Some Things Never Change: How 'Frozen 2' Holds on Tight to the Status Quo
Maria Kopke
(Warning: Spoilers ahead)
In the first few minutes of Frozen 2, when Anna and Elsa are listening to their father’s story about the Enchanted Forest and what went wrong between Arendelle and Northuldra, the plot becomes clear: the former play the role of the oppressor, the latter, of the oppressed. It will later be known that history had been told wrong; that Northuldra hadn’t betrayed Arendelle, but rather the other way around. In this day and age Disney wouldn’t dare paint the tribe of people living at one with nature in the forest as the bad guys.
So, as I was hearing the story, I found myself thinking: what’s the catch? The people of Northuldra couldn’t be the bad guys, but neither could the respectable people of Arendelle. After all, they live in houses in the city like us, they are civilized like us, they are the good guys like us.
In the context of HeforShe, Portugal’s 2018 Arts Day, I gave a talk in which I argued that feminism has become a commodity, and, as such, it has been emptied of all of the characteristics that could make the consumer uncomfortable. Pop culture, I argued, “uses generic feminist discourse, because it looks good, with the purpose of selling, and not actually encouraging change,” and the result of this is that “an ideology aiming to fight the status quo ends up consonant with it.”
In her Medium article “The Problem with False Feminism,” Dani Colman identifies this exact same problem with Frozen’s brand of ‘GRL PWR’ feminism. She writes that the film presents itself as groundbreaking and successfully tricks the audience into believing that it subverts all the traditional Disney princess tropes, when in fact, it brings nothing new to the table: “Frozen creates the clever illusion of its own progressiveness by subtly degrading what came before it to make itself look more enlightened by comparison.”
I believe this is even more blatant in the sequel.
In summary: an entire people, along with some Arendelle soldiers, have been trapped inside the Enchanted Forest and the only way to set them free is to find the truth about what happened and fix the problem. Elsa, a.k.a. ‘The Chosen One’, learns that it was her grandfather who betrayed the Northuldra. She is thought to have died trying to get that information. Anna realizes that to free Northuldra, Arendelle must be destroyed, and she accepts this because it's the right thing to do. But Elsa, who has survived, and who, it turns out, is actually a spirit responsible for linking men to nature, manages to save the kingdom. Order is returned, the historical debt is paid, and everyone lives happily ever after. The revelation that Anna and Elsa's mother was actually from Northuldra steers them from the White Savior trope (it's somewhat irrelevant that the Northuldra people are also white, since these two peoples serve as an analogy for indigenous peoples and colonizers).
The protagonists are oppressor and oppressed at the same time – never mind that they are rich, that they rule over a kingdom, and have never actually been on the side of the oppressed, since their heritage, or even the existence of anything outside of Arendelle, was unknown to them before this point. They are the mediators. In them is the promise of harmony between the two peoples. If their parents' love for each other resulted in something so agreeable, then certainly the same would sprout from a compromise between Arendelle and Northuldra.
The aspect of this movie which could have been read as groundbreaking for Disney is the fact that Anna and Elsa recognize that it was their family who were responsible for all the bad things that befell the Enchanted Forest and its people, and that they are in fact on the side of the oppressors. Frozen 2 handled this about as well as Pocahontas. That is to say, not well enough. Not well at all.
In a video essay titled “Woke Disney,” Lindsay Ellis comments on an aspect that is common in many Disney films that hint to some criticism of the status quo: that the problem, whatever it is, is not rooted in some systemic organization of the world, but rather in one or two evil people (It’s not the system that is bad, but only a few bad apples). Using the live-action Dumbo, The Princess and the Frog, and Mary Poppins Returns as examples, Ellis states that “there’s always a good king, or a good bank, or a good businessman […] nothing of the status quo need be challenged.”
With Frozen 2, the situation is similar: it's not Arendelle that's the problem, it's that one king who mistrusted magic. Once he is gone, the problem can be fixed. And what's more, nature is on their side. It was the elements of fire, water, air, and earth that drove the people out of Arendelle so they could be spared when the kingdom was destroyed. Nature, which is like a god for the people of Northuldra, welcomes the colonizers into the forest. Elsa herself is a spirit, doing what she was meant to do. Nothing happens that wasn't destined, and that absolves the people of Arendelle. How can they be wrong, or evil, when nature has decreed that they aren't?
The fact that Elsa ends up saving Arendelle shouldn't go unnoticed, either. It would in fact have been subversive if the kingdom had been destroyed, like Anna imagined it would. The story, then, would be about a people recognizing their position as oppressors and doing everything in their power to remedy that, regardless of the consequences. As it is, we are left with the idea that it is possible to free the oppressed without having to change anything in the structure of society. That we can generate change if we just learn to love each other a little bit.
When I watched Frozen for the first time, I did it rather uncritically as one is expected to do. And I did buy into its brand of ‘GRL PWR’. But after re-watching it a few times and giving it a bit more thought, I couldn't help but be a little dismayed. So, when I went to see Frozen 2, I had no great expectations in that regard. I liked it for what it is, entertainment, but not for what it pretends to be for profit.
None of this should come as a surprise, though. Disney's primary goal is to sell, and what they sell best is fantasy- be it talking animals, ice powers, or the illusion that the fight for equality and justice can be effortless, comfortable, and brought about without a cost.