Frozen: Regarding the Mental Illness Theme and the Power of Unconditional Love

By now you've likely caught at least some of the hoopla surrounding the movie Frozen. Many of the opinions expressed throughout the Internet regarding this film have been quite positive. At the same time, a good number of bloggers have accused Frozen of having some sort of hidden agenda. Accusations of sexism, drug-friendly references, and even a "Gay Agenda" have graced our beloved blogosphere, met with countless rebuttals, re-rebuttals, and of course trolling.

Now I should mention that Jennifer Lee, who wrote and directed Frozen, has already tweeted that Elsa's character represents people who suffer from anxiety and depression. That should at least clarify the movie's primary motive. Even before reading Lee's statement, I had already found the movie's message to be quite uplifting and exponentially inspiring with respect to my own emotional struggles. But I am well aware that very few pieces of art are meant to be taken one way and one way only. So rather than construct a brilliant yet time-consuming rebuttal of the perspectives I disagree with, here is what I took from Frozen:

Elsa has an amazing gift, present since birth, which she uses to cultivate a strong bond between her and her younger sister, Anna. But because she hasn't learned to control it yet, Elsa eventually almost kills Anna. Consequently, their parents decide to isolate her from everyone until she can learn to control her power. And while Anna is spared the memory of such a traumatic event in her life, it tortures Elsa for many years. This is only exacerbated by her parents' strategy to keep her locked inside the castle until she learns to control her power--by herself.

Anyone who has experienced anxiety or depression at some level can easily see this as a classic recipe for both. Anxiety comes from a fear of failure--a fear of what might happen if you make the wrong decision. Such a fear doesn't come out of nowhere. Somewhere in your past, you made a mistake with such traumatic results that you shudder at the thought of ever putting yourself into that situation again. So you run away from it. You would rather work around your fear than face it, often because you're afraid of hurting not just yourself, but those around you. Imagine how Elsa must have felt when, after Anna had fallen unconscious, her father's first words as he rushed in were, "What have you done?" Hearing such a sentiment enough times can make you feel inclined to not do anything.

But that doesn't fly for too long in this world. People expect you to do stuff, and they expect you to do it well. The movie montages its way through the rest of Elsa and Anna's childhood, so we don't know how well Elsa has ruled the kingdom since their parents died. Perhaps they had a guardian acting as steward until she came of age. What we do know is that on Coronation Day, Elsa is consumed with fear of losing control again, the consequences of which will likely be even more drastic. After all, she never really learned to control her power in the first place. All she has learned is to be afraid of it. The problem is that nobody understands that, and everybody expects her to buckle down and rise to the occasion of ruling an entire kingdom. At her age, even someone without such a debilitating fear as hers would feel insurmountable pressure.

That's what makes the anxiety complete: Being compelled to face your inner-demons before you're ready. How can you be? You've spent most of your life trapped inside your head, hoping to magically wake up one morning with the cure for your problems. So instead of tackling them head on, you keep avoiding them as much as you can. But the world keeps pushing back. Your loved ones keep pestering you for an explanation as to why you are the way you are. What are you going to say? That you're too scared because of something that happened years ago? Tragically, mental illness has such a negative stigma already, without broadcasting to the world that it involves your inability to forgive the past and take charge of your future. You are afraid to let your fears be known.

Ironically, those fears often become self-fulfilling. When you finally give in to society's demands for the sake of anonymity, you inevitably make the same mistakes you made before. The more this happens, the closer you get to your emotional breaking point, which is what happens with Elsa. After losing control and exposing her power, she flees the kingdom for the woods. She decides to embrace her power and use it to her advantage without restraint, building a fortress to protect her from the rest of the world. She no longer has any reason to be afraid, and so she thrives. Of course, this also means that she doesn't make the best choices with her power. She is happy, though, and sees little reason to return to the lonely life she once knew. It doesn't take someone with a mental illness to understand how enticing a prison with high walls can be when the rest of the world represents nothing but heartache. Prison walls don't break so easily, and when they do, they don't seek retribution.

Now I just said that Elsa thrives more when she is alone. We see that immediately during the "Let it Go" scene. This is because, interestingly enough, the mistakes we make during heightened anxiety have very little to do with incompetence, and more to do with the fear itself. We are informed early in the movie that Elsa's lack of control is exacerbated by stress. However, it soon becomes apparent that the stress is the problem in its entirety. Think about it. When she is creating snowy mountains for Anna to play on, Elsa realizes Anna is going too fast and starts to worry that Anna will hurt herself. As Anna makes a dangerous leap, Elsa hastily sends a poorly-aimed beam of ice right at her sister's forehead. Until that happens, Elsa doesn't have any problems controlling her power. Once it does happen, the fear of it happening again is so debilitating that it affects the power itself. Moving on, the accident on Coronation Day is triggered by Anna's persistence in getting Elsa to open up, to which Elsa responds with an angry wave of the arm. This coincides perfectly with the anxiety theme. Many people with anxiety suffer from it precisely because they feel they can't open up.

And of course, the same thing happens when Anna finds Elsa and tries to persuade her to come back. Once again Elsa gets angry, and once again she hurts Anna. By this time, it is apparent to Elsa that she will never completely get away from the pain and inner turmoil that have plagued her life. And yet, she still doesn't know how to deal with the pain or resolve it. Cue the depression. This generally comes from a sense of hopelessness for ever rising above your mediocre state, then being forced to try anyway but without the necessary tools, thus creating a vicious cycle of failure.

So the movie continues, and when Anna saves Elsa's life, we come to find out the remedy for everything gone wrong in the movie: Unconditional love. I don't know why Olaf had to explicitly point that out to me, but it made perfect sense. Time and time again, she keeps trying to help her sister, never worrying about her own needs in the process. It is this emotion that enables Anna to save her sister, thus enabling Elsa to save her kingdom instead of hurting them. After watching Anna sacrifice herself for her, Elsa finally realizes how she can fix the problems her actions have caused. As I contemplate this outcome and relate it to my own experiences, I begin to realize the extensive role unconditional love has played in my increased happiness and success as a person. Somehow, when a person is willing to stand by us during our worst moments, forgive us repeatedly for our sins against them, and even lay down their life for us, it possesses a healing power that can and does cure what we once thought incurable.

I'm not sure why this is so. Perhaps it is because a person's willingness to stand by our side makes us want to be better people. It makes us want to be worthy of their love and patience, thus motivating us to search the very depths of our potential so that their faith in us isn't wasted. I suppose it is nothing new that we feel happier and try harder when we know someone cares. I just didn't realize how much it empowers us to thrive more as well. We make better decisions when we know someone has our back. We tend to succeed more when we know and believe that at least one person will still love us even if we fail.

That is the message I took from Frozen. It has helped me realize that I am not alone in my struggles, and I am not expected to deal with them alone. While I have been steadily progressing in this regard for quite some time now, I still find the message invaluable. I can see it creating a newfound sense of hope and self-worth for millions of people like me.