Eighteen Hundred and Frozen to Death:
Politics and the Threat of Superintelligence in Disney's Frozen Franchise
I. Overview and Prelude
Two hundred years ago this year, a climatological disaster swept the planet. In April 1815, Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa erupted, the most powerful volcanic explosion in recorded history. It released a 160 cubic kilometer cloud of particulate sulfur dioxide, which enveloped the stratosphere. This reflected solar radiation, interrupting the pattern of the 1816 monsoon season in Asia, and throwing eastern North America into a year-long drought and Western Europe into a year-long torrent. People marveled; the sun rose in the summer sky, but was not warm.
Temperatures plunged, making agriculture nearly impossible across vast areas of civilisation. Unrest, migration, ice, floods, mass destitution and famine put Western nations, still recovering from the Napoleonic wars, to the test. These privations would remain in the consciousness of peoples and leaders as an existential warning that governments are responsible for preparation against, and not simply a reaction of last resort to, economic and ecological disaster.
But perhaps the most lasting of all legacies was one born of fevered imagination in the midst of the deadly unyielding Year Without A Summer. Out from all this real death and misery clawed a dread fantasy: A wretched unhallowed character, exiled to wintry lands, who has come to symbolize all the dangers humanity dares to unleash upon itself in blind pride and arrogance, and whom only the most reckless would dare embrace.
Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.
The quote, of course, is from Mary Shelley, a creator describing a creation inspired by the year-long winter that engulfed her Continental travels. Frankenstein's monster was unnamed; as was, before Shelley's day, the fear that the destination of human progress might not be wholesome.
But I'm also thinking of another that came into existence in 1816.
Most overviews of the creation of Frankenstein are satisfied to mention Byron's challenge of writing ghost stories, Mary's dream of the “pale student of unhallowed arts” animating the wretch, and perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley's waking vision of eyeballs taking the place of a woman's nipples while Byron read aloud Coleridge's "Christabel" with storms raging outside their cozy Swiss chateau. (Klingaman, 87) ...The image of Percy running out of the room screaming is an entertaining one, I'll admit.
But again, I'm thinking of something else. Something more real, and far more serious. And something that looks to have been a half-hidden secret for about 200 years.
Author's Note: If you haven't seen Disney's Frozen—as I hadn’t yet when 2016 began—please understand that this essay series will freely engage spoilers, and assumes familiarity with the film itself.
Do the snow bees choose a queen?
Fans of fantasy media are well known for interrogating the works they love; Frozen (Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2013) is no exception, but its writing, presentation, and saturation have been exceptional, especially in its influence on the very young. Dorian Lynskey for the Guardian in December 2014 declared, "Frozen has become more than a very good Disney movie; it's a generational set text,1 like Star Wars, Harry Potter or the Beatles." Time magazine hailed Queen Elsa as the most influential fictional character of 2014, and even as recently as Time's issue of January 28, 2016, Eliana Dockterman, writing on the new body shapes for Mattel's Barbie dolls, felt it necessary to digress for an entire paragraph into the popularity of Frozen:
But in 2012, Barbie global sales dropped 3%. They dropped another 6% in 2013 and 16% in 2014. And the dominance of Frozen's Elsa signals more trouble ahead. Even two years after the film's release, the allure of Frozen hasn't abated. At a Los Angeles Target, I locate Barbie in the toy aisle, beaming down at me from her dream house (pink convertible sold separately). On the next shelf over sits Elsa in a box that invites you to press a button to hear her sing. I press. As the doll begins to belt out the girl-power anthem 'Let It Go,' children–girls and boys–come running from all directions screaming, dancing,1 one explaining to her mom why they need yet another variation of the Elsa doll in their house. I make a hasty retreat as the mother begins to look around for the idiot who started playing 'Let It Go' in the toy aisle during the holiday season. (Dockterman)
Obviously, I'm not the first to observe that the obsession with this specific 102 minute cartoon is more intense and sustained than its contemporaries, either in house or in competition with Disney. Since obsession and repetition in children produces lasting effects and influence, examination of its contents is necessary.
Frozen co-director Chris Buck would seem to agree. Speaking with MTV in August about approaching work on Frozen 2, he said,
"I think we're very aware of what is happening in society... I don't think any of us take [them] lightly, even though they can be very funny and entertaining, the messages that our movies have and the influence they can have on young people. When the kids [watch] them, they watch them over and over again, and if we don't have a decent message in there, I think we've missed an opportunity." (Bell)
Opportunity, rather famously, knocks but once.
