We went to see Frozen today, the Disney animated movie, because Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises wasn’t playing anywhere quite near or convenient enough for today’s schedule, and because Frozen is apparently the favorite for the Oscar this evening… and, thirdly, because there’s been a blogosphere kerfuffle about the film’s supposed ‘gay agenda’, and I was curious to see what this was all about.
I’m afraid I didn’t see the gay agenda. Yes, there’s a stirring anthem, “Let It Go”, about accepting oneself — but in the film, it’s about accepting one’s curse and exiling oneself from family and society. Hardly the kind of situation a gay propagandist would arrange. I liked the film’s brilliant execution of standard fantasy/family drama themes — the plot and songs all play very broadly — and for its occasional stirring of cliches — how Anna is mocked repeatedly for falling in love and intending to marry a guy she just met that day, a common fairy tale/Disney film cliche. And asides for the adults in the theater; “It’s got a cupholder!”. As for the supposed gay agenda, yes there’s a campy character, the snowman Olaf, but C3PO was campy too, and no one accused Stars Wars of promoting a gay agenda.
So what then? I heard about this via a post by Rob Watson on evoL, a gay dads’ site, responding to the post by one Mormon grandmother Kathryn Scaggs. Just now I am reading the original post by this Mormon woman who took her grandchildren to see the film several months ago, in which she now expresses her grave concerns. Well, actually, skimming it — it’s very long, and she seems intent on interpreting every plot point as an analog to the position of gays in society.
I think she, as the many right-wing and evangelical critics of gays, doth protest too much. One cannot help but wonder why they are quite so obsessed with this topic. Hmm…
I will quote only Rob Watson:
Yes, Ms. Skaggs. The movie had a hidden message. It had a message of love, and hope. It had the desire to melt the closed heart and inspire it to let go, and love other people. It wants the target of its message to warm from within and to accept others as they are, and give them the freedom to live their best and fullest lives. What you got wrong is this: that message was not targeted at your grand kids.
It was meant for you.
