Gender & Race in Disney's Frozen

[FigmentJedi]

Gah. Tumblr people are stupid.

Gee thanks :/

Anyways she have a few good reasons but the male replacement characters are pretty neat so yeah. Disney movies are always going to be different from the original tale so I don't understand why people get all pissy when it's different. It's been like that since Snow White. Since the very beginning.

Little Mermaid- " Oh it's not like the original tale because The Little Mermaid doesn't become sea foam and loose The Prince " !

HOND- " Oh it's not like the original novel " ! " Disney is the spawn of Satan for destroying the original classic " !

Hercules- " They destroyed the original " ! " DOWN WITH DISNEY " !

And now Frozen " They destroyed the original, Disney are a bunch of sexist asswipes "!

Except even when Disney tweaks a story, the basic story structure and some of the characters remain. Little Mermaid was basically toning down the christian overtones and changing the ending, Hunchback is essentially the Lon Chaney version with some wacky sidekicks and even after going through the Disney filter it's still the darkest movie they've done, Hercules pretty much opens with the disclaimer of "Yeah, we aren't going to take this seriously at all".

Frozen's wasting a good non-princess story in favor of adding two princesses to the franchise at once without making them lesbians and basically just taking inspiration from the title of the Snow Queen. Yeah, there's some other elements of the book, but I'd rather Disney just call it an original story entirely and then go back to the book sometime in the future like they seem to be doing with Giants.

[Candy-Bonita95]

Now I am going to bring up something that has been going on quite a while.
*sighs*

Does having Elsa ending up with a love interest display a negative message or an anti-feminist message?
and.....
Does Hans as a villain show a poor portrayal of "nice guys"?(Seriously, everytime a guy whines about this I think about Jenna Marbles' "Nice Guys Don't Finish Last.")

First of all let me state this.There is nothing wrong if a woman wants a relationship with a guy. No guy has to be Lord over Elsa,but Elsa can date some dudes.Can she? She can still resolve problems with her sister which is her main arc of the story. By resolving relationships within her family, she is making other interpersonal relationships possible.One interesting tidbit in the the previewed book pages is Elsa yelling "Leave me alone!" at her father when he tries to comfort her. Why does the book emphasize the father trying to comfort Elsa?It almost seems like this situation would be brought up again in the movie.(In this case it could be Anna or Hans trying to sympathise,yet Elsa rejects) I am not trying psychoanalyst nor Freudian,but a father figure can somewhat influence a daughter's perspective of a possible boyfriend or spouse. Yeah,call me old-fashioned or wrong.The writing in those first chapters give that idea. I could be wrong

Now for Hans:No one would assume Hans is the realistic representation of "nice, dorky guys".There were things about him that made me interested in him,but the recent "spoilers" just put me off. Really, in general these spoilers seemed odd, imo.If Hans does some wrong things due to his family issues,that's okay.That is believeable. We have a believeable villain.But those pages made him go through "Hot dude overshadowed by his bros" to "cartoony,villain that overshadows the original cartoony villain". That is not believable. If Hans was recovering from some hypothermia and the Joker convinces him to become "evil" a la Harvey/Two-Face, I will forgive the Frozen script writers' movie sins.

[qindarka]

Elsa having a love interest may not necessarily display an anti-feminist message but not every character has to have a love interest, it's not like the film makes a big deal of it all.
I'd say there were 3 main possibilities.
1) Elsa having a love interest saving her- this would be a rather anti-feminist message, gives the impression that women need men to save them etc etc
2) Elsa having a love interest at the end of the film - no time to develop it properly
3) Elsa having no love interest - seeing as she is isolated for much of the film, this is the logical recourse. Also would be overly convenient to pair her up with Anna's reject.

Her rejection of her father's comfort simply has to do with her fear of intimacy and letting her emotions out. We shouldn't have to overanalyze it.

And the myth of the 'nice guy' really needs to end. Often, the people who claim to be 'nice guys' aren't really all that nice, being quick to blame women for all their relationship problems. Disney have had plenty of genuinely nice characters who have been involved in romance, even Kristoff in this film is a good person.

Also, keep in mind that this is just a junior novelization that will only contain the rough outline of the story and will not go into the scenes in any great detail.

[thedisneyspirit]

It'd would have been anti-feminist if Frozen would have gone the double romance angle- incredibly cheap and diminishes the importance of the sister's bond in the film adding the romance-I hate the "Pair the Spares" trope in movies- it comes out so forced and with little to no development.

[Candy-Bonita95]

It's funny how people think * you know what I'm talking about. I just don't want to use the the black bars over and over again. * is a bad idea because they want Elsa to find romantic love and "nice guys" to be portrayed as evil. I wanted them to be together because they were both hot. Pardon my shallowness

Then there are people who didn't want Hans Christian Andersen to be dishonoured. Oh the irony. Hans Christian Andersen was one of the infamous friend-zoned "nice guys" of European culture. He would fall in love with chicks who already had dudes and dudes who already had chicks. These guys tend to have a strong weakness in their personality-idealism. Fantasy is what seems right to them. If Frozen gives that characteristic to *you know who*, it would be genius.

In the end, Elsa gets the better side of the lollipop.She reconciles with her sister and reclaims the throne.She actually learns from this experience. *You know who* doesn't even bother to get the help or reconciliation with his family. His ego carries on *you know what happens*.

I don't see how people could complain about this movie's portrayal of gender.The female characters learn to manage their mistakes without the help of any guy. It's a punch in the face to idealistic political correctness.

[Dr Frankenollie]

I honestly can't be bothered to read the previous responses on the four pages of this thread, having come to this late, but I will say...I agree with every one of the writer's points in the article. This upcoming film is an undeniably appalling example of casual sexism (which is more forgivable in previous features due to their time periods and due to the fact that sexism was often embedded within the source material, quite unlike the joyfully feminist source material for Frozen). There is no artistic integrity or freshness to the alterations, only a lazy and cowardly attempt to conform to what has worked, and what audiences are used to. Couple all this with the ugly animation, I'm most certainly not going to view Frozen.

[Candy-Bonita95]

Dr Frakenollie, you are joking right? What do you think of Spring Breakers?

Yeah, Disney is doing this for the money,but it has nothing to do with the gender of the characters.How is it sexist?

[Dr Frankenollie]

Spring Breakers? What about it? I hope it's not your example of a film with strong, independent female characters.

Frozen is sexist because it changes a pro-female feminist-esque fairy tale into standard fairy tale fare with only a handful of female characters. All the supporting characters are male, because females can seemingly only be suited to certain roles, like the princess role.

[Candy-Bonita95]

I think Spring Breakers is a sell out.

It's only coincidental that the majority supporting characters are male. There also is also a troll woman in the beginning of the story. The women in the story are not subjected to one position.There is nothing sexist about being royal.

I don't want to continue arguing. Look, I believe that men and women are equal. Both genders can posses the same qualities.No gender is greater in intelligence,morality,or importance. But what I am most appalled about feminist my age is their shallow ideal of strong women. They think it's about money,physique,or a high social status. They don't think about the character,mind, or heart.

Btw, the original fairy tale wasn't intentionally a pro-feminist message.It was about spiritual growth (emotional growth if you don't believe in spirits.)It's ok if you see pro-feminist qualities in it