Why Frozen wasn't that good

This isn't going to be a comprehensive post on why Frozen, to me, failed as a movie, as I've only seen it one time. However, I think I'll be able to adequately explain why I didn't really like it. It will contain spoilers.

First of all, I didn't really feel like any character was really developed well. The main characters - Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, and Hans were introduced in a moment and it felt like I was expected to know them really well without any real work done in helping their character grow. They establish that Elsa and Anna are good sisters, then introduce her parents just so they can kill them. Despite that, I feel like we never really get to know either Anna or Elsa. Sure, they each get their song about becoming the person they always wanted to be and getting to be free, but it's not really a big revelation to me because the movie has like 15 years pass (at least) where I don't see any real development happening [While on the wikipedia page, it was re-clarified to me that only 3 years passed. How old are these girls? 18 and 13? Maximum?]. To me, Elsa's character was like a less developed Rogue from X-men. Afraid to touch anyone for fear of killing them. Anna's character was even less believable. She still maintained this ABSOLUTE desire to be with her sister, and never really rebelled or questioned the state of the castle being nearly empty for her whole life. She alternately treats Elsa as a bosom buddy and unapproachable authority figure whenever the script requires.

Did I mention I don't like Olaf? He's horrible. Yeah, he's there because it's a kid's movie and kids enjoy the kind of stupid antics that Jar-Jar... I mean Olaf exhibits. Unfortunately, I stopped liking him somewhere around the second or third joke about catching his butt. What happened to the comic relief of old in Disney movies? Where are Timon and Pumbaa? Where are Cogsworth and Lumiere? Heck, not even of old! Where's Mike Rosowski? Or Russel? Or any of a HOST of secondary comedic characters that appeal to children and adults? Olaf was a sad attempt at injecting comedy and interest into a movie where there was none. In adding him, the writers made it clear that the movie was only meant for kids, and not for their parents. This saddens me a little, because it's usually something that Disney accomplishes really well.

They have an ENTIRE SONG with young Kristoff and his family (?) about ice but that angle is never really developed. I think it's only in there because the movie is called frozen. Then they throw it in later like - hey, this ice crisis is affecting this little boy we met for a moment in this song because he sells ice! He scoffs at and scolds Anna for becoming engaged to Hans after only knowing him for a day because hey, that's the funny trope that all Disney movies follow. BUT THEN HE FALLS RIGHT INTO IT. Both he and Anna (and Olaf, who is terrible) suddenly believe that after maybe 2 days that's where the true love is. Sure, I get it. That's not the love that ended up saving Anna, but they still fell for it, and the "love" continued through the end of the movie.

Speaking of false love, Hans' betrayal did definitely come as a surprise. I'll give you that. (even if it was so much of a surprise as to be sort of cheap.) But am I to believe that there were NO other guards on the princess? There was no one around at all to help her? No doctors, physicians, apothecaries, or anything? No priest prepared to give her death rites? Furthermore, in Arendelle, apparently it's enough to say that you shared marriage vows with the dying princess with no witnesses, officiants, documentation, or any proof of any sort and people will just believe you and treat you like you're the king. Forget the regular line of succession, and anyone else that may have a claim to the throne, this guy said he and the princess spoke marriage vows. Pack it up, people!

There are also these cool, little, magical stone-trolls that are introduced twice as a little gimmick and deus ex machina. That's cool I guess. But we see them twice and that's it. They don't even get to maintain an air of cool mystery and magic. That's ruined by their ridiculous song.

While I'm on the subject of songs, this movie really felt lackluster. I don't really know where they were going. The movie didn't really seem to have a style. It just felt really poppy, and the songs didn't really serve a purpose. It failed to strike a balance between moving the plot forward and giving us an insight into the character's feelings. It was really either one or the other. The snowman song was used to cover an insane amount of time, and it was a bad choice to do so. All it did was show me that Anna's character (remarkably) didn't change a bit over 3 years.

