Review: Frozen is (almost) a feminist fairy tale

My review, Twitter length: 
"@dancingdiva Frozen is great! The point is sister love, girl power, independence. No Prince Charming needed/wanted! If only there was a strong brown girl."

If you have a short attention span or are short on time, that's all you need to know. Otherwise, let me elaborate.

Background: 
Last night I rented Frozen to watch with my 9-year-old granddaughter, who I'll call Sidekick. I've been curious about the movie since Sidekick has been obsessed with the music for months, playing it on constant rotation. Her mother is ready to kill me, since I bought Sidekick the soundtrack. And even I'm sick of it, in the once a week dose I get on "Grandma Wednesdays."

Apparently we are not alone. School-aged  and preschool kids worldwide can't get enough of the Frozen soundtrack and their parents are slowly going insane, applying limits on how often the music can be played, even hiding it to survive the weekends. The theme song, "Let it Go," has become an anthem for girls especially, everywhere. (And gay men are loving it up, too.)

What is it with that song, I've been wondering? So a couple of weeks ago I asked Sidekick why she loved the song sooo much, and she said, "Because she has Frozen powers, of course!" I looked up the lyrics to dig a little deeper into what she meant, and it really is an amazing song about empowerment:

"...My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back,
The past is in the past
Let it go, let it go
And I'll rise like the break of dawn
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand
In the light of day
Let the storm rage on,
The cold never bothered me anyway..."

 In case you live in a world void of young girls or the Oscars, check it out yourself, sung by the incredible Idina Menzel. (Sorry to those of you who have PTSD around constant repeat of this song. Just don't press play.)

When the song came on early in the movie, Sidekick jumped up and exclaimed, "This is MY song" with such conviction and sang along with such passion that I *almost teared up (okay I cried a little).

Review: 
So, on to the review (it's not a traditional review, so look up others if you want more plot detail). Also, spoilers galore.

There are two princess sisters, Elsa and Anna, in a Scandinavian land of some sort in olden days. Elsa, the oldest, has magical powers related to ice and freezing things. Rather than embracing her powers, she is told they are dangerous and she must hide them and stay locked away, creating much loneliness for both she and her sister (she accidentally hurt her sister with them when they were playing once). Their parents are soon dead, FYI, but the rule to stay locked up and separated in the castle sticks throughout their growing up

Then, finally, when Elsa gets to the age where she can be queen of the land, the doors and windows to the castle are thrown open for a big coming out party, and at the festivities little sister Anna even meets a visiting prince, who she becomes engaged to in one day (I thought the plot was going to tank here, but hang on). When Anna tells Elsa her news and asks for her blessing, Elsa says no, it's too soon and an argument ensues. Elsa loses one of her protective gloves during the argument and accidentally (again) lets her powers fly and freezes all the land. She believes she has no power to unfreeze things, so she runs away to protect the people. But alone, out in the snowy mountains, she releases her powers with great emotion and makes a totally fly ice castle for herself. This is when "Let it Go" is sung.

Message 1: Use your power, do you, and it's okay to be on your own. Let it go.

Anna sets out to find her sister and bring her back. During the course of that adventure she is told by a nice dude she meets that it is a bad idea to get engaged after only one day because you don't really know the person and might not like how they pick their nose. At this point Sidekick inserts loudly, "That's right, watch out for him, he's a liar and evil!" (She has seen the movie already, which only serves to give her more passion for the story.)

Message 2: Don't leap into love. 

As the story progresses, Anna and the love-advice dude go searching for Elsa. When they find her and the ice castle, they are rejected and sent away violently by Elsa, who accidentally again hurts Anna. This time she hits her heart with an ice shard, which will eventually kill Anna by freezing her heart. We later learn from the dude's adopted troll community that only an act of true love can heal a frozen heart.

I get a little worried here again that we are turning to the standard Disney plot as they head back to the castle to find her fiance to kiss her and fix her with his true love. But keep holding on.

Anna ends up back in the castle and we learn her fiance is indeed an asshole, who is scheming to take over the *kingdom, and he locks her in a room to slowly freeze to death. He then sets out to find and kill Elsa so he can be king. At this point Sidekick screams, "But you can't win because they are stronger than you!"

Message 3: Girl power, duh.

My memory of the plot gets a little fuzzy here, but both Elsa and the dude helping Anna are racing back to the castle. Anna breaks free of the castle and even as she is dying, starts making her way to dude, thinking now that he is the one who truly loves her and can save her. But hang on, that tired plot line turns again.

Just as Anna sees dude, she also sees her sister Elsa and that she is about to be killed by Anna's now former fiance. So, despite being near death, Anna turns from her oncoming dude to her sister and throws herself between Elsa and former fiance, becomes frozen, and deflects the sword so Elsa lives. Sidekick yells, "That's right, your family is more important than your boyfriend." (Really, she YELLED that, I'm not making this up.)

