Frozen: Under the Surface of the Ice

   One of the workshop teachers at UTA, I can't quite recall why the subject was broached but it may have had to do with the evolving costume design throughout the film, said that he didn't much care for Frozen. Which is understandable; I like the film but am not much of a fan of the trolls, and...

   Actually, I'm not sure if I've even seen Frozen yet at the time this blog post goes up; I'm checking my notebook of media input/output and the earliest viewing of Frozen I can definitively prove takes place, tomorrow, to this post's date... but as of the writing of the post, why yes, I've seen it, so there. Backlog posts, FTW... or, for the lose, actually, but FTL already means something (faster than light, of course) so ??? sure why not, FTW!

   Anyway, the professor didn't like Frozen that much. His reasons against it had to do with:

1. seriously, Disney, have you read Snow Queen, even if you are adapting it as loosely as you are you're still dropping the ball on a lot of really neat plot points and stuff, and
2. also you've got the "problem of the wandering villain."

   Which points are valid. At least the second one. I've... never actually finished, The Snow Queen. Pokémon tears, I think it had to do with...?

   But anyway. Wandering villains. Who's the villain at any given point in the story? Wesselton? Hans? Elsa? Yeah, yeah, I know you're not supposed to call Elsa a "villain," and you  will be mopped across the floor if you insinuate that, by you know, Frozen nerds*, but, her actions sure seem to drive a lot of the plot, for someone who's still a hero, and so, conceivably, for purposes of plot, well yes maybe, she is, one of those.

   Jus' sayin'.

   Here's the thing, though. Pretending I've seen the film by this point (which, again, not until tomorrow! but it sure is fun writing things and posting them into the past,) that problem, the problem of the wandering villain, is perhaps partly what makes Frozen so compulsively rewatchable. Aside from the musical numbers and all. There's a tension that underlies the whole thing, and... I don't know, it still seems kind of weird to be posting this up today like I've already seen and analyzed it. Which I have. Just not yet.

   There's a tension that underlies the whole thing, a sort of je n'est ce quois, that throws everything ever so slightly off-kilter, which, as is thematically appropriate, doesn't get resolved until the "true" villain is revealed (and by that point the narrative thread is strong enough, from multiple fronts, to pull us through the climax.) It'd be really quite masterful, if I suspected it were actually deliberate. Only, it's probably not, because there's still the Wesselton subplot that needs to be resolved, which probably could have been done earlier were the tension/resolution metastructure definitely deliberate.

   If you've still got any doubts as to whether it was, just remember, I just dropped the word "metastructure," in dealing with the plot of a kids' film. A well produced highly thoughtful and polished kids' film, but, again, I just dropped the word "metastructure." So make of that what you will.


*Frohards? Fronies?

...Flurries?