Gabble Sisters: a walking tour through Disney
Join sisters Megan and Bronwen on their Disney adventure, as each episode they let Mickey's sorcerer's hat decide which Walt Disney Animation Studios film will be the next stop on their walking tour. Each time they'll be discussing the history, psychology and music of the film, as well as their experience watching it as women.
Gabble Sisters: a walking tour through Disney
Frozen
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode we discuss the 53rd Disney animated feature: Frozen.
Follow us @gabblesisters on Instagram.
Email us at gabblesisterspodcast@gmail.com.
Bibliography:
- Frozen (2013) and Disney+ extras
- Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical (2025 recording)
- Frozen (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack / Deluxe Edition) - Various Artists (2013)
- The Snow Queen - Hans Christian Andersen (1844)
- Hans Christian Andersen (1952)
- Walt Disney: Famous Quotes - Dave Smith (1994)
- Strong Songs podcast (2019 episode on 'Let It Go')
- "Examining the effects of birth order on personality" - Rohrer et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)
Intro
MeganWelcome to Gabble Sisters. Join us on our walking tour of every Disney animated feature, taking in the history, psychology, and music of a randomly selected film each episode. Think Goose. Forward March. Hello Megan. Hello, Bromwin! How are you? It's a very warm day. It is. It is very warm. And Bromwin lives by the beach.
BronwenI do.
MeganBut we are not going to the beach.
BronwenNo, we're not.
MeganWe are going to the frozen climbs of Arundel. Yes, we are. I will point out that I'm prepared for this episode. Bromwyn has noticed my socks with snowflakes on. Yes. I'm also gonna whip out Oh, I forgot about these! My Norway Mickey ears.
BronwenWe're gonna need to take a picture of you wearing those. Yeah, they're looking pretty. Your Norway ears, which are from Epcot. The Norway pavilion in Epcot, where we had been on the frozen ride. Yes. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. It is warm.
MeganIt is warm. I feel like the people need to know that we're recording this episode a bit later than we normally would because you have been on honeymoon. I have. I I was in northern Italy for two weeks. Did you and James have a Lady in the Tramp moment? This is the night. What a beautiful night.
BronwenI mean, no one serenaded us while eating. I see that as a good thing. Should they feel like they should? We had some very nice meals, but no no serenading, which I I think after a bit it's just gonna get awkward, right? You're just there eating and listening to this person. No sharing and piece of spaghetti. So we did share food. James is very keen on this. But actually, James did quite a lot of cooking. Uh because the Airbnb we had had a really nice kitchen. Well that's nice. And uh so he cooked quite a lot and he's a very good cook. Megan, what Disney related things have you been doing in the last month?
MeganWell, I was going to mention the two Disney musical things that we have lined up for ourselves last month. I don't know if you were going to mention the one that you found. So I'll mention the ones that both of us found. Um so the first thing is that I spotted that there's a BBC prom that's an Alan Menckin prom, so it's gonna be full of Renaissance era Disney music. Um, so I've booked us some tickets for that.
BronwenJust to say, because Megan won't blow her own trumpet, you were in the queue for a very long time. She was doing this when I was on honeymoon. I was sitting just in an Italian cafe, having a really nice time, and you were messaging me like, I'm still in the queue. And you got really good things, actually.
MeganYeah, I think we are next to the royal box. So that's the first one. That's the first one. And then you spotted that there is an official Disney princess's concert coming to a very local theatre to us. Yes. And as you got on it like an hour after they had posted this. Yeah. And it was already nearly booked up. It was. It was.
BronwenIt was very exciting. Yeah.
MeganVery exciting. So we've got some good Disney musical events very much. Very exciting, yeah.
BronwenYeah.
MeganSo those are my Disney updates for the month.
BronwenWhat have you done that's Disney related? Big thing that's happened in the last month, uh in two parts of my life, being a Disneyerd and a Swifty, is that the thing that we have been waiting for has happened. Taylor Swift has written an original song for a Disney Pixar film. So she has released a song called I Knew It, I Knew You for Toy Story 5. And it's like country twang, it's kind of goes back to her roots, and it's meant to be a song written from the point of view of Jesse, Jesse being reunited with Woody. It's a good song. I like it.
MeganI actually, to my shame, I haven't listened to the whole thing yet. I've just heard like the snippets on social media. I'm sorry. So I will do that. It's gone do my homework.
BronwenIt's gone number one in the British charts. Really? Wow. Yeah. So yeah, and yeah, it's just amazing to see. I absolutely love Jesse. Jesse's like my favourite Pixar character.
MeganMy car is named after Jessie.
BronwenYes, you're very good choice. And so uh to have Taylor Swift, who everyone knows I don't, I won't go on about I won't go on about her too much because we'll be here all day. But to have her write a song for Jesse is like just I don't know what I did to deserve that.
MeganYeah, but it's the dream.
BronwenAnd to hear Taylor doing country as well, when she hasn't done like proper true blue country in so long. Like it was just really nice. So that's the big news, like Disney news from from from my house.
MeganIt's been a good Disney music month. It has been a good theme of our update.
BronwenAbsolutely, yes. Yes.
Our relationship with the film
BronwenSo is it is it time to talk about Frozen? I think it is.
MeganYeah. So I'm I'm really excited to talk about our history with the film because I have no idea when you saw this for the first time because we didn't see it together. No, all the other films we've been talking about we watched together as children. Yeah. Frozen, I don't think we've ever watched Frozen together. No, no, I don't think we have. So I'm really excited to hear our different stories about Frozen.
BronwenYeah.
MeganSo Bromwen, what is your history with Frozen?
BronwenSo Frozen came out in 2013, which was when I started university. And I remember like there just being this huge hype uh about it. I was in my uh so when it came out, I would have been about 19, just turned 19 when it came out. And I was not in my Disney era.
SPEAKER_00No.
BronwenI I wasn't anti-Disney, I love the Renaissance films. I I knew the films that I liked, but I wasn't like interested in what Disney was doing, which is kind of normal for that age.
MeganYeah, absolutely.
BronwenUh but I remember I didn't really know anything about the film. I knew that Disney was doing its take on um the Snow Queen, basically. I knew that much. I remember so I went to university in Plymouth and going around Plymouth and just being inundated with stuff, like the toy shop going past it and it just having frozen stuff everywhere, going past um like Claire's and stuff like that, and just being frozen everywhere, it was everywhere. And I remember finding it kind of annoying. I remember then like, oh for goodness sake, and then I heard this the song, Let It Go, and I thought it's a great song. Um, I did have to hear it too many times. I'm actually gonna go on and talk about that song in quite a lot of detail when we get to the psychology. Oh, cool! Um, there's quite a lot to talk about there. Nice, but yeah, it is a good song. It is a good song. I didn't see it until the summer later, so it would have been summer 2014 when I went on holiday with a group of friends. Uh, we went to Cornwall and someone put it on. Perfect summer viewing. Yeah, perfect summer viewing makes sense, right? And the thing I remember taking away from it was I loved the music. Looking at it now, actually, it's the best music that Disney had done fr after the Renaissance, in my view. Ooh. But we'll come to the music. But yeah, that and then but then I didn't watch it again for a while. So yeah, I don't have a particularly strong history with it apart from that. But yeah, that's my story. That's my story.
MeganWell, mine is relatively similar. So I saw it on the 27th of February 2014. I was quite amazed that I could work out exactly the dates. Do you know this? So you'll remember Tumblr.
BronwenOh yes, I remember Tumblr.
MeganThe blogging website. I was really into Tumblr for a really long time. And as I remembered re-blogging Let It Go on the day that I saw it in the cinema. So I went back to my old Tumblr blog and found the day that I re-blogged Let It Go, which was the 27th of February 2014. So it was a few months after the film had come out, because it came out in November 2013, I won't say. So I saw it at the cinema at university um with some friends. I was just about to turn 21. So very similar to you, I wasn't really in my Disney era. No, no. I didn't have much concept of contemporary Disney at all.
BronwenNo.
MeganWe'd been out for a while. Yeah. I again I remember being struck at the time clearly by the music and particularly let it go. So I re-blogged it on Tumblr and I was like, this this hit me on a really deep level. I was feeling things. Um that that's that's Tumblr.
BronwenTumblr has a lot of really big feelings.
MeganOh yeah. Oh yeah. And that's that's kind of my main memory of it. Coming to it for the podcast was only the third time I'd ever seen it.
BronwenYeah, I think I was about the same actually. Yeah. Yeah.
MeganYeah. So a lot of people have been overexposed to Frozen because it's been so popular with children. Um, but I hadn't I hadn't had that experience. I've probably heard Let It Go quite a lot on the radio and stuff. But in general, I haven't had that kind of yeah, overexposure to Frozen. Yeah. Uh so I was quite happy to revisit it for the podcast. Nice, yeah. So should we talk about how we found revisiting it for the podcast kind of headlines?
BronwenI remember saying at the end of the last podcast. I remember saying that, I don't know what I'm gonna go talk about. I think I must have just been reading tired. We've been talking for so long about Basil. I don't know what I was talking about, and I said that, and then when again, when I was away on my honeymoon in Italy, because I'm fancy, I had a friend send me a like a voice message, um, Ava, who um shout out to Ava, she will be listening to this. And she was like, What are you talking about, Brumman? There's loads in here as a psychologist you can talk about. What are you talking about? And I was just like, okay. And then I came to watch it and I was like, Yes, yes. There's actually quite a lot going on here. These and so I I enjoyed coming back to it, but I continue to have the same issues with it from like a narrative perspective, and maybe we can get into those. I'm sure we will, yeah. Um, so and I continue to be struck with this I'm left with this like, okay, like in a way, the hype around it has kind of not ruined it for me, but has not helped because I think it's a really good film. But I just don't think it's like the greatest thing that Disney's ever done. So I enjoyed it, but I just don't think it it deserves all the hype that it gets. What about you? What what did you feel coming back to it?
