So, How Gay IS Disney’s Frozen?
&|& Jan. 31, 2014
So, How Gay IS Disney’s Frozen?
So basically everyone loves Frozen except me. I&m fine with that. I&m , but I don& parts of it I like very much, though other elements I found disappointing and off-putting. I&ve watched it twice now, and both times I enjoyed enough things about it to be frustrated by the elements that ultimately keep me from embracing it.
I&m not surprised that it&s such a huge hit. I am a little surprised at the sustained effort of Christian fans to spin Frozen as some sort of Christian allegory (more on this in an upcoming post).
For now, though, I want to address something I noted in passing in my review: the question of gay-culture themes in Frozen.
In my review I mentioned this issue (also noted in
by ) largely to dismiss it as a point of concern&not that I wasn&t aware of the themes in question, so much as that I didn&t think they warranted getting upset over. However, a point I overlooked earlier has just been brought to my attention that I think does warrant mention.
First, let&s get the broad themes out on the table.
With her ice powers, Elsa is notably different from other people. &Born this way or cursed?& asks the troll king, and her parents confirm that she was born that way.
Nevertheless, her difference is an occasion of fear and secrecy. Misguidedly, her parents teach her to &conceal it, don&t feel it.& This repression of her true nature leads to isolation, anxiety and finally a meltdown at Elsa&s coronation, at which she inadvertently outs herself, revealing her ice powers for all to see.
Regarded with fear and revulsion by others, Elsa defies the society that has rejected her as well as the unjust strictures placed on her by her parents, celebrating her acceptance of her true identity in the power ballad &Let it Go.& No more &Be the good girl you always have to be& now her mantra is: &Let the storm rage on / The cold never bothered me anyway.&
It&s worth noting that Elsa at no time shares her sister Anna&s romantic longings, nor does she show any interest in a male suitor or in being courted. (At one point a male character remarks that, as heir, Elsa would be preferable to Anna, but &no one was getting anywhere with her.&)
Oh, and viewers who stayed through the end credits were treated to a parting gag in which Elsa&s giant, male-voiced snow monster, wandering through her abandoned ice palace, picks up her abandoned tiara and places it daintily on its own head, smiling as it discovers its true inner princess.
On another side note, there&s a double entendre about another type of relationship that is said to be &outside of nature&s laws&: The trolls, singing about Kristoff in the the &Fixer-Upper& song, suggest that he has an unnatural relationship with his reindeer Sven:
So he&s a bit of a fixer-upper
So he&s got a few flaws.
Like his peculiar brain, dear
His thing with the reindeer
That&s a little outside of nature&s laws!
Yes: a bestiality joke in a Disney cartoon.
All of this seems to me a) clearly if subtly expressive of a pro-gay culture at Disney, and b) not that big a deal, inasmuch as the themes are subtle and ambiguous enough not pose either a significant annoyance to even savvy parents or a corrupting influence on children. (I would not say that of the pro-gay themes in the likes of
or the ; those are in a different category, and I do object to them. With Frozen, I&m more concerned about issues like
and the subverting, in very different ways, of the two leading men.)
However, there&s another pro-gay element in Frozen worth noting that I originally missed: a fleeting but definite suggestion that a minor character has a family consisting of a same-sex partner and a bunch of children.
This was brought to my attention by an interesting article at PolicyMic.com called &.& The article offers a blend of insightful observations, obvious ones, and, for me, one eye-opener:
5. Oaken&s gay family
Hey, did you notice the gay character? I didn&t either, until I went to see the film a second time. It turns out that giant man in &Wandering Oaken&s Trading Post and Sauna& is probably gay. When he throws in the sauna package for Kristoff, he turns to say &Hello, family!& and BAM! there they are.
The adult in the sauna is clearly implied to be his husband. Best yet, Oaken and his partner have a family & and it&s not even a thing. In the few minutes that he&s on screen, Disney manages to make a compelling character of Oaken&
Take a close look at the image.
Is there plausible deniability? Sure.&
The adult male in the sauna, with his slim jaw and lack of facial hair, looks markedly younger than the mountain-sized, hirsute Oaken, and could be his oldest son. Next to him is a young woman who, given the conventions of animation, could be could be Oaken&s daughter or his wife & or, heck, the wife of the other guy, who could also be Oaken&s younger brother). It&s even possible that the family isn&t Oaken&&&Hoo hoo! Hi family!& could mean&&Hi, random visiting family of customers.&
On the other hand&
What&s the moment doing in the film at all? Why make a point of having Oaken call &Hoo hoo! Hi family!& and fleetingly show the family in the sauna? At the very least, the moment and the line seems intended to suggest that they are, or at least could be, Oaken&s own family.
Why is the young man centrally positioned, with all the other figures around him? The framing of the shot, and his huge size, seems to suggest that he&s a father figure, not just an older brother.
How often do we see such a large family in a Disney movie? Why so many, if not visual misdirection to slip the moment past most viewers?
It seems plausible the filmmakers have thrown this moment in to allow sharp-eyed homophile viewers to draw their own conclusions about just what sort of &family& this is.
And we&re going to be seeing more and more of this sort of thing in the future. Here&s why.
From the perspective of Hollywood filmmakers, while it&s not yet possible for a mainstream family film to have overtly gay characters or themes, the heteronormativity of traditional children&s entertainment has been problematized.
