labingi

We finally saw Frozen II, and I need to unload some thoughts about it. Context: I am not a fan of Disney/Pixar/CGI cartoons and got dragged to the first Frozen, only to be amazed by how much I loved it. Frozen is my favorite Disney cartoon, period, despite my sentimental attachment to several of the older ones. So my expectations of Frozen II were high and my judgments made according to an exacting standard. Based on that standard, I told my daughter I found it a 7/10, which is to say very, very good, but…

Frozen II, like the original Frozen, is trying to do progressive social commentary in a smart, fair way, and in some ways, it really succeeds. I have no qualms at all about the gender stuff: it retains its focus on sisterly love and its two awesome female leads, plus a new, strong connection to a mother with agency.

I have qualms about the colonialism stuff. The story’s heart is in the right place: it shows a colonizing people disturbing the land of an indigenous people via a self-serving dam, designed to damage their land and make them weak and dependent. (This is Jeffersonian reasoning, by the way: very realistic. In Jefferson’s version, the plan was to buy up so much of their land that they couldn’t hunt and would have to sell more land to buy food and, thus, conquer the continent.) In Frozen II, Anna quite rightly concludes that the dam her family erected has to come down, and it does. Restoration is the right choice.

However, there were a few bits that made me cringe as a settler colonist wanting to see settler colonial discourse do better:

It uses a semi-false equivalency between the colonizing and indigenous peoples by doing the trick of having them both be puzzled about what’s going on and both looking for the happy way out everyone can agree on. (Somewhat less tone deaf shades of Disney’s Pocahontas, and “We just need to realize we can get along because we’re all human and alike and the fact that one group of us is trying to conquer and dispossess the other group doesn’t really make our aims or identities that different.”)

It does the “white empire can be indigenous too” move by making Elsa and Anna’s mother indigenous (and the only one of her people able to pass as “white” and having two perfectly white-looking children, who thus have the right to be tied to indigeneity without sacrificing any white privilege.)

Most troubling to me, it does the “empire can make amends without sacrificing anything” move by having Elsa’s magic powers save Arendelle from the flooding it really ought to have received as the natural consequence of (rightly) taking down the dam—in the same way, I suppose, that the United States could restore stolen Native land without losing an US land. I think this particular move defied both the film’s ties to the realities of socially just action and to good narrative structuring, in which actions should, indeed, have consequences.

I have a small caveat, too, about race, which not just about Frozen II but about tokenism in general. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the idea that race is being adequately addressed by having a few random faces that look like they're from various continents pop up with no explanation. Frozen represents northern Europe. And, of course, black people could be there; they can travel. But they would not be there as a significant minority for no reason. I wish they had just put in a reason, just a brief "my family moved thousands of miles to build a new life," something. Please can we stop pretending that race doesn't exist?

But again, all this is holding the film to a high standard. I’m not cutting it any slack here for being a Disney movie designed to please the mostly white masses. I’m really expecting quite a lot. It did deliver a lot, and here are some things I loved:

The music: I’m not generally fond of Disney cartoon singing, but I do agree with most others that the songs here are really good.

The art: beautiful throughout. There’s gorgeous color and concepts for the forest and top notch animation and visual creativity all around.

All the main character arcs—I even liked Olaf, in this one, which is more than I could say for the first. Sven didn’t have a lot of development, but he didn’t really need it.

This is a story without a central antagonist… I honestly only realized that now. And it’s a good illustration of how a compelling story does not need one.

All in all, I do highly recommend it and continue to feel the Frozen franchise is among the best in its medium.