MeganYeah, so I watched it with Nicholas. Oh, okay. He hadn't seen it before. He really enjoyed it. Did he? Yeah, he loved it. Oh I mean, I think he wants to be Elsa. Because Nicholas is always too hot. Yes. So it's his absolute dream to be just in charge of ice. Ice, yeah, yeah. So yeah, um, it was really nice. He would say like days afterwards, I'm still thinking about Frozen.
BronwenOh, that is so cute!
MeganHe really enjoyed it, so it's nice to see that through his eyes.
BronwenYou should get him a frozen dress, like all of the people that when they watch Frozen for the first time and they just have heart eyes for Elsa. Like Yes.
Synopsis
BronwenSo, is it time to talk about like the history surrounding this film? No, it's on a bit Brumwen. Oh, sorry. The haiku. It's very important that we have your haiku. I spent a lot of time on this haiku. So, yes, it is now time for Brumwen's haiku.
MeganIt needs its own music. It really does like Brumwen's haiku. There we go, you've done it. I'm gonna put that in every time.
BronwenSo this is the frozen haiku. Elsa's a snow queen. She freezes Arundel. Oops. True love saves the day.
MeganAh, very good. Thank you. I'm guessing that's not from anyone's perspective. That's just like a synopsis of that one.
BronwenThat's fair. Yeah. It works. Thank you.
unknownThank you very
History
unknownmuch.
BronwenSo now, Megan, is it time for us to talk about some of the history surrounding this film? Let's do it. This is gonna take a while, okay?
MeganIt's gonna take a while. Okay, to cover what I'm going to be talking about briefly, I thought we could trace this same idea of the snow queen through its various iterations. Yes. So the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and then Walt Disney considered doing it in the 1930s and 40s. Oh, I thought you might have come across that in your research. Ah, that's interesting then. Okay, so we talk we can look at what what Walt might have done with it, and then coming through to what we ended up with in 2013. So we've got these iterations of the same story, but with a very different message coming out each time. So it's quite fun to just trace that quite simply. So let's start with the original Snow Queen story by Hans Christian Andersen. So that was published in 1844. Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author who was most famous for his fairy tales. I thought I would ask you whether you remember the original Snow Queen story.
BronwenI don't remember how, but we watched some version of it.
MeganI was gonna ask you about that specifically. Yes, I have.
BronwenI couldn't tell you a single thing about it except something about glass getting in the eye of like this, like a child. Is it a boy? Is it a it's a boy? It's it's a little bit, reminds me a little bit of what happens in the Land the Witch in the Wardrobe, actually. You are so good. With Edmund and obviously becoming like meeting the queen and all of that. And it turns in evil, and then they have to try and get it out, and that is all I remember. They are extremely relevant memories.
MeganThank you. Well done. We will come on to like all of that. So I I think I have slightly more memories. This is probably just from being the eldest. We'll come on to it. We'll come on to that. So I think we might have had an audiobook of the story, but I actually think it was more likely that our grandpa used to read us fairy stories, and I think he was a particular fan of Hans Christian Anderson, and I think he read us The Snow Queen. We have no recognition. Well, this is the thing, we could have been very little. Yeah. Um, because the other thing I so I remember that sort of hazily, and then I more clearly remembered the film, which I was able to look up, so it's called The Snow Queen, and it came out in 1995, and it was a British animation, it was absolutely star-studded. Everyone in it was really famous. Really? The animation is not good. So the Snow Queen is played by Helen Mirror.
BronwenWhoa! Starting strong. I mean, that sounds quite classic to me, British. Like they're like, it doesn't matter about the animation, it all matters about the the voices. We need Shakespearean voices. Drama.
MeganYes, that's British. So, well, we'll talk a bit about the original story and maybe maybe more things will come back to you. But what you've remembered is very relevant. So the setup is that we start with a hobgoblin who made a mirror which distorted everything. So anything good or beautiful was minimized. Okay, I actually do remember this now. There we go! I thought it might come back, and everything bad was magnified. And what ended up happening is this mirror gets shattered and that fragments fall all over the world and cause distortions everywhere. And then our two main characters are these two children called Kay and Gerda. Okay. So Kay is the boy, Gerda's the girl. One day, Kay felt something strike his eye and then his heart, and these are two fragments of the mirror. So that you remember this. Yeah. And a lump of ice grows in his heart. So that's like the one one of the only similarities is the frozen heart.
BronwenThat sounds like quite a medical problem. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Like, okay, I understand that it's gonna impact the psychology from a fairy tale perspective, but like I think he ought to go see a doctor if his ice if there's like ice in his heart.
MeganYeah, that feels like it'll be quite obstructive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that means that he starts seeing ugliness all around him and he starts being really horrible, including to Gerda. Okay, then he's playing around in his sledge, and he attaches his sledge to this really fast, big sledge. And that is the snow queen's sledge. Right. So this is this is where the similarity with The Line of the Witch and the Wardrobe comes in. And I think it's well recognised that the story um in the Line, the Witch and the Wardrobe must have been inspired by this. Yes. Yeah. Um, because the Snow Queen whisks Kay away. Um, and uh he forgets all about his home and who he is and Gerda. So she then sets off to rescue him. And she has various adventures which we don't need to go into. There's a lot, and nothing relates to Frozen.
BronwenI thought you were they were gonna be like inappropriate in some sort of adventures.
MeganNo, no, today. Today we don't need to do any warnings about that. Everything is entirely appropriate. Yeah, very boring, really. I wrote down a quote at this point, which I think demonstrates some of the messaging of this story. Someone is talking about Gerda's chances of saving Kay and how she's going to confront the snow queen. It's her own purity and innocence of heart that will give her power.
BronwenThat's interesting.
MeganYes. I think we're gonna be talking a lot today about power and where that comes from. But yes, purity and innocence of heart, that's Gerda's thing. So then it's from this point onwards that it all starts to get just a tiny bit weird from a modern perspective in terms of the messaging. So there are these snowflake creatures that are guarding the snow queen, and Gerda conjures snow angels to defeat them. The way she conjures snow angels is by reciting the Lord's Prayer. As you do. Yeah. You know, when when I've said the Lord's Prayer, I've never had a snow angel. Clearly, I'm saying it right. You're you're clearly you don't have enough purity and innocence apart. Yeah. Well, anyone could have told you that. Yeah, I mean, we should clarify. We are talking about this from a Christian perspective. We are both Christians. Even so, I read this story and thought, okay, okay. Fair enough. So Gerda arrives and comes across Kay, who I think at this point is fairly kind of catatonic.
BronwenUm standard day at the office. Yeah.
MeganHe's um just frozen and not very well. And so she she sings him a song about the Christ child, obviously.
BronwenObviously, that's what you do, that's normal.
MeganAnd she cries over him and her tears thaw his heart. Then he comes back to life and he cries, and that washes away the fragment of mirror in his eye. Yeah, that that sounds like something I remember almost. Yeah, almost, yeah. And then they go home and they've realized that uh they've grown up.
SPEAKER_03Hello listeners, it's Megan here in the edit.
MeganWe had a little glitch in the podcast recording at this point, so I'm just popping in to let you know that what past Megan is about to tell you is a quote that Gerda's grandmother reads from the Bible at the end of the story. Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God. So it's the importance of the innocence of childhood. And then it ends by saying, and they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart, and it was summer, warm, beautiful summer.
BronwenI didn't realise it was such a Christian-oriented story, I had no idea. In a slightly strange, um sorry, maybe strange isn't the right word, but it's not the typical use of Christianity in stories, is it? There is a fairy tale element to it.
MeganYes, and I find it quite difficult to decipher actually what the Christian message is. Because it's clearly there with the prayers and the Christ child and the reading from the Bible. But I got to the end of the story and I as a Christian, I was like, What am I being told? Yeah, I don't understand.
BronwenThe idea being you need to stay childlike in order to be accepted into the kingdom of God.
MeganOr something like that. But what has made them childlike in this story? In the story they have grown up. Yeah. But they're still children at heart, apparently. But why?
unknownYeah.
MeganThat's quite strange. Okay, Hans. Okay. So that reaches the end of the original fairy tale. So in 1937, Walt Disney began exploring the idea of a possible live action and animated biographical film of Hans Christian Hansen. When you say live action and animation, the idea had been like Mary Poppins, like both in the same film. Yes. Right, okay. And in 1940, he suggested a co-production with another studio. So Disney would do the animated fairy tales and the other studio would do the live action bits. Hey, okay. And then what ends up happening is that after America entered the Second World War, Disney was focusing on Hello listeners.
SPEAKER_03Me again.
MeganWe had another little glitch here. Don't worry. Last one. So I just need to fill in a little gap, which is that I go on to say that Disney ended up focusing on wartime propaganda, and that the other studio went ahead and made the film about Hans Christian Andersen without Disney's input. So it ended up being a live-action musical film.
BronwenGrandma and Granddad have the video of that. Yes, I was about to say, do you remember this film?
MeganBecause I think we've seen it.
BronwenI think we've seen some of it at least. So it's it's got music in it. Yes, Hans Christian. Yes, you remember, you remember exactly. It's that film.
MeganI went and watched clips from it. Um so yes, it's got that Hans Christian Andersen song. It ends up coming out a bit later. Um 1952 is when it came out. And as so it's got that song, and as the song There Once Was an Eddie Duddling.
BronwenOh, wow, okay.
MeganYeah, and and other music as well.
BronwenSo yeah, they left Walt Disney behind and they did it anyway.
