References to the shenanigans of Kevin Swanson, the Religious Right figure who's currently being schmoozed with by GOP hopefuls Huckabee, Cruz, and Jindal (http://goo.gl/sCxTtM), led me to a rumor I'd managed to not hear before: that Disney's movie Frozen is all about coming out as a Lesbian.
To which some of you are saying, "Wha–?" and others of you are saying "Well, of course" (approvingly or disapprovingly).
The article linked to below seems to be one of the more prominent writings to have taken that theory and pounced on it as a proof that Disney is out to corrupt our kids. I poured through it looking for some actual concrete indications of why this was seen as a thing. Had I missed something watching the film? A hidden song, a coy reference, a rainbow flag over the ice palace, a guest appearance by Ellen, something concrete?
Nope.
Bottom line, Elsa is being accused of being a Lesbian because she:
1. Is rebellious
2. Is desperately hiding a secret that she fears will turn others against her
3. Has no boyfriend
This last one seems to be the most important. If Elsa doesn't have a boyfriend, then obviously she's gay.
Wha–?
So here's a cool thing about a good story: you can map your own feelings and experiences and meaning into it.
He o’er the words of Shakespeare
A hundred hours spent;
And found a million meanings
That Shakespeare never meant.
— Tom Pease
So some people watch Gone with the Wind and empathize with Ashley. Others picture themselves as Rhett Buttler. Still others follow along with Scarlett O'Hara — maybe about their own pursuit of love, maybe about times when they were hungry, maybe about a setback their family had when growing up, or maybe about that crazy ex-girlfriend they once had.
No, neither the book nor the movie was written about them. But the human experience is many-splendored, and there are ways to relate to each of the characters as aspects of one's own life, even if those aspects are different from those of the person in the next seat.
Could Elsa be a Lesbian? No particular reason why not. Can her experiences be taken as a metaphor in some fashion for the gay experience? I guess so. Apparently so, in fact, since both gay critics and actual gay people have read that meaning into it.
Is Frozen some sort of not-so-cryptic advancing of the "Gay Agenda" by Disney? Um … seems sort of unlikely.
I mean, turn it around. Is the theme of keeping a secret about yourself from others applicable in more than just a homosexual way? Is feeling rejected by your family and friends an experience only gay people go through? Do straight teens ever feel constrained by expectations and disapproval, and then break through into a moment of rebellion and independence where they blossom into who they were meant to be?
A look at the movies of the last, oh, six or seven decades argues otherwise.
Heck, I can look at Frozen and think of how I was unpopular as a teen, involved in goofy, geeky stuff, but how I eventually decided, "To heck with the high school social conventions as to what is acceptable stuff to be involved in: I'm a Trekkie and I'm proud of it! Let it go!"
#IAmElsa in modern terms.
I suspect a lot of people can relate to that story arc in their own lives without it touching on their sexual orientation.
But Elsa doesn't have a boyfriend!
That's the clincher argument. Read it again. Elsa must be gay because she doesn't have a boyfriend.
Not that she has a girlfriend. Or any hint of a girlfriend. Or any hint that she's ogling any girls. But she doesn't have a boyfriend, so something must be wrong.
Never mind that there's plenty of heterosexual relationship shenanigans going on with her sister. It's not like there's a lack of boys in the movie (good, bad, and indifferent), or that the only hints of romance we see are hot girl-on-girl action. There's none of that.
No, Elsa — who is busy dealing with a whole mess of problems and conflicts and difficulties in her one-half of the movie — doesn't have a boyfriend. What's wrong with her?
Yeah, that sounds more like several dozen other movies over the last several decades. "Honey, look at you, why are you so obsessed with your career / music / vocation — you want to grow up an old maid? Find a boy!"
Because it seems the only place a woman can find true fulfillment in her life, career, and super-powers is by being swept off her feet by a man. And if she isn't — well, she must be waiting to be swept off her feet by a woman. QED!
Except, of course, that's absurd.
Could Elsa be gay? Sure. There's no reason to think she isn't (and no reason to think she is). But the movie is not about Elsa's romantic life, any more than Finding Nemo is about finding Nemo a girlfriend.
If some Lesbians find Elsa a role model or inspiration, more power to them — again, that's the power of storytelling. But I really don't think that means it was the specific goal of Disney in producing the movie, whether you think such a goal is a laudable aspiration or a nefarious plot. It seems to me that interpreting a non-romance-driven female protagonist as some sort of conspiracy to promote the "Gay Agenda" says more about one's obsession with sex than about the character in question.
Frozen: Not Gonna “Let It Go” When Movie Advocates Gay Agenda
I heard that argalblargal shortly after the movie came out.
Nothing new really, just more Christianist martyrdom.
Sometimes, you live in a world in which there is no concept for “Telling your sister not to marry the first guy she sleeps with and deciding that you’re gonna do your own damn thing regardless of what your parents say” AND THE CLOSEST THING IS TO SAY THAT SHE MUST BE GAY.
That word might just be “feminist,” btw.
Modern right-wing Christian theme: if you're not explicitly in agreement with us, you're against us.
I remember reading an interview with Kristen Lopez (half the songwriting team). She said that the feminist bits of the songs, specifically "Let It Go," were mainly her, while the bits that sounded like a drag queen came from her husband. So I think that that subtext is absolutely and consciously there, but it's pretty heavily coded.
+Brittany Constable http://www.npr.org/2014/04/10/301420227/songwriters-behind-frozen-let-go-of-the-princess-mythology
Actually, it was Bobby who kept saying, "I feel like if I were a high-school student, that this would be that moment that you had worked and you had studied and you hadn't gone out and then you just failed a test miserably, and what would that feel like?" And he came up with the line. All of the lines that sound like a drag queen are the lines Bobby wrote. … I did more of the feminist [lines].
Sometimes you write something for a character and you think you're just writing for a character, but when you have to musicalize it or turn it into lyrics, little things from your own gut start to ooze in there. I joked, I was like, "I think with 'Let It Go,' Bobby and I had feelings we needed to express." Because I imagine, who doesn't have some fear or shame in their life?
Which is a broader set of contexts into which, certainly, some folks' gay or lesbian experience can be fit, but is a bit different from saying it's specifically about (let alone endorsing) the lesbian experience.
I think part of the important context is that it's only extremely recently that we've had straight-up gay narratives. So gay literary scholarship has always looked for encoded messages because for most of history that's all there was. Those signals may not be readily apparent to someone who's not actively looking for them, but that doesn't mean they're not there.
Honestly, I think it's about time for an openly gay Disney character. (Or an openly asexual one, which I think Elsa can also be read as.)
+Brittany Constable You may well be right. And one of my theses here is that stories are protean — the reader can derive from them (or insert into them) a lot of elements that the creators may not have intentionally put in.
I doubt we will get an openly gay Disney (major animated feature) character any time soon, for a variety of reasons (most of them commercial). As to Elsa being asexual — again, it's possible, but, frankly, (a) we simply don't know anything about her sexuality (my point here), and (b) I do think it was highly refreshing to have an adult Disney princess whose story arc wasn't about (or wasn't resolved by) getting a romantic partner.