Frozen and Gender Roles

~Spoiler-free~

This winter, people fell in love with Frozen, Disney’s latest installment in their long-running series of princess movies. This is a list which generally is seen as an exhausted sequence of recycled themes and plots – a flat, lifeless franchise, which only survives by successively re-skinning the same tired narrative. One of the main criticisms of these movies is that characters are often so limited by their gender; many times decaying into rigid personality models which viewers simply feel they’ve seen before. However, Frozen showed the whole world that an old animation studio really can learn new tricks. Disney majorly departed from their classical mold, updating the movie for a savvy modern audience. It does this with groundbreaking visual effects, a masterful soundtrack, and characters that shatter longstanding clichés. Yet, Frozen also appeals to society’s changing perceptions about gender and sexuality. Though the big screen, Disney has created a piece of art which represents contemporary viewpoints concerning the roles of men and women.

One of the most tired clichés in princess movies is the main female protagonist. In Disney’s early days, she was an idealistic feminine paragon, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, a petite young woman who falls into trouble and has to be rescued by her prince charming. As time passed, the feminist movement gained momentum and Disney altered their model to fit the ideas of the time. Newer Disney princesses like Bell and Pocahontas are independent, determined, and strong-willed. That way, they fit changing perceptions about womanly behavior. However, this is still an idealistic view of the way women ought to act, which is why audiences quickly tired of this model as well. Frozen is different in that it does not force its female protagonists, Ana and Elsa, to conform to any one model. These two characters are simply people, which means they have unique personalities all their own. For example, Ana is independent, strong-willed, and gregarious, but she is also romantic to a fault and at times can be incredibly awkward. Likewise, Elsa is a respectable, intelligent leader, yet she still struggles with her inner emotions. In a sense, Disney snatched-up its own mold, and then turned it on its head. And the results are fantastic. Both of the main protagonists fundamentally feel like real people, not despite their flaws, but because of them. Disney has shrewdly demonstrated how society is conquering long-held beliefs about woman by opting to treat them like people instead of portraits.

Frozen is also likely the first Disney movie that would definitely pass the Bechdel Test. This test was devised by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985 in order to gauge gender bias in movies. To pass the test, a movie must meet three simple criteria: one–it has more than one woman in it, two–those women talk, and three–at least one of their conversations is about something besides a man. Obviously, it’s not a very difficult test, but it is surprising how many movies fail it. However, Frozen definitely passes. Ana and Elsa talk throughout movie, and although some of their conversations are about men, many are not. Mostly, they talk about their relationship with each other. So, instead of placing emphasis on a woman’s ability to marry and have children, Disney highlights how women can care about others, including their sisters.

In addition to responding to changing expectations of women, Frozen also includes characters that do not fit with traditional manly stereotypes. A great example is Olaf, the snowman who joins Ana on her adventure. Although Olaf is male, he is never afraid to show his emotions. He loves to shower affection onto the people he cares about, and is very sensitive to others’ feelings. Not only that, he also likes to talk about his own physical appearance, much like one would expect a teenage girl to do while shopping – admiring his new nose or looking forward to being tan. Most likely, if Olaf were a human character instead of an anthropomorphized snowman, many people would think he is gay. And who knows, maybe Olaf is cinema’s first LGBT snowman. But that isn’t the point. By making Olaf a snowman, Disney ingeniously legitimized his behavior, making it seem okay or even normal. In this way, Disney’s new movie is in-line with changing present-day perceptions about sexual orientation.

Yet, Frozen does more than break stereotypes with its characters’ personalities. Using their behavior, it also addresses changing gender roles. One example is the idea that men should be the breadwinner of the household and women should be the caretaker. In modern times, this perception has greatly shifted, and Frozen demonstrates this. When Ana leaves on her adventure, her fiancé Hans asks if he should go with, because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. But Ana does not need a man to “protect” her, so she asks Hans to stay home and take care of the kingdom. Although Disney has made this purposefully subtle, it’s still noticeable.

And of course, Frozen is not the first piece of media to tackle gender roles. However, most seem to do it with a classic role reversal, wherein the woman takes on traditional manly traits – like going to work at an office, and the man takes on traditional womanly traits – like staying home to clean. In some ways, this approach does more harm than good, because the challenge to traditional gender roles is seen as humorous or ironic, not serious and acceptable. Therefore, Frozen does it better by resisting this shallow method. It is true that Ana takes on traditional manly traits by embarking on an adventure, by Hans does not suddenly morph into a housewife. Instead, he takes on the role of a leader, managing a government and organizing its people. In a lot of ways, this represents an ideal modern household, where both participants have important fulfilling jobs, and they work together to get by.

There are other times where Frozen challenges gender roles and traditional views about ideal men and women; for example: no one in Arendelle questions the legitimacy of a female head of state. However, the movie does not get it perfect. It still utilizes character models with idealized physiques, giving female characters humongous eyes and slim waists, and giving male characters large builds and huge muscles. However, the thing that makes Frozen refreshing is the fact that the creators never tried to profit from the movie’s modern social values. It was advertised and targeted the same way as any other Disney movie, towards kids, not social reformers. This is great because kids who watch the movie will start to think of these things as normal. And isn’t that the kind of world modern children need to grow-up in, one where overturning gender roles is no longer a struggle, but a given? By the time these children reach adulthood, rigid gender roles could be a thing of the past.

For those of us who want to see gender equality, Frozen can offer a great deal of hope. Culture and movies are intimately connected so that one can hugely influence the other. The fact that Frozen is so popular means that it can start to change opinions, but the popularity also indicates a societal shift. In modern times, we have a new definition of gender, one where men, women, and others can act, think, and love any way they want. Therefore, Frozen is not so much a cause of change; rather, it is a symptom.

It is fun to think that one day Frozen will be viewed by cultural historians studying our time. They’ll talk about how media represents culture. They’ll say this was the time when people were beginning to widely accept other sexual orientations, a time when both men and women could start to hold any occupation they wanted, without having to feel out of place. Probably, some of those scientists will be men, and some women, and some gay, and some strait. And they’ll all work as a team, learning from each other’s strengths and weaknesses, thankful to have grown up in a world where gender perceptions do not get in the way.