MeganYes. Okay. So that was that was the end of uh Disney's association with the Snow Queen at that time that they they had dropped the idea. So obviously, we can't know what kind of messaging they would have put across in their version of the Snow Queen, but I think we can have a good stab at it because we have the template of Snow White and the other fairy tales that they did around the time. And there's we know that Disney wasn't averse to religion, like we talked about in our Snow White episode. You see Snow White praying, and there is some quite religious imagery in it, but I don't think it would have been nearly as explicit as the original tale. So there's this quote from Walt Disney where he says, Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. So you can he's he's got this kind of Christian outlook, I think, but wouldn't have made it nearly as obvious a message. Um not that the message of the original Snow Queen was that obvious, but it was very Christian, whatever it was. No. So I think they probably would have followed a similar style to Snow White, getting that kind of morality across, but I doubt we would have had the Lord's Prayer stuff and the reading from the Bible. No. I think it would have been more magical. In terms of Walt Disney, I was just gonna finish off with this quote he said, From years of experience, I have learned what could legitimately be added to increase the thrills and delights of a fairy tale without violating the moral and meaning of the original. Story wise, we sharpen the decisive triumph of good over evil with our valiant knights, the issues which represent our moral ideals. We do it in a romantic fashion, easily comprehended by children. And I think that's the crucial line. Yes. Easily comprehended by children. So I think he probably would have got a an a moral across that was easier for me to understand than the original story. Probably also easier for me to understand than the message of Frozen. Yes.
BronwenYeah, I agree, I agree. I don't think, and I don't mean this to be disrespectful to the creators of Frozen, but to me, this I don't think Walt would have quite liked the story writing. I think he would have said we need to reshape this a bit. That's my take, because it's too complicated and at some points too complicated and at some points too simplistic. It's sort of one of my issues with Frozen is that the law feels like there's quite a complicated backstory, but it isn't really explained. Why does Elsa have these powers? Why does no one else have them? Why just her? And for me, also the end, the whole thing about true love will save. My issue with that, and maybe I'm just being dumb, it's not like true love wasn't in the film up until that point. Anna goes to her sister, like she climbs up this mountain to go find her. She loves her sister, she she would do anything for Elsa, and Elsa loves Anna. Their love for each other is the one sort of it's like the that's the bedrock of the film, right? And I think what they were trying to do was sort of do a bit of a spin, as the film does throughout on the whole true love being from a romantic. Because I'm saying true love doesn't have to be romantic, true love has many forms, and in this form it's the it's the relationship between these sisters. Yeah, and I like that the idea that you know, and we maybe we'll get more into this when we talk about sort of the feminism, but you know, this sort of um mo shifting it, but to me it doesn't really add up with the rest of the film because it's not like when you have romantic relations a romantic relationship that builds in a film, it's like, oh, this is new. Whereas their love for each other, we see it from the beginning of the film, it changes in its shape, but it's always there, they always love each other. Yeah, that's never in doubt. So I don't really understand why love then becomes the thing that saves when it was always there. Why didn't Anna's love for her sister kind of make things easier for her?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
BronwenOr kind of help her. I I I don't really understand that. To me, it doesn't quite all add up.
MeganI guess the final the act of true love is a self-sacrificial act. Yeah. Um and so I don't know if it needed to be that big love, they're saying, but that would be a bit of a sad message, actually, that true love only counts if it's a big gesture and not kind of the quieter sort of love. Yes. Yeah. Well, let's get on to the modern day then. Let's do it. And I think the production story probably explains a lot of what we've been talking about. So Disney actually began developing a new adaptation of the Snow Queen in the 90s.
BronwenUh I could see it being a Renaissance film in some ways, but considering it for the Renaissance.
MeganExactly, yes. Um, the project was scrapped in 2002 when one of the main animators, Glenn Keane, reportedly left to work on another project which became tangled. Now that's very interesting. Because those two films are often put up as fighters against each other. Ah, yes, yeah. So development for Frozen, What We Got, began in 2008 when Chris Buck, who directed Tarzan, was convinced to come back to the studio. And had he pitched several ideas, including the Snow Queen. And as he later said that his inspiration was not the original Snow Queen, but the idea to do something different on the definition of true love. Right. Disney had already done the kissed by a prince thing, so I thought it was time for something new. And I appreciate that. I think that that's a good idea. Do I think it was executed? No, but I I like that idea. So it's the whole inspiration for this film is doing something different, which is quite interesting. So when they began development, the title of it was Anna and the Snow Queen. Frozen's better.
unknownYeah.
MeganAnd they were planning to do traditional animation. Oh, okay. Yeah, which I mean, I'm always a big fan of traditional animation. I would have loved to have seen that.
BronwenI will say though, the snow in this is very good.
MeganIt is. I will skip forward to a point I have on the snow, which is that they created a snow simulator software application, particularly for this, to deliver to deliver shots of heavy and deep snow that interacted believably with the characters.
BronwenBecause it does. And I will say this is one actually where I might disagree. I d I love sort of traditional animation. But because this film requires ice and snow, that needs to have an element of three-dimension.
MeganYeah.
BronwenOf three dimensions to it. So I think this is actually a very good one to do in computer animation.
MeganI can see that.
BronwenCompared to some of other Disney's films where I'm just like, that would have looked so good in traditional animation.
MeganBy 2010, the project was in development hell. Oh really? And as I didn't know that, I am not now looking back terribly surprised because I think that explains some of the complexities that we see in this story because they were desperately trying to make something work.
BronwenYes.
MeganI think it's really funny how, particularly with Disney, the only examples of production hell I can think of have either resulted in an amazing film or a terrible film.
BronwenOnce it's in production hell, I imagine that we've yeah. Whereas everything else is mid. Yeah. You know, like if if it goes quite well, you're probably gonna make a mid-film. Because I imagine something about the production hell either really inspires people or it just completely shoots like the whole thing down. Yeah. But yeah, I completely agree with that.
MeganBecause like we've got the black quadrant. Horrendous. Horrendous. And then we've got the Emperor's New Grove, which is absolutely amazing. Yeah. And Frozen. And uh we might have our own complicated feelings about Frozen, but undeniably successful. Absolutely.
BronwenYou can't deny that it it's it's insane. It's I mean, it's the first Disney film that's going to get three films out of it, because obviously we're getting thro frozen three next year, and that's gonna be a first. Yeah, so that's a good point. I have complicated feelings about that, but again, you can't deny, therefore, this particular idea is extremely successful.
MeganYeah. So then in 2011, following the success of Tangled, Disney announced the new title for the film, Frozen. Yeah. Which I think we're both on board with. 100%. It's a really good, solid title. It works on a literal level, it works on an emotional, symbolic level. It's snappy. Yeah, I think it's a good name. Yeah. And at that point they announced the release date of 2013 and they confirmed that it would be 3D animation. And they said exactly what you have said, that they understood that the visuals were going to be so complicated that they needed computer animation. And then in 2012, they brought on Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez to begin writing songs. And this was maybe the crucial thing. Yeah, I think. So one of the main challenges they were facing was the Snow Queen herself. So she was a villain, as she had been in the original story in all of their drafts. And I don't know if you watched any of the deleted scenes. I didn't know. So you can go and watch some deleted scenes on Disney Plus, and in some of those you can see Elsa being the villain. Oh. Which is quite interesting. But they realized that the characters in particular were the problem with this film. That the characters just weren't resonating, they didn't seem to be making sense. The first major breakthrough they had, and I'm sure you will talk about this in more depth, but was it was the decision to rewrite Anna, who was based on Gerda in the Snow Queen, as Elsa's younger sister for that family dynamic. So originally they weren't going to be sisters. No.
BronwenThat's really interesting. Because to me, that is the fundamental what makes this film is one of the things that I love most about this film is the relationship between these sisters.
MeganYeah, so that was an important decision. So originally they were just going to be antagonists, the Snow Queen and Anna. Then they make Anna and Elsa sisters, but Elsa is still a villain at this point. So that would have been a very different film. Yes. Such a different film. Just like sisters hating each other. To explore the dynamics of that relationship. Disney convened a sister summit. Wow. A sister summit. So women from the studio who grew up with sisters were asked to talk about that experience. Disney, can you please have another sister summit and invite us along to talk about being sisters? I thought that was quite fun. That is fun. So it'll be very interesting to see what you say about the sister presentation, given that they did a lot of research on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. Roman's face is appropriately frozen. How interesting. Yeah. So then they brought on Jennifer Lee, who was one of the writers of Wreck It Ralph. They brought her on in 2012. And uh bearing in mind they had a release date of 2013. They weren't getting up to the wire on this one. And they were still making decisions about the story, still bringing new people on board. When is this, sorry? 2012. Wow. 2012 is when the songwriters come on board and a new story writer. Wow. With a release date of 2013. So crazy. Jennifer Lee said that by that point they had several core concepts in place, such as the phrase, an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart. This was the thing that they wanted to say. Robin's rolling her eyes. I don't even know what that means, but okay, fine, fine. So they knew that the ending was going to involve true love in the sense of the emotional bond between siblings.
BronwenI love that. I love that. They just made it unnecessarily complicated.
MeganYes, exactly. They knew Anna was going to save Elsa, but they didn't know how. Again, Elsa was evil at the start of the original version. And she was going to kidnap Anna from her own wedding to freeze her heart, and later was going to descend on the town with an army of snowmen. Sure. Clearly, what you need someone to do is the Lord's Prayer. Is to say the Lord's Prayer.
unknownExactly.
MeganWe know, we know how you deal with that situation. On the Deluxe Frozen album, you can hear the demos for songs that they didn't use. And so you get like there's one from Anna about being the spare as opposed to the heir.
BronwenOkay.
MeganSounds quite interesting to go and listen to those. Um, so then another breakthrough they had, so this is probably like the big breakthrough, was the song Let It Go. Interesting. So written by Lopez and Anderson Lopez, and they reimagined Elsa as a more complicated, vulnerable, and sympathetic character. So it's interesting. Yeah, it was the it was the songwriters who came up with that, and then Jennifer Lee said that that decision then rippled throughout the whole plot and the film, and it changed everything. Another breakthrough was developing that plot twist with Prince Hans. So he wasn't he wasn't in the early drafts of the film. They only introduced him quite late on, and there's the twist that they would be revealing him as the true villain at the end. Yeah. So then Jennifer Lee in particular was responsible for developing Anna's personality. I think other people were trying to suggest that she should be a bit more I think codependent was the word that they used, a bit more kind of complicated and a Jennifer Lee wanted it to be more of a simple, funnily enough, um, coming of age story. That she went from having a naive view of life and love and then having a more sophisticated and mature view of love. Where she's capable of the ultimate love, which is sacrifice. So I suppose that answers what you were saying about true love being there all along. I guess that that quote contains it, doesn't it? Is that they're they're thinking the ultimate love is sacrifice. I mean, that's actually quite a Christian message. It is, isn't it?