Let's get back to Elsa, because I have another point that revolves around her: her powers. I have no idea how her powers are supposed to work. She has no way of controlling them at first, then she does, then she doesn't, then she does. There's no real reason, or epiphany, or training that I see happen. I was hoping maybe she'd go with the stone trolls for a while to learn, or maybe she spent a lot of time in the mountains learning how to control her power. But NO! One moment, she's inadvertently and randomly freezing everything with abandon and with no control. Then she sings a song about how instead of being sad that she's cast out, she's happy because she's free... even though she's just as alone and isolated as she was in the castle. Except more so. (by the way, and I know this is a movie, and I know it might just be nitpicking, but how in the WORLD did she survive up there? Can she just live on ice powers? There's no food, no water, no ANYTHING... but she's fine.) After she sings her freedom song, she can suddenly create an incredible, structurally sound, architectural masterpiece just by wanting it. That's an incredible step forward in the use of her abilities. Then, she claims that she can't just control her powers. Then, she does, by creating a huge ice golem. Then she claims that she can't again while in prison. Then she totally stops the big freeze, just because she wants to. My problem is that there's no continuity to her ability. There's no training, there's no learning. She just ends up feeling her way through using her powers however the script requires.

Also, she's probably a terrible queen. Who was running the country before she was crowned? Did she even care? There was no obvious second in command in the movie. Also, at the end of the movie, she cuts off ALL TRADE with Weasleton, her biggest trade partner, because the ambassador was a douche. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Why not just punish the dude who sent people to kill you? Why punish all of your citizens by cutting off a major opportunity to make money, and cutting off whatever trade goods his country had that you don't have access to in Arendelle? It's celebrated as a major victory in the movie, when it's really just death sentence for a lot of her subjects.

Finally, this movie was utterly predictable. I will add that I can see why ladies might enjoy it more than boys. This is definitely a story about strong female-female relationships and I don't really have a personal connection with that experience. But it was easy to see from the talk with the stone-trolls about true love that it was really going to be the sister-sister bond that broke the spell and not male-female romantic love. Also, it was clearly going to be some sort of hug because of Olaf's incessant rambling. You could call this good foreshadowing, but I just don't think it was subtle enough to really count as foreshadowing.


Anyway, if you've read all this, thanks! It was a long ramble on a cartoon, and I'm glad you took the time to read it.

An Analysis of Metaphor in "Stereo Hearts"

            If you’ve turned on the radio recently, and gone to a pop music station, it’s very likely that you’ve heard the song “Stereo Hearts” by Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine. If you haven’t, you can find it here.  I’m not here to argue about whether the song is a good song (although, I must admit it is pretty darn catchy). Instead, I’m going to focus on the motifs and metaphors that the singers employ throughout this song.

            Most of the song focuses on the idea that the artist is literally a boombox, or a record. Which is kind of cool, and the comparison makes sense. I can understand how a famous musician might begin to feel that’s all he or she is – merely a jukebox used for the entertainment of others. I like where it’s going right now, and it seems that I may be getting a little more depth from pop music than I’m used to getting.

            Then the verse starts up, and my hope begins to wane slightly. The speaker opens with “If I was just another dusty record on the shelf, would you blow me off and play me like everybody else?” Analyzing these lyrics, I’m not sure whether the speaker’s audience can really make a positive choice in this situation. At first, it may seem to be a good thing to blow the dust off of an old record and play it as though it were new, like every other record. However, the terms “blow me off” and “play me” have gained a negative connotation in recent times. To the uninformed, they mean to ignore someone, or manipulate/use someone for one’s own gain respectively.

           

            The good interpretation implies that “everybody else” refers to other records, but this more negative interpretation hints that it actually refers to other women (and perhaps men) in the speaker’s past. This interpretation of  “play[ing]” the speaker is bolstered when a little later he says, “the last girl that played me left a couple cracks.” “Playing,” here, seems to be the more negative, manipulative version, rather than a positive version. But if this is the case, the only other option the speaker has given the audience is to leave it on the shelf gathering dust. Surely this isn’t a positive option either.

