(no subject)

[alexseanchai]

Saw Frozen. Much feminist...very white.

Hans missed a trick, though. He shoulda kissed Anna, said they shouldn't expect her recovery to be instantaneous, locked her in the room with the fire burning, and gone off exactly as he did in the movie. With Anna still convinced Hans was a good guy, the movie would have ended very differently.

Comments

[raine]

Agreed.

[alexseanchai]

nod

[milkymoon]

I've wanted to see Frozen, and I'm... relieved that it's not sexist, at the very least? I was hearing rumours that it was somehow sexist, but as the rumours were originating on Tumblr I'm not fully certain whether something was blown out of proportion or not.

[alexseanchai]

I didn't see anything that pinged as sexist. And there's a really excellent argument to be made that Elsa's entire arc is about Elsa vs the patriarchy, and Hans is a very good example of same. I like it as a feminist as well as as a Disney fan. Except for a couple niggling little details like where are the people of color. I vividly recall hearing that the set-the-scene music at the start is Saami music but there's not one Saami in the film, nor more than one or maybe two briefly glimpsed and silent dignitaries of color.

[rooibos]

Maybe it's just me setting my standards low, but that totally didn't bother me for two reasons:

1. It seemed like actual Saami people worked on the film-- at the very least, it's a Saami composer who write that intro music. I'm SO glad that they actually consulted real-life people behind the scenes that I can't find it in me to be too mad at the whiteness of the film.

2. The background POC kind of indicated to me that the society is fairly racially-integrated. The character of Kristoff was particularly interesting to me, because while he doesn't necessarily look ethnically Saami, it seems like he was raised in a Saami community (his clothes and profession, etc). I kept thinking of the work of Caribbean theorists about race relations (Edouard Glissant and relation and Chamoiseau, Bernabe and Confiant and creolite). There are multiple ways to theorise race.

[madgastronomer]

The usual complaint on Tumblr is that the movie, while maintaining a focus on the sisters, actually gets rid of a lot of female secondary characters, and replaces them with men. The original has an almost entirely female cast, with the exception of one young boy that the heroine saves, IIRC.

[alexseanchai]

I gave up expecting Frozen to be anything like The Snow Queen when I heard they were sisters. But yeah, that is a point.

[madgastronomer]

Well, yes. But that's where the sexism accusation comes from.

[rooibos]

I actually found the original story to be much more sexist, especially when we contrast the characters of the Snow Queen and Gerda. Kai is trapped by the sexually-mature Snow Queen and is rescued by the young, innocent Gerda. Totally portrays female sexuality as dangerous.

That being said, I was annoyed that all of the side characters were men. But still, it didn't have that level of ick.

[silveradept]

Good point. Likely that hero-reindeer could reach Anna and/or save Elsa anyway, but could make for a very Sadistic Choice at the right time...

[alexseanchai]

Yep!