BronwenUm I'm not sure I completely Yeah, just as a human sitting here taking out sort of the spiritual component and just that that I'm not sure how I feel about that message, giving that to children, but it does make it make more sense. What I will say though is that I think you can tell from my perspective, the fact that I still have that question in my mind, I don't think that that was well evidenced in the film. Like that came in too late. And you can see they're really working against the wire here. So they knew kind of the concept that they were working with, but I don't think they kind of put that into the film well enough.
MeganSo another bit of context to set you up for what you'll be talking about, um, to work on Anna and Elsa's relationship. Jennifer Lee was particularly inspired by her relationship with her older sister. Oh, okay. So she's the Anna in this relationship. So she called her older sister by Elsa, and then she walked the red carpet with her Oscars, which is really nice. And I think this this is really interesting, and I think a really nice quote from her. She said, having to lose each other and then rediscover each other as adults, that was a big part of my life. And that's just classic siblings, isn't it? Yes. You'll you'll talk about that. I'm gonna talk about that, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the production history of this film. So to come back to that idea of different messages coming out at different times with this story. I think the message has obviously moved away from the explicit morals of the original story and the explicit Christianity of the original story, and it's also moved away from that early simplicity of Disney. Given that the message has become quite complicated, I would say, and maybe not super clearly presented in this film. It's interesting that children love it so much. Yes. When I don't imagine that they are getting a clear message from it.
BronwenNo. I suppose children aren't going into films for messages. No. I think they love the music, I think they love the look of it, and I think they love I think they love Olaf.
SPEAKER_00I think Olaf is a really good.
BronwenI actually really like Olaf. Um, I can understand why some people wouldn't, um, but I think he's really funny. I think um Josh Gadd's performance is immaculate, yeah, an absolute immaculate performance. And yeah, I think there's it's the visuals of it, the number of little girls that if you go to Disney World who you see wearing Elsa's dress, there's something about the visuals of this film that are just that that I think really appeal to it, and it's so otherworldly, they really create Arundel and the castle and all of that. It's just this beautiful world that you can lose yourself in. But I'd I'd like to think maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but like as a child, I would I would have chosen another film to get obsessed with.
MeganWell, I mean, I went for The Lion King in the 90s, so I'm I'm so basic, I probably would have been a frozen girly. You're basic. I'm basic.
Psychology
MeganSo yeah, I think that pretty much covers what I was going to say about the history. Okay.
BronwenThank you. I mean, it does lead really nicely into what I was going to talk about. Perfect. So, what I will say is I I've got a couple of topics I want to speak about, and uh generally speaking on this podcast, Megan is like the glass shatterer. Uh, this doesn't actually add up, and Disney haven't followed like the history or whatever. Um, and normally I'm just there like, oh, this is really interesting. This time it's kind of the other way around, and I'm gonna be here going, yeah, guys, none of this actually really makes sense from a sort of psychological perspective. Still a great film, but yeah. That's fun, I'm excited. So the first thing I I wanted to look at because I really do think it is the centre of the film, is the relationship between Elsa and Anna as an eldest and youngest daughter. So, first thing I want to ask is Megan, you are the elder child in this. You're the Elsa, and I'm the younger child, so I'm the Anna. Do you relate to being Elsa and do you think I'm anything like Anna? Ooh, interesting. And I really should have thought about that.
MeganIt seems like the obvious question. I think I do relate to Elsa, yes. I mean, clearly, from my history with the film, me going home and re-blogging Letting Go and saying this speaks to me on an emotional level. I clearly resonated with let it go. I would say so. I think I relate to Elsa. I think I always want to be Anna. I think she's I think she's nicer. I think she's a better person. Okay. What makes her better? So I I actually again, this is a plot point, which it I'm maybe reading too much into. But I think that Elsa puts Anna in real danger, particularly with marshmallow. Yeah, marshmallow does seem quite a lot. Yeah. Like he's he's throwing them around, they end up falling off this massive cliff because Elsa has sent marshmallow after them, and I feel like, oh, I don't think I would do that.
BronwenIt's good to know.
MeganI think it's obviously it's more complicated than just the sister dynamic, isn't it? They obviously have their own personalities as well, sort of independent of being sisters. I think probably what particularly appealed to me watching it when I was univers at university was Elsa kind of closing herself off from the world and not feeling like she could be herself. But I feel like that's probably a fairly universal experience. I don't think that's going to well, you can tell me, but I don't think that's just gonna be older sisters. Well, let's get into that.
BronwenNo, you just yeah, I think that's very useful for you to for us to note that you had that experience.
MeganI think that's that's the thing that I relate to most about Elsa, this whole conceal don't feel thing, and then her the empowerment of her like letting it go. Yeah, I I felt that was a really profound message to me, that I feel felt like I was concealing myself from the world. So, uh but then um are you like Anna? I I could probably pick up on things you you have in common, but it doesn't seem like the most obvious comparison to me. Yeah. No, that's fine. But there may be things that you draw out that I go, oh yeah, oh yeah.
BronwenSo for myself, I would agree with you. I think I think you're more like Elsa than Anna. I think that I would agree that in your your youth, like I think a lot of people do, there was an element of yeah, concealed, don't feel. I'd also say, and you can feel free not to put this in the podcast, we don't need to get like too personal about you, but like you are someone who is a striver, I think can have some like is a bit of a perfectionist, wants to do really well, and we see that in Elsa. Like Elsa just wants to, she wants to be good, she wants to do her duty. Yes, she doesn't want to let her parents down, and I see a bit of that in you, and I think I have some of that as well. I I think I can be like Anna in that I think I'm I would say I'm less serious than you, generally speaking. I think that's I'm more playful, I'm kind of just uh I don't take life very seriously because when I do it gets too serious, and I think that's quite like Anna, and Anna's love of chocolate, and Anna's love of just wanting to, you know, Anna just wanting to enjoy the coronation because she just wants to experience like just to have fun, basically.
MeganI thought of another thing as well, in that um I think Anna does herself down and she blames herself for things, Anna's I can see you doing that.
BronwenOkay, that's interesting. I didn't see that, but that's really interesting. Okay. There are a lot of anecdotal reports these days of this concept called eldest daughter syndrome, where we see where people talk about the sense of being the eldest, leading to them having sort of high perfectionism, they're socialized to be good, particularly daughters, to be mu to be mothering, to to hold leadership roles, at least in sort of family settings, and that younger children are allowed to be more carefree, to be more creative, and to be less rule-following. And I see this all the time on social media. I'll see like a video that's like tell me you're an eldest daughter without telling me you're an eldest daughter. Yes, it's a really common thing that's talked about. I mean, even my my my girl, my my everything, Taylor Swift has written about this on her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, her track five is called Eldest Daughter, where because Taylor Swift is an eldest daughter herself. How many siblings does she have? One, she has a younger brother.
SPEAKER_00Ah, okay.
BronwenAnd she writes, Every Eldest Daughter was the first lamb to the slaughter, so we all dressed up as wolves and we looked fire.
MeganOh wow. Okay. So you know, this is a lyric.
BronwenYeah. And then she also writes, Every youngest child was raised up in the wild. She's writing there about so her fiance. By the time this comes out, maybe it'll be her husband. Uh Travis Kelsey is a younger uh so um every so you know, saying that they had had different experiences growing up is what she was writing about. Um that makes them good for each other. And Elsa and Anna appear to be presented with this sort of very classic trope, with Elsa being the eld that eldest daughter, you know, she the line that comes up a few times is be the good girl you always have to be.
MeganYeah.
BronwenThat's sort of that's very important. And Anna being a youngest daughter, she's more outgoing, she's carefree, she she finds it easier to access fun, I think. And I was interested in this concept and whether this actually stands up to scrutiny. Like if we look at eldest and youngest siblings, whether we see a difference in how they approach life.
MeganI I really want to know the answer to that because, like you, I see it on social media all the time. I saw something this morning about the importance of birth order and how that affects your personality. So I really want to know the answer.
BronwenSo the short answer is it doesn't.
MeganOoh, it doesn't hear first.