In Obama&s post-evolutionary America, the assumption that every protagonist in every cartoon is by default heterosexual&that every heroine gets her prince, every hero gets the girl&is no more acceptable than it would be for every protagonist to be white, or male. How are children with two mommies or two daddies meant to feel when every family in every cartoon looks like their friends& families and not like theirs?
Yet obviously the Disney version of The Prince and the Prince is a long way off yet. The revolution is still in the early stages. Gay families and their allies must take their consolations where they can find them, and content themselves for the most part with winks and nods, hints and subtexts.
Admittedly, this may sometimes mean running the risk of overly creative interpretations and appropriations of characters and themes (a bit like Christians in the post-Christian era over-eagerly latching onto &Christ figures& anywhere they can find them) on the basis of slender evidence or even pretexts. Tinky-Winky! The Cowardly Lion! Bert and Ernie!
But it also means Hollywood filmmakers really want to throw in those winks and nods when they can. They feel good about themselves when they do, and it&s something they can talk about at parties.
It&s the civil rights issue of our time! And if you aren&t part of the solution, you&re part of the problem. If you&re making a family film and you aren&t doing something to undermine the heteronormative establishment, then by default you&re reinforcing it.
That&s why Oaken has the family he does, and makes a point of calling out to them.
And yet, in this case the filmmakers have walked that line really well: so well that the pro-gay themes have gone right over the heads of countless adult Christian viewers, many of whom have embraced Frozen as resonating powerfully with Christian themes.&
I disagree.
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Deacon Steven D. Greydanus is film critic for the National Catholic Register, creator of , a permanent deacon in the , and a member of the .
With David DiCerto, he co-hosts the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television. Steven has degrees in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several entries to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including “The Church and Film” and a number of filmmaker biographies. He has also written about film for the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy.
He has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA, and an MA in Theology from Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ.
Steven’s writing for the Register has been recognized three times by the Catholic Press Association awards, with two first-place wins in 2017 and 2016 and a second-place win in 2015.
Steven and his wife Suzanne have seven children.《冰雪奇缘》史上最“同志”的迪斯尼动画片？
编辑：YVES |插画：亦生
《冰雪奇缘》不仅摘得奥斯卡最佳动画长片、最佳原创歌曲两大奖项，票房上也超越《玩具总动员3》，成为影史最卖座的动画电影。不过，影片在美国左右两派间引发的争议自上映之初便甚嚣尘上。
随他吧，随他吧
回头已没有办法
随他吧，随他吧
一转身不再牵挂
他们想说的话
任风吹雨打
反正冰天雪地
随他吧，随他吧
眼泪不再掉下
这个家，让我留下
《冰雪奇缘》不仅摘得奥斯卡最佳动画长片、最佳原创歌曲两大奖项，票房上也超越《玩具总动员3》，成为影史最卖座的动画电影。不过，影片在美国左右两派间引发的争议自上映之初便甚嚣尘上。
影片焦点集中在天生具有造雪魔法的艾莎公主与她为爱甘愿牺牲的妹妹安娜两人身上，诸如艾莎不许妹妹与王子结婚，艾莎天生不同于常人、不为社会大众所接受等情节，落在保守派人士眼中，根本就是呼之欲出的支持同性恋宣言。于是他们在网络上公开呼吁，&为人父母和祖父母的，千万别带你家娃去看《冰雪奇缘》，因为别看它表面上画作精美、歌声悠扬，其实那根本就是一部彻头彻尾的同性恋宣传片。&在自称&行为检点的摩门教女性&的知名博主凯瑟琳&斯卡格斯的个人网站上，她更以长篇檄文抨击好莱坞自由主义想尽一切办法荼毒青少年，&迪士尼的邪门天才们，欺骗全国范围内大量笃信基督教的家长，眼看着自己的孩子被《冰雪奇缘》洗脑后转而支持同性间性行为的常态化，甚至自己都变成了&同志&。&
而在另一边，影片也确实赢得了大量&同志&影迷的热捧，主题曲《随它吧》甚至被不少&同志&组织拿来当作会歌。深入表象挖掘本质，便有诸如《大西洋周刊》影评人阿克什&尼古拉斯等人提出，&其实不仅是《冰雪奇缘》，迪士尼出品的绝大多数儿童片私底下都是挺&同志&的。&他指出，迪士尼在同志问题上向来态度开明，他们自1991年起便为&同志&大游行提供场地，对公司内&同志&员工的权益保护也走在多数美国企业前头。而从文本上分析，不管是小美人鱼、木兰、《风中奇缘》里的土著公主还是《美女与野兽》的主角，全都是价值观有别于普罗大众的&社会异类&。甚至，再往前追溯，长着大耳朵的小飞象、一心要成为&真正的男孩&的匹诺曹，有心之人无不可以从中读解出&挺同志&的意味。当然，为吸引主流观众入场，此类儿童片总体上贩卖的仍是王子公主、天下大同的美式传统价值观，只是在这表层底下，似乎已有越来越多的暗流涌动。
值得一提的是，围绕本片的争论并非全聚焦于&同志&问题，早前就有女性影评人指责主题曲的那一场戏，以服饰和妆容上由朴素到性感的转变来表达女主角所谓的内心释放，乃是一种廉价及消费女性的做法。此外还有平权人士谴责影片明明以北欧雪国为背景，片中却无北欧原住民萨米人登场。如此种种无不在提醒我们，儿童电影，真没它表面上看着那么简单！
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