Alright, let’s talk about Frozen 2.
I know a lot of you childless folks and empty nesters—or, as I like to think of you, “people who eat Reese’s Cups in peace”—are just now getting around to watching it on Disney+, and although it’s been half a year since I sat in a theater openly weeping at the power of Idina Menzel’s voice, I didn’t have a blog then. Now, it appears, the time has arrived for me to tell you about the religious experience that was, for me, Frozen 2.
*cracks knuckles*
First of all, let me say that there’s a lot to love about the general conceit of this movie. The plot centers around facing the exploitation and subjugation of indigenous people and the land they care for, so, YEP. Also, the sweet and somewhat progressive—for Disney, anyway—relationship of Anna and Kristoff is once again playing second fiddle to Elsa’s self-actualization, which I appreciate. And by design, both Frozen movies absolutely shatter the Bechdel test. All of those are good things in a movie I’m showing my children, and they deserve honorable mentions.
As exciting as it is to see all of those elements in a children’s movie, however, it is Elsa’s existential quest that really takes me to church.
When the movie opens, Queen Elsa has an easy, if somewhat underwhelming, life fulfilling her royal duties. She rules the kingdom while Anna, Kristoff and Olaf keep her company in the castle; and in my favorite metaphor of the last decade, she has confined her formidable magic to literal party tricks, sculpting ice creations for lines of eager children. But like so many of us having a quarter, one-third, or midlife crisis, she hears a voice calling to her that she’s meant for more than this.
Elsa refuses to hear it at first, reasoning in the ridiculously spectacular “Into the Unknown” that the people she loves also live inside this peaceful, undersized life, which is… relatable, to say the least. Fortunately for all of us, however, she can’t resist the call longer than one musical number, and she sets off to find its source.
This requires her to ignore and eventually leave behind those people she loves, who with the best of intentions prefer her to remain a birthday clown, albeit a regal, sparkly one. They are afraid for her because her journey is dangerous, and they are afraid OF her because her need for freedom threatens their desire for everything to stay the same. So…yep again.
Elsa’s journey ultimately takes her to the Fortress of Solitude (probably should’ve been a big hint, there), where she pleads in another glorious musical monologue for the all-knowing voice to reveal itself. I’ll admit that the first time I watched, I was expecting a goddess figure. The rest of the movie is positively dripping with the divine feminine, from the rebalancing of the elements to the environmentalism to Elsa’s intuitive guidance, but the big reveal isn’t a deity of any sort. It’s deeply, profoundly better.
As Elsa belts again, Show yourself! Let me see who you are! The soundtrack opens up with a song from her childhood, and Elsa is surrounded by images of her mother, both as a child and an adult, and of herself, both as a child and as an adult. Elsa starts to weep, and her mother drops the ultimate spiritual truth:
You are the one you have waited for
all of your life.
Show yourself.
Boom.
That’s it. There’s no ancient one, no fairy godmother, no goddess, no romantic partner, no patronus. There’s no one and no thing calling Elsa to become her highest self except…herself. YOU are the one you’ve been waiting for all of your life, girl. It’s you. It’s always been you.
I am found, Elsa responds.
Watching this scene, even just listening to this song while attempting to control a motorized vehicle, utterly destroys me. I am raising a son and a daughter at a time in which the most popular children’s movie character in the world realizes the person she’s been looking for all her life is herself.
To put this in context, when I was a child, the most popular Disney heroine in the world realized the person she’d been looking for all her life would like her better if she lost the ability to speak and brushed her hair with a fork.
So look, Elsa’s story is enough to qualify Frozen 2 as a spiritual text, in my opinion. But as if that wasn’t enough, the movie adds another layer of richness for us with Anna’s parallel journey: as Elsa becomes Spirit, Anna embodies Earth.
We have to have both, you see. Anna is the one doing the work that must be done here, at the level of living. The colors of her scenes alone are enough to carry us, contrasting so beautifully with the stark whites of Elsa’s world it makes me weep Pantone swatches, but there’s also the incredibly mature “The Next Right Thing,” in which we descend with Anna into the most essential of all earthly struggles: grief.
I know that for many people, that song has become something like a mantra for dealing with our collective pandemic trauma, the loss of loved ones, or the condition of just being a human, and I understand if it’s Anna’s story that resonates more deeply with any of you. That’s the beauty of Frozen 2. It’s the totality of our experience, in the heavens and on the ground, with a comic relief snowman and Jonathan Groff’s absurdly attractive voice to help the medicine go down.
In conclusion, I don’t have to tell you that I give this movie all the stars and all my money. Well, except for an unfortunate Frozen 2 licensed eyeshadow, gifted by some well-meaning family member, that made my daughter’s eyelids swell up like water balloons. With that single exception, Frozen 2 enjoys free reign in our household, right up there with Moana, the other seminal female-first Disney text that I’ll get around to writing another dissertation about sometime. What a time to be a parent. But also: what a time to be a person. If we can assume Disney is bringing up the rear on the cultural conversation, the existence of these two movies makes me think we are maybe, probably, going to be okay. Into the unknown, indeed.