Open those gates
Buck did not go into which issues facing society would be reflected in Frozen 2. But in 2013, the film he co-directed with screenwriter Jennifer Lee was marketed as a Walt Disney fantasy adventure, the advertising emphasizing a kooky snowman and downplaying the princesses, in order to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible. Timed to be a holiday entertainment, it was released on Thanksgiving weekend to mixed, but mostly positive, reviews. The social commentary leading up to the film largely addressed issues of how women were physically portrayed in 3D animation, and the usual literary fan complaints that the film wasn't likely to resemble the original story of "The Snow Queen".
Then, over Christmas, Disney ran out of tie-in toys. This is a good problem for a business to have, and not very unusual, as anyone working in retail over Christmas can tell you. Frozen was a seasonal hit, as intended. Going into 2014, the box office kept climbing. The meet-and-greets of the Elsa and Anna "Cast Members" at the Disney Parks, scheduled to wind down in March, began gathering three hour wait times. Sometimes five hours.
In April, Disney ran short of toys a second time. (Thurston) Their social media and outreach responded swiftly, but from what I can gather, their Consumer Products division didn't officially offer a press release acknowledging the mania until September 4, and that was in the context of the Disney Royal Ball spring collection.2 I'm not a parent, but for those of you who are who reading this, my condolences for making you mentally relive your shopping nightmares of 2014. My point is simply: If Disney ran out of toys, twice, the power of the film’s messages was unanticipated.
Fans assembled as many videos, memes and derivative pieces as they could from the work, as Disney took an indulgent turn towards use of its property online. (Leonard) Cresting a billion dollars in box office alone, product market saturation defeated the argument that sharing IP was equal to a loss of revenue.3 Heading into summer and then autumn of 2014, critics were forced to reassess their initial reviews in the light of the growing cultural impact. Scholars called for submissions to a professional conference, the "Symfrozium" to be held at the University of East Anglia on 12 May of 2015, to better understand the attraction of the film, and what people were reading into and taking from it. (Rickards)
For all its many awards and record-breaking take, those and other industry "inside baseball" kudos are sideshows to the main event of Frozen's influence on its public, which derives solely from the craftsmanship applied to its story. Massive repeat viewing of the same 102 minutes, in the era of distracted attention and binge watching, itself commands attention.
As for the "messages" that Chris Buck doesn’t take lightly, let me just say, they are honeycombed and legion.
Put ’em together, it just makes sense
I will be interrogating the film in a series of diaries over the coming weeks (no particular schedule, but I hope not to keep anyone waiting too long). Frozen has mostly been pored over for its gender issues, appeal to children, and assessed for elements where Disney is playing against its reputation. Several sources have discussed typical power dynamics, largely in how to symbolically fit Elsa's ice magic into social constructs, and these can all be legitimate observations.
I’m seeing other things. Things that are little discussed, as if they are inconspicuous by their presence.
One intent of mine will be to explore the real world politics present in Disney's Frozen and its canonical sequel short "Frozen Fever" (2015). This has only been touched upon rarely up until now, mostly half-serious fan musings, with a notable exception or two. I will be strictly applying elements addressed in the finished films4 to historical events, mores and political dynamics of the 1820s, '30s and '40s, when the films are set.
You may be surprised to learn how close to Realpolitik a Disney cartoon kingdom hews. But one of the core elements of Frozen is power. It seems to be expressed as sorcerous fantasy snow power, but that disguises the hard political motivations that drive the antagonists. Conceals, not reveals, if you will. If there's one thing the creators of Frozen know how to do, it's misdirection: Misdirection is a constant force in the film. And isn't that a key skill in power politics?
Another intent of mine for this series is to interrogate the presence of artificially intelligent constructs, and the abstraction of the threat of superintelligence in the film and its short sequel. Again, this may sound like I'm embarking on a frivolous grasping at meaning. But given the shape real world technological power has taken, and will take into the future, consideration of how a certain artificial snowman has the managed expectations of the very young, takes on some urgency. He's more solid than he lets on.
(Oh, and along the way I've determined the core reason why Frozen is so massively popular and influential. I don't think anyone else's noticed it really, and I've boiled it down to a four-word sentence. Pretty sure even Disney and its artists haven't pinned it down, as they certainly haven't said. That's for a later installment.)
But for now, that other secret I promised. The one that's been half-hidden for 200 years.
Now you will have no more kisses
When Hans Christian Andersen came to the end of his life, he was one of the most celebrated authors in Europe, his fairy tales being creations for the ages. But his childhood was very hard. Harder than Charles Dickens's, and his terrible remembrances of labeling bottles in the dark and soot of London. And certainly harder than Mary Shelley’s, for all the personal tragedies she faced later in life.
