What is it with Frozen? I know people with 4 -6 year-olds went through this last year, but my 3-year-old is quickly catching up. He is obsessed with Elsa, Anna, Olaf, Kristoff and that insidious song.
I mean, do any adults think the movie is amazing? How on earth did they craft something so addictive for kids?
Is it immediacy?…that we can conjure the song on phones and parents couldn’t have done that with The Little Mermaid? Would we have gone ape-shit over Aladdin if we could YouTube “Never Had a Friend” while on a ski lift or in line at the grocery store?
Obviously Disney creates magic, but I wonder if they don’t have a “Department of Nefarious Arts” in a turret of Sleeping Beauty’s castle where they plot to seduce impressionable minds with scientifically-chosen colors and committee-crafted plot points?
Ellison is learning a lot about families, behavior and body parts with his preoccupation with Frozen. Last Tuesday he asked me 16 times why Elsa stays in the room hiding from Anna. I explained twelve times (and ignored the other four), “Because Elsa has magical powers in her hands, but she doesn’t know how to control them. So she hides from Anna to keep Anna safe.”
“But Elsa loves Anna. They’re sisters.”
“That’s right, buddy. Sometimes you have to protect people you love by hiding from them.”
How on earth is that a concept he can understand? But maybe Frozen is expanding his brain capacity?
Yesterday, Ellison pulled a blue yoga mat around his chest and said, “Look! I’m Elsa. My purple cape flew away. Now I’m in the blue dress.”
He does this with blankets, towels and, once, a paper towel.
It’s hilarious how he taps into the role-play. (I bet this woman would have something to say about it.)
As we walked to school, the other day, he asked this non-sequitur: “Do Elsa and Anna have penises?”
“Um, no buddy.”
“Oh. What do they have in front of their hinies?”
I took a deep breath to quell my guffaw. “They have vaginas, buddy.” (We’ve discussed anatomy, before.)
He responded, “Olaf doesn’t have a penis.”
“Oh,” I said, newly enlightened. I refrained from saying, How do you know he isn’t just suffering from shrinkage? He’s a snowman!
Another non-sequitur: while playing trains, Ellison stood, stomped his feet and informed me, “When Elsa stomps her foot on the stairs, she makes snowflakes. She runs upstairs but she doesn’t fall. I don’t run on stairs. I could fall.”
Bless his preschool and their staircase vigilance.
And the song. Seriously? Is it really that good? Even Idina Menzel, herself, has declared the song “too damn high.” (I can’t find the citation, now, but I swear I read it.)
And the ending? “Cold never bothered me, anyway.” Isn’t that some kind of dangling grammatical deviant? It’s so clipped…like the writers jumped off the horse mid-stream.
But maybe this is the Disney psychological warfare? Adults are musically unsatisfied, the kids don’t seem to care.
And the writers and Disney are laughing at my novice criticism all the way to the bank.
Yesterday I needed to wake Ellison from a nap (he could nap for hours in the afternoon, but then he’d never sleep at night. So I wake him at 45 minutes…resulting in crabbiness.) I brought him from the brink of tears by pulling up “Let it Go” on my phone. Breathlessly, he whispered, “What’s that song, Daddy? It’s…it’s…it’s ‘Wet it D’oh.’”
Ellison couldn’t care less about my envy-tinged artistic grand-standing. And I’m still charmed by him singing.
Let it go, Gavin. Write something better and then we’ll talk.
What are your thoughts on Frozen and “Let It Go”?
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A version of this post was previously published on ecknox.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: disney.com