BronwenSo I found a paper from 2015 by, I apologise if I say their names wrong, uh, Rora, Elgoth and Schmuckel. Great names that from all from the University of Leipzig. They wrote a paper uh examining the effects of birth water on personality. So this study examined whether a person's position among siblings has a lasting impact on that person's life course. So empirical research on the relation between birth water and intelligence has been convincingly documented. So if you do psychometric intelligence tests, you see a decline from firstborns to laterborns. And this has been noted for over a hundred years. In 1874, Francis Galton analysed a sample of English scientists to find that firstborns were overrepresented, and he suspected that eldest children enjoyed special treatment by their parents, allowing them to thrive intellectually. Now I don't know if that's true, but this does stand up to scrutiny. You want evidence, just look at the difference between mine and Meghan's GCSE results. Oh no! And so firstborns do this is shown in research over and over. In 1928, about a hundred years ago, it's something like 60 or 70 years after Francis Galton had started to talk about the difference in birth order in terms of intelligence, the psychotherapist Alfred Adler extended the birth psychology of birth order to personality traits. So, from his point of view, firstborns were privileged but also burdened by feelings of excessive responsibility and a fear of dethronement, and were thus prone to score high on neuroticism. I'm gonna explain what neuroticism is in a minute. Conversely, he expected laterborns, overindulged by their parents, to lack social empathy. So we can basically see the concept of eldest daughter syndrome beginning about a hundred years ago. So before I go any further, I think we should talk about how we measure personality anyway, and what is personality? Yeah. So there's lots of different ways of viewing personality and operationalizing it to make it something we can quantify. And the most common version is called the big five model. Oh yes, yeah. So if you're doing a big five personality scale, you will get someone to fill out a questionnaire and they will say how much they are like or not like a given statement. And the answers are measured on five scales: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, so that means capacity for empathy, cooperation, and compassion, and neuroticism, which means emotional reactivity and vulnerability to stress. Now, the first thing I should say about that is this is a very Western approach to understanding people and personalities. And I personally am not sure how I feel about condensing people down to five traits. Oh wow. Um this has been contested, but it seemed to have the most sort of validity in research. It allows you to compare, I guess. Yes, across people. So Aura et al. They used big five data from three large national panels. There were over 5,000 responses in each of those panels. So we're looking at over 15,000 people from the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Again, very Western data sets. So the study used two uh different analytical strategies by comparing siblings with different birth order positions from within the same family and between different families. So, for example, they would compare me and you, but then they could compare me as a youngest child to your husband, Nicholas, who is a youngest child, and they could compare you as an eldest child to James, my husband, who's an eldest child. Really interesting. Yeah. Like that. Isn't that interesting? The other one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they looked at within family design and between family design. So obviously, what that allows them to do is rule out differences in families because you might just look at a particular family and how they work, and you might have parents who are like really care about their eldest living and then they don't care about the younger one. These analyses again confirms the expected birth order effect on intelligence, i.e., people do less well on psychometric tests of intelligence when they're younger. Now, I want to be clear, that doesn't actually mean they're less intelligent, it just means they do less well. I'm not gonna get into the tests and the fact that intelligence tests don't mean what people think they mean, but just the way it's tested means that they're not doing as well. However, and more important, they found consistently no birth order effects on extroversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, or imagination. And therefore the researchers concluded that birth order does not have a lasting effect on broad personality traits outside of the intellectual domain. Interesting. Oh my goodness. Now, when we're looking at frozen as a film, we're looking at one single sibling set. Yeah. So they're allowed to be however they want to be. But I think it's really interesting that Disney kind of went for that trope. And so it's important for us to know that like we can exist outside of those. Youngest and eldest siblings are not tied to those particular roles. I think what people might be seeing on social media right now is a bit of a um an echo chamber of less around actually their personality and more what society is potentially trying to tell them that they have to be or what they are being told to be or what they should be given their birth order.
MeganYes, so often I don't relate to the older sibling.
BronwenI remember you've said that before. Yeah. That sense of responsibility and yeah.
MeganYeah, and I have previously wondered if that's something to do with like the the small age difference between us. I've I've never had like a caring responsibility for you because we're so close in age.
BronwenYeah. I and it's not to say that the people that do relate to it shouldn't, because obviously there will be eldest children who are put in these positions and do really relate to it, and I'm not saying that they shouldn't, but it's just saying that middle children and younger children can relate to it as well. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting, and therefore that the traits that they're showing, Anna and Elsa, are not to do with their birth order and more about potentially how they've been socialized by their parents. And you know, obviously there's an awful lot that happens to them very young, and I think it's the difference between them is very much to do with those external events, and then for kind of like how they feel they're they have to be in response to those events rather than a sort of a deeper personality experience. Yeah. Just while we're on the subject of sisters, and you kind of touched on this actually when you spoke about Jennifer Lee. I really like how this film shows how our relationships with our sisters can grow and change over time. Yeah. I think as humans, we're not our flexibility in how we think about relationships isn't very good. And I can say that for myself. Our relationship is good until it's not and then it's over. And I think that that's a problem. I think it's something that's happening more and more and more. The idea of sort of like, you know, oh, that's a red flag, and so that person is out, or whatever. Yes. And the idea that relationships, even with and our siblings are so complicated because you're brought up so closely, particularly like us when you're close in age. And if we're just being honest, you don't really have a choice but to be with each other. Yep. Like, you know, your maid is like, you know, you're like go and spend time together. There's an assumption that like that's gonna work. It I'm gonna get emo not emotion, but I'm just gonna get like personal about this for a second. I think one of the things that I've loved about like our Disney journey together, doing our big Disney rewatch, going to the parks, it's made me feel closer to you, and I feel like I understand you better through these films.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I really like that.
MeganYeah, so I think it's really nice, it relates to what Jennifer Lee said about her and her sister. I think it's really important that we've like rediscovered each other as adults.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
MeganThat it's kind of interesting actually that we both saw this film independently. Yes. When we went off to university, we were at different ends of the country. You were in Plymouth, I was in York. We were discovering who we were, we were making new friends, we were thinking about like our future careers and stuff. And now we've come back to a point where we happen to be geographically close, which is nice. Um we're both in Devon, and that we've come back to each other with those kind of those adult personalities that we've developed.
BronwenAnd the experiences that we've had, and just yeah, and the kind of the different thoughts we've had based on our different just yeah, the different interests that we have. And yeah, so yeah, I think that it's really nice to know that, and maybe people, it might be whoever listens to this, that yeah, adult relationships with our siblings can change, and that's and that's a really nice thing. And yeah, rediscovering each other as adults is a is a really nice thing to do. Yeah, I recommend doing it through Disney. Yes, definitely.
MeganYeah, and that's a lovely thing. Like Anna and Elsa bond over their like childhood love of chocolate.
BronwenYes, yes, I love that. I love that. So, yeah, that that's what I have to say about siblings and birth order. I'm now gonna go on and talk about Elsa and what I'm gonna frame as sort of her anxiety. She's very, I think we can agree, she's an anxious person. A lot of what I'm about to say is framed through a cognitive payful therapy or CBT lens. And the reason I wanted to do this was because, like I say, my relationship with the song Let It Go kind of changed this time. I was like, oh, I'm actually not sure how I feel about this. So Elsa is taught as a child not only to be very afraid of her powers, but it seems as well she's afraid been taught either very obviously, like literally told, or through what she's told is thinks, that she needs to be very afraid of thinking of her powers and uh these that strong emotions might set it off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
BronwenAnd one of the first lines of the film that really struck me was fear will be your enemy. Yes. I imagine that a lot of people actually might find that very uh relatable, particularly people who are experiencing such difficulties as obsessive compulsive disorder. Now, I'm not saying that um Elsa has obsessive compulsive disorder, it's not for me to say, really not saying that, but I think there are some really interesting parallels between her experience and the experience of those who experience OCD. And what I mean by OCD, because it's a very misunderstood concept. People think it's all about right angles and keeping things clean, and it can involve that, but that isn't what OCD is. OCD is worrying about the power that thoughts can have on the safety and well-being of themselves or the safety and well-being of others. It's giving too much power to your thoughts in terms of what that means about the world.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
BronwenAnd I think we see some of that in Elsa. And what I found really frustrating this time around watching it is Elsa is given gloves by her father to help her keep her powers in, and he tells her he is the one that gives her the line, conceal it, don't feel it, don't let it show. That comes from her own father. And we can see this as an example of what we call in my neck of the woods a safety behaviour. So a safety behaviour is a coping strategy or an action that's used to prevent a fit outcome. A classic one that people might know is like I need to flick the light switch a certain number of times. Because if I don't, I I've had the thought that this like someone I love will die. So I need to do it that many times to make sure that that doesn't happen. In this case, it's it is about hurting Anna. That's that's Elsa's at least at the beginning, that's like a really big fit. I do not want to hurt my sister. And so she separates us. That's another safety behaviour that she does. She separates herself from Anna. They don't they don't build snowmen together anymore, which is genuinely heartbreaking. It is. Um the song Do You Want to Build a Snowman? It's really sad. It's so sad. Yeah, it's so sad. And what the safety pages do is they sh in the short term reduce anxiety in situations that we perceive to be as threatening. Now, I do appreciate that in this situation there is threat, which is one of my issues with this film because I don't really see that threat being resolved. But anyway, but it only does it in the short term. In the long term, it doesn't resolve the problem in terms of kind of get mastering control over the your relationship with the thoughts that you're having. I'm really I kind of am realising that I'm using this effectively as like what I call psychoeducation, which is to explain psychological concepts. But I think it might be interesting, but it also might be useful for someone listening to this who might be able to relate. So Elsa appears to believe that because she has magical powers, that she is dangerous, that she's a risk to others, and then after the coronation, that she's out of control. And these appear to be what CBT would call her core beliefs. So a core belief is a fundamental, deeply held assumption we have about ourselves, other people, or the world around us. Now it's important to say it's an assumption because mo oftentimes they're not based in strong evidence. If we think about Elsa up until the point of the coronation, she's actually only hurt her sister once. Yes. Only once. And her sister's fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
BronwenBut all that happens at that point is that she gets a bit of silver in her hair. Now, I don't maybe Eleanor's not happy about that, and that's not okay. But actually, the um if we think about how much Elsa is like desperately trying to control this thing, if we compare that in terms of the ratio of the actual harm she has done, I think we can see it's a bit out of proportion. Now, in the song Let It Go, Elsa decides to break social rules and remove herself as queen. And in some ways, this is really great because she's not being controlled by social expectation anymore. She says, you know, that perfect girl is gone. But the problem is, the real reason she's doing this is to remove herself from the people she worries she might hurt. And in again, in my neck of the woods, we call this avoidance. This is a another safety behavior. The core beliefs of I am dangerous, I'm out of control, I'm a risk to others, they are still intact. They have gone nowhere. She's wearing a nice dress, she's singing about being free, but nothing has actually changed in terms of her relationship with the world around her.
MeganYeah.
BronwenYeah. So that's my Problem.
MeganYes. Can I say? Yeah, please. That really struck me as well. It was the final moment of it when she says the cold never bothered me anyway. And then she slams the door, and they make a real thing at the door slamming. You hear it. That's the shop you're left with. And I was like, huh. So she's cut herself off from the world. She's cut herself off. And yeah, we're we've had this really empowering song. And as sorry, this is kind of stealing your thesis, but she's not that empowered because she has to cut herself off from everyone.