            The speaker asking if the listener could manage to “scratch [his] back” only further confuses the interpretation. Scratching a record is cool for a DJ, and usually pretty loved by audiences, but tends to damage the record itself pretty badly. However, scratching a human’s back usually has a positive connotation; it’s a helpful task that isn’t easy to manage by oneself. In addition, this is the kind of thing that leads “skipping tracks” that he mentions in the very next line.

            It seems to perhaps be a poorly constructed motif at this point, but I still hold out hope. It could just be really complex, and require more thought. I do like the little fake skip that happens in the very next line, literalizing the fact that there are scars that he holds from past loves and cementing in the record metaphor even more. In addition, the hopeless romantic in me can’t help but like the idea that the speaker’s “heart is a stereo that only plays for you.” The only time he is truly able to make music, truly able to fulfill his purpose as a musician is when it is for the listener. There’s something beautiful about that I just can’t deny.

            I start to lose that thin thread of hope during the next verse. The next cutesy comparisons to an old boombox (or ghetto-blaster as slang once named them), don’t really connect back to any sort of good picture at all. If he’s the boombox and she has to “carry him around wherever she walks” it sounds like a pretty lopsided relationship. This is only the beginning. Later, the speaker makes sure that the listener “won’t be mad” when she has to completely financially support him. Of course, he says it a little differently – “when she has to purchase mad d batteries.” (again, in case you don’t know, “mad” = a lot of)

            So, overall, this song disappoints me again. As does most pop music, but let’s be real, none of us really listen to pop music for the content. This song does have some nice turns of phrase, and the general cramming in of metaphors and wink-inducing lines do give it some merit. Unfortunately, it’s just not really well crafted enough for me to rejoice.

BONUS: Jason Derulo’s “It Girl” also doesn’t seem to know how to use clichéd metaphors very well. "25 to life" is a well known phrase used in a legal setting, when sentencing a convicted criminal to prison time. Something about comparing that to marriage with a woman whom you claim to love dearly just rubs me the wrong way.

The Hunger Games

            For the sake of not spoiling anything for anyone, the first bit I’m going to write will be relatively spoiler free. I won’t give away any huge plot points, but I’ve gotta talk about some small stuff. If you don’t want to read spoilers, don’t read past my subtle note. You’ll know where to stop.            

            I finally did it. I finished The Hunger Games. I’ve gotta say, I was a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the books were fun to read, especially the first one. It was kinda like popcorn. You could just keep on reading and not really think too hard about it. Which is really great, considering the age group the books are aimed at. It throws some good metaphors at you, but then makes sure that the characters or Katniss’ inner narration explain it fully, Kind of like the way Dickens does It’s a great entrance into critical reading, and I hope a lot of people start to read more complex literature after they devour these books.

            The whole series had an Ender’s Game feel to it. An exceptional young girl thrown into a situation way larger than anything she thought she could handle. Taking huge risks? Add in some awesome fight scenes and a really cool battlefield, and you’ve got me convinced! Yeah, the first book was positively a BLAST to read. You begin to hate the evil puppet-master in the background, controlling the people of the Districts, smelling like blood covered up with roses, forcing children to fight to the death to pay for the supposed wrongdoings of those who lived over 70 years ago.

           

            The first book is fast-paced and never really leaves you waiting for action. It’s a little dystopian. That is, it’s like a warning about what could happen to our own future if we let things go to far, like Brave New World or 1984. The whole book is a fun ride, and we follow our heroine through quite harrowing circumstances. There’s a little bit of focus on boys, but not too terribly much, and it’s understandable, given her age. Most of the book focuses on what’s important – the battle for her own life. And it’s a blast reading it. The coliseum that Suzanne Collins has given her gladiators to fight in is diabolical. Not only do the fighting children – they’re called tributes in the book – have to worry about the other tributes trying to kill them, they also have to worry about the whole environment around them. It’s littered with booby-traps for the unaware. The entire book leads up to a chilling cliffhanger that promises more action, and perhaps even war in the future.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

            Catching Fire is where I started to lose a little confidence. It started off great. We see Katniss outside of the games for a little while, and it’s ok. She’s dealing with the sort of things you’d expect her to deal with – her memories, the people she’s killed, getting her life back to a semblance of normalcy. But we want the action. We’ve seen the creative genius of Collins in book one, and we know that fireworks are going to go off at some point. And then we get her great, new idea. The idea that’s going to top the coliseum and wow me again! A NEW …. Coliseum? Oh, we’re going back to the coliseum. Oh… ok.