Elsa can't believe what has happened and wraps her arms around the frozen Anna, sobbing. Before long (yes you can see what's coming), Anna melts because her act of true love to save her sister, and her sister's true love for her in return are enough to heal a frozen heart, and indeed an entire frozen body. 

Message 4: Remember who counts. Family first. Sisters rock. The power of love (in non-romantic forms).

Then Elsa realizes that she can control her powers with the strength of love, and uses her love for her people to melt the land and summer returns.

The story ends with the bad guys rounded up and sent off, and Elsa takes her place as queen, using her frozen powers to throw a kick-ass ice skating party in the middle of summer. Dude who helped Anna asks if he can kiss her (gets consent!) and she gives him her cheek! (Sure you can kiss me but we are just friends, buddy.) He sells ice for a living so he is made the official royal ice man. 

And the sisters live happily every after. Together.

People, there is NO Prince Charming in this story, not even a back-up Prince or a side Prince or a *commoner who is anointed prince. The story is not about finding true happiness through love of a man, preferably a rich man. Not at all. It's (almost) a feminist fairy tale!

After it was over, I asked Sidekick what she thought the movie was about and she said (as if she was schooling me), "Grandma, come on, it's about finding your true self." 

Message 5 (as spoken by a wise 9-year-old): Happiness comes from finding your true self and living your truth.

What's missing: 
Brown people. Yes, it's set in Scandinavia, but that is no excuse. Also, nothing queer, not even a subtext. Again, inexcusable in 2014 (I might be wrong. See update at the bottom for a potential queer moment). And Elsa and Anna are stereotypes in their appearance - white, pretty, blonde (and red) haired, blue eyed, skinny, silly gowns. We can do better. But for Disney, Frozen overall is serious progress so I'm feeling a little forgiving, except on the lack of diversity. Sidekick is brown and I REALLY WANT her (and all girls like her) to feel that much passion for and attachment to a story revolving around someone who looks like her/them.

So I'm making an ask. We need a movie as wonderful as Frozen that stars a brown girl. Remember Tiana, the only Black Disney princess, who spends half the film as a frog and they rest chasing her prince? We deserve a do over, Disney. So many of we parents and grandparents of Black girls were hopeful, wanting a story to get our daughters excited about, but it just went flat, for them and for us. No wonder.

I'm not the only one sick of lily white Disney princesses. I'm just late to the table on the Frozen critique, having waited to rent it. See some of the many reactions in this July 2013 Indiewire article.

Segue: 
I'm going to end here by making a leap to Lupita Nyong'o, who just won an Oscar for her incredible work in her role as a brutalized young slave in "Twelve Years a Slave." We watched her on all the red carpets and she captivated us with her talent, beauty, and sexiness. Which has caused some to call (again) for roles for Black actors beyond slaves, maids, pimps, and whores. Amen to that!

Rumor has it that Nyong'o is being considered for a lead in the next Star Wars movie (along with Michael B. Jordan!), and for a film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's amazing, award-winning book, Americanah! If Hollywood can make that necessary step forward, then Disney surely can make an animated feature where a young Black girl saves the universe through her strength, courage and wisdom. 

That's where we go from Frozen. 

March 21 update:
Wait, there may be a teeny-tiny queer moment in the movie. Read number 5 in this PolicyMic article! (The store guy is gay and his hubby and kids are in the sauna!)

Review: "The Help" doesn't help white people

If you've missed the outpouring of negative reviews, tweets, and general outrage over the release of the movie version of The Help from voices in the African American community, you've had your head in the sand. To bring yourself up to speed, read these reviews before continuing with this post:

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help, by the Association of Black Women Historians

Black-and-White Struggle with a Rosey Glow, by Nelson George

And for balance, here is an interesting interview with Octavia Spencer about her role as Minnie Jackson, one the of maids, and the movie overall.

Another great source for ongoing discussion of the movie is to search the hashtag #TheHelpMovie on Twitter. All kinds of people have lots to say.

I finally saw the movie tonight and came loaded for anger after reading all of that outrage. I was shocked to find myself liking it more than I thought I would. I could see and understand that the movie was a sugarcoated, whitewashed version of what really happened during Jim Crow, but it didn't send me into a fury. It didn't go far enough, but it wasn't that bad, through my lens. I was disappointed I didn't hate it.

That got me thinking about how differently black and white people are experiencing the movie and wondering why. Is there a white perspective on the movie, and if so, what is it?

Let's start with comedian Louis CK, who sums up things pretty well here:


Sadly what makes this spot so hilarious is that most white people are pretty clueless about our privilege.

We are also pretty clueless about the varied experiences of African American people of all education and economic backgrounds, from slavery to today.

I came of age in the sixties and early seventies, during the time in which The Help is set, and when the civil rights movement was in full force, changing our country forever. But I barely knew it was happening.