BronwenShe's not. So later on, when Anna has made it to her castle, she says to Anna, I belong here, where I can be who I am without hurting anybody. And she says, Yeah, and she sings, Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free. What is she free from exactly? She's free from societal expectation. And there's there's elements of that that are really good because as we know, society can sort of give us messages and put pressures on us that aren't right, they're not right for us as individuals, and they might not be right for us based on our characteristics, whether that be our gender, our race, our you know, whatever it is. But she's not free from her anxiety anxiety about hurting others. That's gone nowhere. That's no gone absolutely nowhere. So I don't think, based in this, that let it go is the positive song that people think it is. It's good if you're if you're using the song to think about like I've decided that I I don't want to live this the way that someone else is telling me how to live anymore. Great, that's great, but if you're talking about anxiety and kind of just going, I'll give an example from my own life. Okay, I'm gonna self-disclose for a minute. I don't drive anymore because I find driving really anxiety provoking, so I can really relate to Elsa because I worry an awful lot about hurting people in a quite a similar way, actually. And I got rid of my car. Now I'm not singing let it go about getting rid of my car. I absolutely accept that that was a safety behaviour. I and I haven't done anything about it, which is which is my which is my right, but it's also, you know, there's problems to that. I've not been sort of, I haven't kind of freed myself. In a way, I've just all I've done is put myself in a different sort of cage, and that's what she does by going to the palace. So when Anna goes to find Elsa in the Ice Palace and she tells her Arendelle is frozen, Elsa discovers for herself that avoidance doesn't actually solve the problem. Like, no, or the problem is still here, nothing's changing. And she she thinks, you know, there's no escape from the storm inside of me, I can't be free, I can't control the curse. So she kind of realizes that for herself. Like, yeah, I've taken myself away, but it that's not that hasn't solved anything. And what we also know is that try trying to not feel actually makes things worse for Elsa. When she tries to protect Anna, she ends up hurting her more. Things like with the marshmallow, and also when she sort of, you know, she puts the ice in her heart. The uh analogy that I use at work quite a lot, because I have conversations about thoughts and what they mean and the pressure that people feel about thoughts all the time at work. And the analogy that I use is uh my beach ball analogy. If you imagine pushing down a beach ball down into water, what ends up happening is buoyancy actually pushes it up towards you. The further you try and push it down, actually the harder the beach ball is going to try and come back, right? And this is the same with thoughts and feelings. The more you try to control them, the more they seem to appear to you, and the bigger they seem. It's Anna who knows that the problem will only be fixed by facing it and not seeing it purely as one person's problem either, but being willing to see, you know, she says we can head down this mountain together, you don't have to live in fear, I will be right here. And I I love Anna is so pure. Oh, she's so great. And this also fits in with the last song of the film, Fixer Upper, where they sing, people make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed, but throw a little love their way, and you'll bring out their best. True love brings out the best. I actually think that's a much better concept of true love than what they come up with. Yes, it's hidden in quite a silly song. Yes, it's a very silly song, but there's something really beautiful in there. Yeah, yeah, because there's another bit where they're talking about um Christoph tinkling in the wood. Yeah. That's the song we end on. It's a bit strange to finish on that, but that that sort of that bridge, you know, is a really good bridge. And so what this is saying is when we're struggling, we need it's important that others get alongside them to understand, and this requires us to be open about our difficulties and for others to be willing to listen. And I think that possibly from a psychological perspective is what this film attempts to do is that Elsa is able to be much more honest with Anna about what's happening. Because obviously Anna has no memory of what's happened, and she has to tell her about it, and Anna I don't think Anna was ever not willing to listen, but Anna's there listening actually doesn't matter. So that's all I have to say about in terms of like the film and the psychology of it. And so I think it's important that people know, yeah. What I'm trying to say is that um you don't have to do what Elsa does, which is take herself away. There aren't answers to the problem, and it often involves having to work and with other people and tell them about what's going on, and being willing to yeah, let other people in, and that's what Elsa does eventually. And I think for me, that's what saves Elsa, not the whole true love.
MeganI I think I blame the trolls for a lot. I don't think I'm the first person to make this point. I think people have said previously that the trolls are the true villains. That's the layers. Seriously, like the the thing he says at the beginning, you must learn to control it. Fear will be your enemy. You must learn to control it. That sparks off so many problems. Which is it? Push the beach ball down. That's what he's saying. Push the beach ball down. Yeah. And it doesn't work. So the king, while they're still with the trolls, he says, We'll lock the doors, we'll keep her hidden. And the trolls are just like, yep, yep, sounds good. Like, it's obviously a horrible plan.
BronwenThey yes, they are very unhelpful. It's a bit strange that that it's the trolls, you've made me think it's the trolls at the beginning who say that you know, Fear will be your enemy and you're gonna have to control this, and then it's at the end they're like, Feel little love that way, you know. How is that loving? How's that loving to cut someone off from the world? It's not loving, yes.
MeganUm, and then it's them later on that suggest a true love's kiss. Like trolls are wrong.
BronwenTrolls are stupid, yeah, they cause all the problems. Yeah, I agree, I agree. So that's that's that for the psychology.
MeganThat was fascinating, thank you. Oh, you're welcome. And now, whenever I see those posts on social media about being an older sister, I can be like, ha.
BronwenJust put a link to this to the
Music
Bronwenpaper. So, Megan, shall we talk about the music of Frozen? Music. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba yes. Yes, of course.
MeganUm it's probably the only reason I know that was on the show.
BronwenYeah, so we've talked about it quite a lot, actually. We've made reference to it. I've talked about letting it go. I've got quite a lot to say, can I say it? Do Bromin's Music Corner. Bromin's Music Corner. It's I think the music is really good. I I really liked how Scandinavian they made the music. I'm gonna talk about that. I really enjoyed the I'm gonna try and say this, but um, Hima Ardala, the coronation music, basically. The music of the coronation music.
MeganSo beautiful.
BronwenI wrote that down.
MeganUm because you could just kind of skim over it mentally, couldn't you? But I I thought that was lovely. Yeah. And the same, same with the dance music and the celebration afterwards.
BronwenYeah, the music producers recruited a Norwegian linguist and composer, Christine Hulls, to assist with lyrics from an old Norse song for Elsa's coronation, and they travelled to Trondheam to record the Cantus Choir for a piece inspired by traditional Sami music. That's good. I think what I really like about the music is the songs genuinely move the plot forward. They do. So let it go, obviously, but love is an open door. Yes.
MeganUm, if we Do you want to build a snowman? A lot happens in that song.
BronwenI think my favourite is actually for the first time in forever. Oh, interesting. I love that's probably the one I forget about. I love Kristen Bell and Erdina Menzel's voices, they work so well together. I'm gonna talk more about that in a minute. I love the line I want to stuff some chocolate in my face when she sees an attractive man, strong relates.
MeganYou know that that's an edit, do you?
BronwenNo.
MeganOh, so the original lyric, Disney said no. The original lyric was I think I'm gonna vomit in his face. And I'm pretty sure it was one of um one of the Lopez children. So they got their children involved in like recording the demos. Oh, that's so cool. And when they had to come up with, I I think I'm right in saying this. I think when they were told to replace the vomiting lyric, it was one of the daughters um who said, What about I want to stuff some chocolate in my face? I love that.
BronwenI I find that much more relatable. Yeah. I see an attractive man and I I go to chocolate not vomiting. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that uh Adina Menzel had auditioned for Tangled but didn't get it, but obviously stayed in touch with Disney. Yeah, I've spoken about let it go from a like a lyrical perspective, but it has done so well as a film. I don't like the demi lavato version. Sorry if there are any demi lavato fans, but I'm not a big demi lavato fan anyway. Like, no shade, just it's not really for me, but I didn't like the pop version.
MeganI think that's an interesting point, isn't it? That if you look at the Renaissance films, it was the pop versions that got into the charts, wasn't it? Whereas with this one, I think they probably originally put the pop version out there, but that wasn't the one that made it, it was Edina Menzel's version from the film. But didn't go to number one though.
BronwenDid it number one? No, the first original song from a Disney film to go to number one was We Don't Need to Talk About Bruno. Oh gosh!
MeganThat's interesting, okay.
BronwenSecond one being I Knew I Knew You by Taylor Swift. Well, that's just happened. Put off the press. Yeah. But it did incredibly well. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media. The Academy Award for Let It Go led Robert Lopez to become the youngest person to have achieved an Egot. For those of people for those of our audience who don't know, an egot is uh receiving an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. If you receive that, you're basically considered to have defeated the arts.
MeganThere are so few of them, aren't there? There are like, I don't know, 23 is the number that's bringing to mind. Very, very small number.
BronwenI don't like rangers that are better than people. I Oh, that's also very forgettable. Can I just say, can I just say, I really don't like film Sven and the relationship with Kristoff. There's something weird, I don't like it. I don't like it. Okay. When we go on to talk about the Broadway production, I love Sven. But no, no. No.
MeganYeah. Okay. Fine. I feel quite neutrally about that whole thing. It is really disgusting when Sven eats the carrot and then Christoph takes a bite when it's a big thing. That is slobbery.
BronwenThat's absolutely disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. In summer is meh, in my view. It's funny though. I think that's the last. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The album debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and it topped the Billbourm album chart for 13 non-consecutive weeks. And it's been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, which is kind of insane for an animation soundtrack. It really is, yeah. It was the fourth animated film soundtrack to peak at number one. Would you like to guess at the other three? Fourth animated okay. So there are three others. The album went to number one.
MeganThe album. The album. Oh flip. What's it gonna be? Um I'm gonna go with Lion Kings.
BronwenYes, that's one.
MeganI uh I guess I'm then thinking about other Renaissance films. Yes, okay. Yeah, that would be right. Beauty and the Beast.
BronwenNo.
MeganAladdin.
BronwenNo. Oh man Tarzan. No. What? Not Tarzan, no. That's no, that's weird. That's a crime. This is it's strange.
MeganOh, okay. Okay, right. I'm just gonna have to work my way through the whole Renaissance. Okay, Little Mermaid. No. The rescue is down under. No! That'd be hilarious, but no. Moolan. No. Why am I not getting this? What else have we got in the Renaissance? Pocahontas! Yes! Wow. Okay, I kind of get it, but up against those other Renaissances. A bit strange. So I've still got one to find. You're not gonna get it. Okay, so it's not Disney. No.