Andersen was the only son of a proud but struggling cobbler in the Danish city of Odense, Hans Andersen. I say proud, as he had once insulted a wealthy client, who criticised a pair of shoes they had ordered, and struggling, as he had trouble in the trade ever after. He had a doting paternal grandmother who gardened at the asylum that held her husband. Hans Christian himself was a gangly boy who enjoyed creating dolls and puppets, and got bullied in an all too typical fashion. His mother, Anne Marie, cared enough for Hans Christian's early education that she placed him the local Jewish school, an uncharacteristically open-minded step in the day; still, reading and writing came hard to him, and could never spell properly to the end of his life. His father also read to him various adventure tales, such as the Arabian Nights.
In April 1816, he turned eleven, while his father was only 33. In the quest for meaning and money, Hans Andersen met an ill fate.
In 1812 Hans Andersen, an admirer of Napoleon, accepted a cash offer from a local farmer's son, Gregers Hansen, to take his conscripted place in the Danish army and fight for the French. When he returned in 1814 – from no further than Holstein, and without seeing combat – he was a broken man. He talked repeatedly of Napoleon and his campaign in the delirium of his final illness, the last stages of tuberculosis; he even hallucinated that he was in command of the French army. When he died on 26 April 1816, Hans Christian and his mother remembered how in his winter-long sickness he had identified the form of a maiden in the patterns of the iced-up windows,1 saying she had come to fetch him. Now, observed Anne Marie, she had. (Binding, 15)
Frankenstein was published in 1818; "The Snow Queen" would not be published until 1844. But they were fraternal twins, haunting dreams of living death in the rehearsal for an extinction. Mary Shelley's nameless wretch had a nameless elder sister, born in the same ceaselessly cold year of 1816, both yearning for a companion, stalking the rich and the poor, and taking them away.
Other Installments
II. The Carrot or the Stick (1st half)
II. The Carrot or the Stick (2nd half) (In preparation)
III. Arendelle Looks to You (In preparation)
IV. (In preparation)
V. (In preparation)
Notes
1Emphases in bold, mine throughout.
3One can go on. Box Office Mojo stopped counting the take for
Frozen in August 2014, so the official worldwide figure for
Frozen stands... frozen at $1.27 billion. But it's never quite left release: It's still on screens, technically racking up a few hundred thousand dollars every so many months, in
Turkey, Iceland, Brazil, and Australia. At this writing, it is still the highest-grossing animated picture to date. (
Wikipedia)
4The September 23, 2013 "
Frozen Final Shooting Draft" by Jennifer Lee will also be utilized, but with an eye to confirm rather than establish arguments. This and any references to the creative development of the finished film will be indicated as such.
Bibliography
Andersen, Hans Christian. Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling. 1845. (21 Dec. 1844)
Bell, Crystal. "'Frozen' Director Teases What's To come in the Sequel." MTV.com. August 11, 2015.
Binding, Paul. Hans Christian Andersen: European Witness. (Yale University Press, 2014)
Disney Consumer Products. “Ashdon, Inc. Unveils 2015 Disney Royal Ball Spring Quinceañera Dress Collection Featuring New Designs Inspired by Disney Frozen Characters Anna and Elsa.” Press release, September 4, 2014.
Dockterman, Eliana. "Barbie’s Got a New Body." Time. January 28th, 2016.
Klingaman, William K. and Klingaman, Nicholas P. The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History. (St. Martin's Press, 2013) [excerpt at Scientific American]
Leonard, Andrew. "How Disney learned to stop worrying about copyright infringement." Salon.com. May 23, 2014 12:43 PM EDT.
Lynskey, Dorian. "My year of warming to Frozen: several million children can't be wrong." The Guardian. 18 December 2014 11:18 EST.
Rickards, Carolyn. "Symfrozium - Conference Report." filmtelevisionmediauea.wordpress.com. May 20, 2015.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. (London: Lackington, 1818)
Thurston, Susan. "'Frozen' frenzy creates shortage for Elsa, Anna merchandise (with video)." Tampa Bay Times. May 21, 2014. 6:25 pm.
Other references
These will give you all the general background, plot and credits for Frozen (2013). I'm not one to fuss over listing people's careers and CVs, but credit where credit is due; so please head here for everything about the creators:
imdb.com
en.wikipedia.org/Frozen_(2013 film)
Edits
2016-04-18-17:10 EDT — Corrected Mary Shelley’s dream; my brain always swaps that with her character waking up to his monster. Go figure.
2016-09-26-03:39 EDT — Updated links to other installments.