When watching a Disney princess movie, I don’t typically expect to find too profound a message. Yet, when I recently re-watched Frozen with my family, I found myself picking up on the motifs of love and fear throughout. Stringing these together—between all the singing princesses and talking snow—I began to find a message that echoed something biblical.
Now, I am not bashing musicals and princess movies in general, but I do sometimes find it hard to discover something profound in them. But I was pleasantly surprised to find something of note in this particular movie.
Note: As many people have watched Frozen already, I thought it would be acceptable to include spoilers here. So, for any of you would have not yet seen Frozen and would like to avoid spoilers, this is your warning.
When the movie first introduces us Anna and Elsa, they are loving sisters who enjoy playing with each other and just generally being in each other’s company.
Until the fear creeps in.
The Destruction from Fear
The very first expression of fear occurs when Elsa and Anna are playing in the winter wonderland that Elsa has created in the palace ballroom. This fear is shown when Elsa fears that Anna will fall from the piles of snow that Elsa is creating as Anna jumps. Out of that fear, Elsa frantically rushes and accidentally strikes Anna in the head with her ice powers.
When Anna and Elsa’s parents take the unconscious Anna to the trolls for healing, Grandpa Troll warns them of fear’s negative impact on Elsa’s powers. In some foreshadowing, he explains that a frozen head is easier to cure than a frozen heart. After he removes Anna’s memories of Elsa’s powers to save Anna, their parents react in fear, shutting Elsa and the palace off from the entire world.
So begins Elsa’s life of fear.
Shut off from the world, she grows colder emotionally as her powers only grow stronger.
Divided from her sister, she (and, it seems, her parents) think that the only way to keep people safe from Elsa is to keep people away from Elsa.
The Repercussions of Fear
The rest of the movie revolves around by the domino effect of fear in the lives of Anna and Elsa. On her coronation day, Elsa is haunted by the fear that her powers will be discovered. She acts out the coronation, which requires her to remove the gloves that help her control and conceal her powers, but she is still consumed by fear.
In yet another moment of fear—the fear of not being able to control her powers—she unleashes her powers in self-defense. Surrounded by unfamiliar people and missing a glove, she loses her sense of being able to control her powers.
Thus, as she flees the palace and everything she has ever known to be alone in the wild, Elsa unintentionally puts Arendelle under an “eternal winter,” as Anna calls it. Even as Elsa sings boldly about finally being able to “let it go,” she is still consumed by the fear of hurting other people.
This fear continues to drive her to seclude herself and push everyone away, just as her parents had taught her to do, even as Anna tries to remedy the problem by seeking her out.
As Anna tries to convince Elsa that everything will be okay if she can just undo the winter she has caused, Elsa unintentionally freezes Anna’s heart, and Anna begins to rapidly deteriorate.
The Antidote to Fear
At the climax of the story, Elsa performs an act of true love that unthaws Anna’s frozen heart, even though Elsa was the one to freeze it in the first place. Anna’s own sacrificial act of love to save Elsa breaks through to Elsa so that she is finally able to love Anna back without being haunted by fear.
When Anna is revived and unfrozen, Elsa realizes that love alone that can thaw Arendelle back to summer. Her love for Anna is finally conquers her fear that she will hurt Anna. This enables her to finally act out of her love for others instead of out of fear of others.
“Perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18 (ESV).
A biblical message in a Disney princess movie? Yes, I think so.
On a separate note, there is irony to Anna’s frozen heart. While Anna’s physical heart is frozen, it seems that perhaps Elsa also has a frozen heart metaphorically. In that sense, love thawed both of their hearts.
And so we have the classic happy ending, where no one and nothing is frozen anymore—except Olaf.