BronwenIs it DreamWorks? No. Oh. Curious George. So we've talked about the writers, or you've talked about the writers, uh, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson uh Lopez. They also worked on the Disney Parks finding Nemo the musical. Yes, which we really that had great music. Great music. Yeah. Um Lopez and Anderson Lopez were aware of the facts that their work would be compared to that of Alan Mencken and Howard Ashman from the Disney Renaissance. And when they felt lost, they asked themselves, what would Ashman do? And that that warms my heart. And again, I I'm preparing the audience to give a great long speech about Howard Ashman at another time, but like that they paid homage to who they should have. One last thing. Christoph Beck is a well-known film scorer, and he did obviously he did the score, and he's done a lot of work with Disney. He did the Muppets films, Frozen films, Marvel films, and he also did the music for the Disney's 100th anniversary logo. Mmm.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
BronwenAnd uh a link to our last podcast, he composed the score for the Pink Panther 2006. Oh whatever the name was, I guess. Kerry Mancini. There you go, he did the Pink Panther like the original Pink Panther. This guy did the Pink Panther in 2006. Nice obscure link. I love it. For the orchestral score, he, as you can tell, he paid uh homage to Norway and uh SAMPI-inspired music by employing regional instruments such as the bookhorn and traditional vocal techniques such as coolning. So you have some sort of long sort of cries that you hear, particularly at the beginning of the film. And it's also known as the Nordic herding call. It's a work song and refers to high-pitch herding calls that were developed centuries ago in Norway and Sweden to sort of bring animals back to them. They would make that that sound. And the songs and calls were used to guide the movement of livestock in the wilderness and to communicate between farms. So I really like that they went and they like used like actual techniques and that sort of thing.
MeganThere's some really good integrity there, isn't there?
BronwenYeah, that those are all my thoughts on the music, all the all the things I found out that I thought interesting.
MeganWell, I just have a couple of things to add to that. So I mean, so a lot of my thoughts were focused around Let It Go, which we've already talked about quite substantially. In the show notes, I will link people to a good podcast episode that I listened to about Let It Go and as what makes it so clever musically. I think the thing that particularly struck me was how complicated and effective the instrumentation is. Um that they're kind of constantly swapping in and out the instruments that you hear, and you're just not aware of that when you're listening to the song. It sounds quite simple, but there's so much effective stuff going on in there. I also, I know we've talked a bit about the lyrics and the meaning of the lyrics, but I really like the imagery that they use as well, like the frozen fractals and all of that stuff. The kingdom of isolation. Yeah, all of that clever lyricism. I really like that. Also, linked to let it go, I don't imagine that I will be the first person to have pointed out parallels between let it go and defying gravity. Yes. I think there's a lot of wicked going on here.
BronwenTo the point where they at some point they made somewhere like an off-Broadway production of like Wicked Frozen, where they get like an amalgamation. Where they kind of Yeah, because there's so much wicked in this.
MeganI mean, obviously they got Edina Metzel on board, but also, yes, Divine Gravity just has a very similar vibe to let it go. Very similar. We've got the two female leads in both cases, in both plots, we are repositioning the villain.
BronwenThe only thing I think Define Gravity is better because it doesn't have the anxiety problem. Define gravity is really like I'm going to do my own thing now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
BronwenAnd like And she does. You know, no wizard that that ever was is ever going to bring me down. Like, all of it is just sort of socially constructed what she's going through. Whereas Elsa, you've got the social constructed element of like, you know, you need to be queen, but also like her own internal anxiety and sort of her understanding of herself, the men basically a mental health problem. I think that Elsa has a mental health problem, but Alphabet doesn't. Elsa and Alphaba. I hadn't even noticed the similarity between the. That's what I think, in terms of like how it works in the film, I think it has the internal logic works better than that. In Define Gravity.
MeganYes. I have many other criticisms of the plot, etc. Well, wicked. But Defined Gravity, that works.
unknownYeah.
MeganThe only other thing I was going to talk about was the so I know we both went and watched the recording of Frozen the Musical. Yes. I've got some notes on that, yeah, yeah. So this feels like an appropriate point to talk about. I think it's really interesting on Disney Plus how it's labelled as frozen, the Broadway musical or something like that, and then it's the recording from the West End. Yeah, they did the West End one, interestingly. Yeah, yeah. I I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I thought it was alright. I think in a lot of ways it translates well to the stage. Not in all ways. I think, particularly the structure of the songs in the film means that you get basically all of the songs in the first half of the theatre production. Yeah.
BronwenAnd that means the second half is a bit lacking. Very similar to Wicked in that sense, that you the songs in the first half so much better than the second half.
MeganYeah. Yeah. I thought Olaf was horrifying.
BronwenI thought he was quite cute.
MeganHow funny. I thought his head singing on its own was quite creepy. I thought the guy who was playing him was immensely talented, being able to do the puppetry and singing at the same time. Amazing. I just thought I'm not surprised.
BronwenI will say, I did think as I saw him, I was like, I think that's quite cute. I did think he's probably that's probably quite marmite-like.
MeganSome people think I thought he was proper nightmare fuel. To to clarify, I actually, in the film, I think Olaf is very funny. As you say, Josh Gadd's performance, brilliant. Yeah. I don't like Olaf's design. I find him off the superficially. So I guess then when that was translated and exaggerated on the stage, I was like, no, get him away from me. That's hilarious.
BronwenThat is so funny. Oh, that's so funny. I thought that the dancing was great. Yes. The puppetry for Sven, you were going to get about Sven, it was amazing. I I loved, I don't love Sven in the film. I find Sven creepy and disturbing in the way that you find on stage Olaf. He's not a nightmare if you want to talk about that. I don't find that, but I thought the way that they did Sven was brilliant.
MeganI remember ages ago seeing um a lady do a video of how she gets into the Sven costume, and she's there in like so it's one person. Really? Yeah.
BronwenAnd she's there in these like massive high heels. As I was watching it, I was comparing it to Hercules, which is sort of obviously. Well, it's taken over in the same theatre. Yeah. Oh, is it the same theatre? Yeah. Um, I thought the staging of this was a lot better. It felt a lot more magical. I felt a lot more transported. And I thought it was surprisingly good considering they weren't able to use real snow. Obviously, you've got like, you know, um Samantha Barks was able to do like she'd put her hand out and like some s like and like snow come up, which I thought was really cool. But they made managed to make me think, like, yeah, I'm in Arundel in the snow. And that through the screen as well.
MeganLike, we weren't even there for a live performance, they just recorded it. So that's pretty impressive that that translates.
BronwenI thought finishing on Let It Go for the Interval Made Sense. Yeah, could have predicted that. It's the Define Gravity, isn't it?
MeganBut it is, it's yeah. I thought it made sense that they did a reprise of Let It Go at the end as well.
BronwenLike, yes, we're all here but let it go. That's why everyone's here. I said I'm not sure what that I liked what they did with the trolls. They had to make them human. Oh, I liked the trolls. Oh, did you? We completely just I I said I I I understand they're the hardest character to adapt for the stage, but they were too human for my taste.
MeganI mean I just don't like the trolls generally, but Well, yeah, I don't particularly like them in the film and they are responsible for everything that goes wrong. That is so true. But I liked how they were like slightly sinister um in the production. I just felt they felt quite they they felt more grown up as a concept than the silly thing as but that then meant I didn't think that Fixer Upper worked very well given that they'd established these more sinister.
BronwenI did I said I didn't like the change that the changes they made to Fixer Upper, but it's not my favourite song anyway. So um
Depiction of women
Bronwenso shall we talk about sort of feminism or women in this film? It's a very female story.
SPEAKER_03Yes, let's do it.
BronwenI don't, to be honest, I've I think most of my thoughts on it I've kind of already spoken about. I loved the Disney roasting itself with the you can't marry a man you've just met. Yes, the self-roast, and that's this whole film felt like a bit of a self-roast from that sense. I thought that was really good. Definitely passes the Bectal tests.
MeganYes, for the first time, I think we have a definite past.
BronwenA definite pass, like a definite not scraping by.
MeganYes, not trying to work out is this a named character? Yeah, do they speak back to each other? This way we can go, no, there's so much of women talking to each other in this, it's great.
BronwenSo I was reading a little bit about what the two main actresses, actors, whichever they prefer, had to say in terms of the film. And this touched a bit on feminism. And when she was talking about her approach to Anna, Kristen Bell said that she had dreamed of being in a Disney animated film since she was four. Oh I always loved Disney animation, but there was something about the females that was unattainable to me, their posture was too good and they were too well spoken, and I feel like I really made this girl more relatable and weirder and scrappier and more excitable and awkward, and I'm really proud of that. I think she does a really good manner. Because Kristen Bell is a I love Kristen Bell, she's great in everything. Yes, and she's so funny, very funny, and yeah, she brought this slightly more oddball, slightly chaotic vibe.
MeganVery believable as well. Sometimes there's sort of a modern problem with female characters that kind of the quirky female character can be a bit yeah, exactly can be a bit unbearable and they're all the same and not very realistic. But I feel like Kristen Bell injected so much of herself into Anna that it just felt very believable.
BronwenYes, I think she's very believable, definitely. And then Edina Menzel said that she felt that Frozen is a bit of a feminist movie for Disney, which is that I'm really proud of that. It has everything, but it's essentially about sisterhood. And she said, I'm not sure if I if I agree with this. She said, I think that these two women are competitive with each other, but always trying to protect each other. Sisters are just so complicated, it's such a great relationship to have in movies, especially for young kids. I don't see the competition. No, I don't at all. No, I I see that. What a serious thing to say. I see Anna as desperately wanting to have a relationship with her older sister and not understanding why she can't, and Elsa desperately wanting to look after her younger sister and so keeping her away, and so their kind of motivations are kind of there's a friction there. Obviously, that's kind of the point of the film, but I don't see competition, interestingly.
MeganI mean that would sort of I feel like that would imply having the same goals in life and that therefore competing at them, and I just don't feel like they have the same goals.