           

            Now, I’m giving her less credit than she deserves. In her defense, the new design of the coliseum is BOSS. It adds somewhat more of a level of scariness to the whole field, and the fact that it’s not untrained kids she’s going to fight, but previous winners, really does add an extra bit of “Oh no, Katniss will never survive this one!” That being said… it’s a coliseum again. It’s the same idea as before. I don’t know if you guys liked it, but for me, it felt a little recycled.

            Beyond that, the second book is where Katniss really started annoying me with the whole love triangle deal. I thought more than once, “Wait, why do these boys like her again?” And then I realized that they don’t even know themselves. It’s literally just written that they love her for no real reason. In one it was just sort of an instant thing, and the other it just kinda happened gradually. There’s no real reason behind either boy’s passion. Which, you know, okay. That’s a view that you can have on love. It’s just not very convincing from my end. That’s not even my real problem. She goes back and forth SO OFTEN on these two. “Ooh, I have to pretend to love boy A, but I really love boy B, but maybe I owe boy A my love, but no, I do really love boy A he’s so so so so so amazing, BUT HE SUBTLY MADE FUN OF ME ONE TIME I DON’T NEED EITHER OF THEM, no wait, I need boy B, blah blah blah blah blah.” Is this a story about a political rebellion? Did I just pick up Twilight? What’s happening?

            Thankfully, this romantic meandering didn’t REALLY take all that much time, and there were still some cool fight scenes in the (recycled) coliseum.

            Then we get to book 3. Oh yeah, baby. Mockingjay. Here we go. We’re finally gonna see the huge civil war that has been building since book 1. I wonder how the fight scenes are going to happen in this. Is there going to be a lot of warfare? OH MAN COOL HOVERPLANES AND BOMBS AND COOL TECH-ENHANCED ARROWS. I’m in. I wonder what the battle to the Capitol is going to look like! Urban warfare. So cool. What’s Collins gonna throw at me this time?

            What? It’s… it’s just like the coliseums? The capitol…. made the streets…. exactly like the coliseums. Oh. Well…. Ok. As long as she makes it really cool, I guess. What? We don’t even get to see half the action? Even if Katniss wasn’t in the action, we can’t make her a single friend who can come back and at least tell us a cool story? Oh. Well. Ok.

            Even when she finally DOES go into battle, it’s mostly sneaking around, and not much in the way of confrontation. People start acting ridiculously! They just do what Katniss says because SHE’S THE MOCKINGJAY. People with legit wartime experience, bow to what she says, when she’s clearly demonstrated that she knows next to nothing about tactical warfare. Perhaps it’s because she’s a great public speaker.

            No, wait. Everyone in this book has said many times that she is NOT good at public speaking. She simply can’t come up with things to say on the spot. They don’t sound heroic, or loving, or anything. They just sound lame. She can’t do it. But… but then she does it? Several times? When the hospital is destroyed? When the rebel shoots her? Huh? I thought she couldn’t speak well. That’s just bad continuity.

            But by far, my biggest complaint about Mockingjay is that it ridiculously anti-climactic. The entire book, indeed, the entire series, leads up to a confrontation between the President and Katniss. It just HAS to be awesome. I’m willing to forgive everything else that annoys me if this just gives me what I want. The whole book just begs for an awesome fight between the two. But then, Katniss, who apparently hates this man with her entire being trusts him. She trusts his assessment of the situation. WHAT? The very worst part of it all is that we don’t even get to see him die. After 3 books and nearly a thousand pages, ONE line is given to his death. “Oh, President Snow? No one really saw what happened to him. I guess he was either trampled or he choked on his own blood. Anyway, he’s dead.” DONE. No more is said about that.

