being abused, men being turned into frogs and beasts, parents disappearing or being killed.  Disney didn't write these tales; at worst they are guilty of perpetuating them and perhaps doctoring the endings to make them a lot less harsh than the originals.  (And frankly, I'm probably just fine with my daughter not having an image of Ariel standing over the prince's sleeping body, knife in hand, ready to plunge it into his heart.)  But they are hardly alone in the game. Where would Shrek be without Princess Fiona, and vice versa?  Emmett and Wyld Style? To name just a couple from rival studios...

Yet somehow, one sentence uttered in the first 1/3 of a movie has redeemed Disney of past sins, despite the fact that later, said princess does indeed wind up with a man who, at best, she has been with for 2 or 3 days.  Despite the fact that Elsa has spent at least a decade ignoring Anna, who desperately misses her big sister.  Elsa, who won't even open the door when their parents are tragically lost at sea, who cannot even bring herself to console her sister.  Why?  "It's for her own good.  It's not safe."  Bullsh**.  And when Anna shows up at the ice palace to beg Elsa to come back, just to talk with her, Elsa responds by summoning a hideous snowish hellbeast that very nearly kills Anna.  Elsa's treatment of Anna is, in my estimation, what make her a monster far more than her powers of freezing whatever she touches. 

I do believe the princesses teach us important life lessons, not just about how to look good in a ball gown if you have an impossibly tiny waistline.  A little trip over to Pinterest shows how many of us love a pithy saying, as if these little gems can lead us down the primrose path of happiness.  Every day I log into Pinterest and someone has pinned one or two of them.  Heck, the image at the top of my sidebar here, which inspired my blog title, is one such image.  So I've taken these sayings from Pinterest, all of which have been pinned by women, and matched them with a Disney Princess just for fun.  You can fly your princess flag with pride, friend.  Enjoy.  (Picture of the princesses, then each quote I've selected for them with their name underneath)

Tiana

Ariel

Jasmine

Snow White

Frozen: Anna and Elsa

Sleeping Beauty

Belle

Mulan

Pocahantas

Rapunzel

Cinderella

Merida