BronwenI don't think there is an airspare thing going on. No, we don't have Anna who is sort of you know the scar character of being the young sibling and sort of wants to overthrow. There's not that about her at all. I think she's quite happy being a younger sister of a queen, and she just wants to love her sister Mr. Queen. That's all she wants. Yeah. Yeah, she's excited about the coronation and yeah, all of those things. So I don't really see that. Interesting that she read that into it somehow. I mean, maybe it was just a slip at the top. Yeah, it was on the spot, she was being asked about it. Yeah. If you compare it, for example, it's interesting that Adina Menzel would say that particularly, seeing as she played Alphaba. If you compare Alphabet and Glinda, they're clearly in competition with each other. They're set up as yeah, having the same sort of goals. And Elsa and Anna, there's there's a lot of these, yeah, wicked and frozen do have a lot of similarities across them. But the relationship between Anna and Elsa feels a lot purer.
MeganI think it's just worth pointing out the fact that Jennifer Lee, so uh she was brought on as a story writer, but she was promoted to co-director because she'd been so important in it, and that made her the first female director of a Walt Disney animated feature.
BronwenNo, it took into 2013. But it happened, so that's that is a very important thing to point out. Thank you for pointing that out.
MeganYeah. I just uh made a little note about how Anna saves Christoph from the wolves, which I thought was an interesting like parallel with the wolves scene in Beauty and the Beast. Yes, where the beast saves Belle from the wolves. So we've got obviously a lot of this story is about subverting our expectations and subverting those traditional tropes, and that that was an example of it. And then the only other thing I was thinking about was I remember at the time some I would say maybe conservative critics talking about how Elsa, particularly when she sings the song Let It Go, she suddenly becomes like sexy. And they were criticising it being a children's film for that messaging. And I will say that when we were watching it, I hope you won't mind me saying this, that that transformation moment, Nicholas went, oh, she has hips. And I think it was just the way she was moving, she suddenly starts kind of is it her being sexy or is she being confident? That is exactly what I have written. I have written that. I think she just becomes confident. And confidence. And confidence is sexy. Yeah, she's just yeah, she's moving very confidently. Like, so I mean, there are much there are much skimpier Disney dresses. I'm thinking here of Tinkerbell.
Bronwen100% yeah, Tinkerbell. Yeah.
MeganThis is actually a very covering dress. Yeah, it's it's uh she's got bare shoulders, yeah, but uh it's very covering in every other way. And the in and yeah, she's just moving and um looking confident.
BronwenI mean, that just sounds like classic conservative commentary, yeah, really. Speaking about the that animation, I really love the character animation on both Elsa and Anna. I think it really showing their personalities. We s I think you do see Elsa going from being kind of like quite jerky movements or to let it go where there's much more fluidity. And Anna sort of the bouncing around and jumping. I love it in the first time in Forever where she's sort of jumping up against the paintings. Oh yeah, it's gonna be. I love that. I think that's yeah, I think that's a lovely scene. So yeah, I think I love how the animation complements like their personalities and the change in terms of that groove and yeah, the hip swing.
Final thoughts
BronwenSo Megan, what are your final where does this film currently come in your rankings? Oh gosh. Um like kind of what are your final impressions on the film?
MeganI don't think my rankings are terribly reliable to be honest. I feel like everything moves around quite a lot. That's okay.
BronwenThat's alright.
MeganJust where is it today? Today, today, today, today. Let's have a look. It is certainly in the top half, it's at number 19. Similar to me, it's at number 17. Oh right! Oh, I'm kind of surprised actually you put it higher than I did. I would have predicted it'd be the other way around.
BronwenIt's gone up, actually. This watching, it's gone up. I feel like frozen fever has gone down, perhaps a bit. Sort of like the obsession with frozen has gone down, so I feel like I can enjoy enjoy it a little bit more without feeling like I have to enjoy it because everyone loves this film.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
BronwenSo yeah, it's at number 17 for me. Um so similar.
MeganYeah, similar. I mean, I I think in terms of a star rating, I'm sitting at about four stars. Same, same. Because I think so much about it is really good. I love the music, I love the look of it, it's really beautiful, colour palette in particular. I do think it's funny. Yeah. Oh, something I haven't really said, so I've already kind of given the criticism of it being potentially a bit overcomplicated. I also don't like the way they handled the plot twist because I think they give us zero indication that emotion's evil.
BronwenYeah. And that's a cheat. And kind of linking back to our last podcast, thinking about mystery, like what people like to be able to put clues together. Exactly. Yeah, you're given nothing. Like well, it's made me think about Hans, and that's actually a really interesting question. Do you think that Hans was evil the entire time, or do you think he turned when he kind of realised he could use this situation with the sisters to kind of get more power for himself?
MeganSo I think he implies that he's been planning this all along. I don't like that. Because he does he everything makes him seem like a good guy, and there's even so, particularly when you know the twist and then you're watching it with that knowledge, yeah. Nothing, nothing gives you a little hint. And there are things that give you the opposite hints, like when he's first met Anna, and then she walks away, and you've got the final shot of him in the bows, and then he looks after her kind of ha lovingly.
BronwenKind of almost you kind of can see that they've added him in at the last minute, and perhaps we're not quite sure how they were gonna handle him.
MeganYes, I don't think he's kind of developed as a character. No, I agree, I agree. So that's my my main criticism, really. So that's uh yeah, that's where I am. So how about you? What are your final thoughts of the film, Bon Wendy?
BronwenYeah, I I think it's a it's a very good film. It's a very good film. Do I think it deserved all the hype that it got? Compared to other Disney films that I do not think have got their flowers in the same way. No, but it is a very good film. I mean I've put it at number 17 out of 64. Are we on? Yeah. The animation is phenomenal, it's sublime to look at, and it's yeah, one of their best uses of computer animation. The songs are lovely. I I love the relationships between Anna and Elsa and the way that they are performed, both in terms of the animation and the work of Kristen Bell and Adina Menzel, they do such a great job. I think there are holes in the story, I don't think it quite works. I think they overble it a bit, but that's frozen for you. They kind of try and do too much. I'm gonna leave you with one last thought, though. Tangled is better than frozen. Meg, don't you think that's true? Oh, the pressure to answer that question.
MeganI do agree.
BronwenThe old war, the old war. And when we get to tangled, I will wax lyrical about why I think that is. But yeah, I I think that for its time in terms of the era that it comes in, tangled is a bet better constructed film.
MeganOh, and actually, that's interesting in terms of what you said about the music being the best since the Renaissance. My first thought was of Tangled, which is Alan Mencken music. It is.
BronwenYeah.
MeganYou stand by what you say. I stand by what I say.
BronwenI stand by what I say. So I think that's that's it for our frozen podcast. We have defeated frozen. That's I mean, that's a big one to have in the can. Yeah. Yeah.
MeganYeah. We've we've had Snow White, we've had Frozen. Yeah, these are these are big films. What could be next?
BronwenTime to decide!
The next film draw
MeganAnd of course, Frozen 2 is now in the so it could be Frozen 2.
SPEAKER_03Bromwen, are you ready?
BronwenI am ready to choose our next film. Okay. This is the one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. The princess and the frog. Oh, okay. I'm telling you that. Yeah. It's gonna be an interesting one to do next to this one because the two princess stories.
MeganYeah, and close together in time. We're just going back four years. Only four years. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool.
BronwenAnd another one that we didn't watch together.
MeganNo, oh, I've got no idea when I first saw it. Oh dear. Yeah, so you're not gonna be able to use your Tumblr to work that one.
BronwenI don't think so, no. Oh, but Tiana's gonna be such an interesting person for me to talk about. Tiana!
MeganYeah, and I I love Tiana. I think I mentioned in our introductory episode that she's one of my three top Disney characters. So yeah.
BronwenI don't like her bio adventure. It's it's scary. Oh it's lovely. It's lovely, like in terms of like the theming is wonderful, and um, I'm really I'm so happy that Tiana has a ride at Disney World, but it's scary. Would you not do it again? I would, but I think like frozen, like that that sort of drop is a bad way to be the frozen ride.
MeganOh, so so things that we need to think about. So history, I guess it's the kind of New Orleans setting. Is it setting like oh 1920?
BronwenI would guess. I was gonna guess something around there, yeah. Yeah, I think I mean the story, the original story of the princess and the frog.
MeganYes, yeah. Again, we're going to we're going to fairy tales. I can't think off the top of my head where the the princess and the frog story would have first come from. So I will look into that. No.
BronwenPsychology? I think well Tiana. Tiana and her uh I think she has uh she's another person I might want to do a bit of a character study on, like I've done with Elsa. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to have a bit of a think because I actually don't know the Princess and the Frog that well. I think I've only watched it twice. So I'm gonna have to go away and what watch it.
MeganOf course, we can't speak with much experience on any kind of race issues in it. We can do our best research.
BronwenSo yeah, but I think it'll be important to read and the expert the the views of people of colour, particularly women of colour, who kind of watched this and sort of saw themselves for the first time in 2009. The first time that a black character was the main character in a in a Disney film, which is absolutely insane.
MeganIt's one of the final pieces of 2D animation, of course.
BronwenYes. Okay, well, that's something for us to look forward to.
MeganYeah, definitely.
BronwenMegan, it's been a pleasure, as always.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it has.
BronwenI don't think there's much left to do now except uh Gamma Gamma Gama Gama Gama Gamma Gary.
MeganI was waiting for you to say something else. Bye, see you next time.
Outro
BronwenThis is not an official Disney podcast, and the views expressed are our own. Thanks for joining us on another stop on our walking tour through the Disney landscape. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, you can follow us at Gamble Sisters on Instagram. Be sure to subscribe and rate us wherever you listen to your podcast, and please recommend us to all your Disney pals.
MeganToo leap as opposed to the air. I'm thinking of Prince Harry again. We love you, Prince Harry. Do we? I don't hate it the moment.
BronwenSo I'm gonna give a shout out, okay.
MeganWe know you're listening, Harry. I can relate to Prince Harry.
BronwenI'm a youngest little.
MeganOh, maybe that's the thing. Yes, okay, okay.