            Sure, maybe Collins was trying to show that things can become more complicated than the way they seem at first, but she didn’t do nearly a good enough job of exonerating him if she didn’t want to write his death. It was just one big letdown. As a reader, why am I reading all of this stuff about how evil Snow is, how much Katniss hates him, how he orchestrated all of these horrors when I don’t even get to see retribution for it. I felt like I was promised a nuclear explosion, but got only embers. The girl on fire must have gotten doused, because she was nowhere to be found by the end of that book.

            I’m being a little harsh, and I’ll admit, the books kept me turning the pages. It was an interesting read, definitely fun, and I don’t regret reading them. But they certainly do not merit a re-read. If you really loved these books, try Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, or 1984 by George Orwell, or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This first step that The Hunger Games provided into critical reading should definitely lead there.

Once Upon a Time

            So I’ve been watching “Once Upon a Time,” the new TV show from the producers of LOST. (LOST, by the way, is probably the best piece of storytelling I’ve ever seen on a TV screen, and coincidentally, my favorite TV show of all time.) It definitely has that LOST feel to it – really character driven, and striking, fantastical plotlines. I’m only two episodes in, and the characterization of not only the main characters, but also of several secondary characters is so complete that I feel like I’ve known them for much longer than 2 hours.

            The way that the show blends classic fairytales with a modern spin is peerless. Each character has been artfully brought into the real world, with a personality and occupation to match their literary other. They’re also given clever names – Jiminy Cricket becomes Doctor Hopper, and Rumplestiltskin becomes Mr. Gold. This, by the way, has a sweet added side effect that you can try and match yourself, your friends, your teachers into who they might be; Prince Charming, Snow White, and even the Evil Queen can be found in your own circle of acquaintances. The English nerd in me can’t help but geek out at the subtle changes and allusions, the way that interpretation of the fairytales bleeds back into the real world. 

            For instance, in the storybook world, the king and queen must sacrifice their child in order to even have the hope that the Evil Queen’s curse will one day be lifted, and so the child may have its own best chance at a good life, saved from the curse. The way that this show begins introducing the idea of giving a child up for adoption for the same reason – not to save a child from a curse, but to give it a chance at real happiness – is beautiful. Just in case the audience wasn’t able to connect those dots, they have the 10 year old in the show figure it out (he’s a precocious little scamp). 

            Of course, it’s also around this time that I started thinking about Superman being sent to Earth in a rocket to save him from the destruction of Krypton, but I digress.

            What’s even cooler is that the writers have given themselves a huge amount of leeway by not sticking to merely one story. In the mythical storybook land, all characters from every story are present, and interact with each other. The focus is definitely on Snow White so far, but we’ve seen Geppetto, Pinocchio and even Maleficent.  There’s no limit to what they can do or add into the mix. 

            From the beginning of the show, I was curious about how they would deal with the classic problem of fairytale villains – they always know they’re evil. Time and time again, stories have been railed against in English classes because the bad guys (or girls) always declare themselves evil. In the real world, this just isn’t the case (which makes bad guys all the scarier) and a lot of writers have tried to expand on classic villains. It goes all the way back to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a book in which we learn about the crazy woman in the attic and how she’s not really the bad guy in the story. A more recent example is Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. He expands the back-story of the Wicked Witch of the West and makes her less evil because of extenuating circumstances. 

            The writers have done well fleshing out the Evil Queen, making her a real person that can be identified with. She is not nice, and not easy to dislike, but she makes some points that are hard to deny. The writing is so good that despite the fact that I do not like her, there are times where I catch myself thinking, “Well, she has a point. Maybe she really is just trying to do what’s best for her son.” Fortunately, that conflicted feeling didn’t last long because she just does more slimy things that make me hate her again. 

            Final conclusion? This is definitely a show worth watching. It doesn’t have me hooked as hard as LOST did. Lord knows that’s going to be a difficult bar to jump. But it definitely is a great show that’s made with a lot of thought and CGI that’s usually pretty good. You should definitely start watching it if you haven’t already. If you were a LOST fan, that goes double for you.