The environment I grew up in was virtually all-white, middle class suburbia. Anything I knew about Black people, slavery, Jim Crow, or the civil rights movement came from the history I was taught in school, what I saw on TV, or from the very brief, infrequent conversations we had about those topics at home. Which means I knew Jack, and what I did know was mostly distorted, watered down, or an outright lie. This is true for most white people.

I didn't begin to get another point of view until college, when I had my first opportunities to meet Black people, say stupid stuff in front of them, be called a racist, and thanks to the beginnings of African American Studies and Women's Studies programs, take classes that deconstructed the hell out of my naive reality.

More than 35 years and thousands of experiences later, I am no longer clueless. Yet I am clued-in just enough to understand that what I know about being African American is only by proxy, despite the fact that my most intimate and important relationships are with people who are Black, including my children, my grandchildren, and my spouse.

But I'm fortunate. Most white people stay in segregated enclaves and never get the chance to grow or to understand anything outside of our distorted realities.

So the stakes are very, very high for African American people whenever a movie comes out about The Black Experience, especially if it is a white person trying to tell the tale. (There is also the Tyler Perry debate, but that's a whole other post.)

No wonder people are seething at how The Help falls short, glossing over the exploitation and brutality of the time, and appropriating the real story of Black maids in the Jim Crow south by making the central character a white person who saves the day.

Which is exactly why movies like The Help are not helpful for white people. Most of us have not had enough experiences or education outside of our white worlds to have any critical context and perspective about what we are watching. We falsely think it is The Truth. Liberal white people in particular have a hard time wrapping our heads and hearts around the ugly truth of our nation's racial history without becoming paralyzed with guilt. Many liberal white people want desperately to believe that things are almost all better now, especially since we elected a Black man president.

The great racial divide is alive and well. Same country, two different worlds. And it's all playing out in reactions to this movie.

Read the screen grabs below from actor Wendell Pierce's Twitterstream. He recounts watching the movie with his mother, who was The Help at one point in her life, as was his grandmother. He sums up the great divide perfectly, 140 characters at a time. Especially this: "Watching the film in Uptown New Orleans to the sniffles of elderly white people while my 80 year old mother was seething, made clear [the] distinction."

Read from the bottom to the top:

Pierce: "The story was a sentimental primer of a palatable segregation that is Jim Crow light."

Yes. The The Help lets white people off the hook. It creates a partial truth that allows us to feel less guilty about Jim Crow and all the bad things our ancestors did during slavery because the feel-good outweighs the feel-bad, to keep our heads collectively in the sand about how we still benefit from all our privilege, and to be in denial about the incredible racist backlash caused by President Obama's election and how bad things still are for most Black people today.

There is an opportunity in all of this. White people, if you were moved by the movie (thanks in part to the amazing actors who play the maids) and are curious about the vocal controversy surrounding it, seek out knowledge about what it really meant to be The Help. We share this history. We need to understand it.

I recommend these books as a place to start:

Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

And here is a list of books offered up by Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) after she did some scathing live tweeting while watching The Help. A great recounting of her tweets and an interview with her about the movie can be found here.

(Again, read from the bottom up.)

Note to readers: In all the searching I've done for reviews and responses, I've not found one critical piece by someone who is white. If you know of any, please leave them in the comments sections. Thank you.

Sept 18 Update: Read this great post by 74 year old Janet Cheatham Bell, an accomplished author who once worked as a maid. 

"It's Complicated" -- a plausible romantic comedy for aging baby boomers

My spouse and I (we married three years ago at mid life -- a detail important to this review) trudged out in the snow and ice on Christmas Day to see "It's Complicated," a romantic comedy starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. And guess what, my fellow over-50 people, it works! It's plausible! It's hilarious! The characters are sexy in a way that fits for their age; they reveal their aging bodies in a way that is charming, self aware, and not at their expense (a chubby Baldwin, sagging eyelids on Streep). They make poor dating/sex decisions and get their hopes dashed and feelings hurt as a result, just like older people who are dating do. (Yes, some things never change. What is it about sex and romance that can make us lose our minds, whether we are 25 or 55?)

Even though the characters all had a lot more money than me, were heterosexual, their adult kids were well adjusted (actually a little too well adjusted), and everyone was white, I knew their story. As someone who got divorced, dated throughout her forties, and married in her 50s, I could envision myself in the story. "It's Complicated" is not some misguided fantasy about what's possible at mid-life and beyond; it's a very funny comedy about what -- indeed -- is possible.

The audience included mostly aging baby boomers like me, but there was a decent showing of under thirties, too. I wanted to ask them what they thought. Did they imagine their parents as they watched the movie? Was it plausible to them? My twenty-something kids have a hard time wrapping their arms around the fact that I still like to go out and dance, fall in love, have and like sex, and that it's not gross or over the hill -- it's simply living!