Like my post about Belle, I'm going to start with listing the pros of these princesses and then their cons. However, in this movie there are two princesses, so I shall name the pros and cons that they share and then I shall list their individual strengths and weaknesses.
Again, I shall give my disclaimer: Disney Princesses are not role models. Do not look at them as role models. If we are going to model ourselves after fictional characters, they should be people like Christian (Pilgrim's Progress) or Hadassah (Mark of the Lion Series) or even Elsie Dinsmore (Elsie Dinsmore Series). However, even these should not be looked at as role models. Disney Princesses should never be looked at as anything more than characters which move a story along. That being said, let us begin.
Pros that Anna and Elsa share:
- Both sisters love each other to a great extent (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
- Elsa stays away from Anna in an effort to protect her. Elsa loves Anna so much, that she refuses to be around her. Her love is not self-seeking. If she could have had her way, she would have been with Anna playing with some snow; but she stays locked up in her room for years to protect her sister.
- Anna spent those years that she was seperated from her sister yearning outside of Elsa's bedroom door, pleading for a chance to be with her again. (see Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?) She knows that Elsa used to have fun with her, and can see that she is discontent with her life and tries to help her. Later on, when Elsa leaves, Anna travels for hundreds of miles to try and get Elsa to return with her to Arendelle.
Cons that Anna and Elsa share:
- They are both discontented (Psalm 37:3-4, 1 Timothy 6:6-7)
- Anna wishes that she had more freedom, that her sister was sociable towards her, and that she could find "true love." She doesn't think about what she does have (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), only about what she wants.
- Elsa has actual problems. She has magical powers that almost killed Anna at one point. She wishes that she could leave her home and her life behind for freedom. (cite same references)
Elsa's Pros:
- She honors her mother and father above her own wishes (Exodus 20:12, Ephesians 6:1-3)
- The king and queen of Arendelle had her "conceal her powers" under gloves. They put her in a far-removed room for years, never allowing her to see her sister or socialize with anyone. This was possibly the worst thing they could have done, but she tried. She tried so hard to obey them. Then one day, in the midst of an argument, Anna grasped Elsa's hand, causing her glove to come off, at which point she accidentally froze everything. If their parents had tried to teach Elsa how to utilize her ability (Proverbs 22:6), then the blessing that she had been given would never have become a curse.
- She admits when she has done wrong (1 John 1:8-10)
- She stays in her room all those years and eventually runs away because she realized that she did wrong. She almost killed Anna at one point and at another point she almost killed a dozen guests at the coronation (all accidentally)
- She leaves because she thinks that it's the only way to protect people from herself.
Elsa's Cons:
- After she leaves, Elsa becomes prideful (Obadiah 1:3-4)
- If you read this verse, you see that the person it is describing is exactly like Elsa. She ran to the top of the tallest mountain she could find and built a castle in the "clefts of the rock" and began to glory in the power that she realized that she had. After all this transpired, she was brought down from where she was, put in to her own dungeon, and is almost killed by Hans, she realized that she could not be a perfect person. She could not rule the world by herself. She needed the love that she lost when she gained pridefulness. (Proverbs 11:2)
Anna's Pros:
- My mom and I have been talking about this, and the only pro that we could think of for her we placed under the pros that she shares with Elsa. I feel really bad about this, because everyone loves her, and most prefer her to Elsa, but she is everything that I listed below. I really like her too, in an "I-feel-so-sorry-for-you-I-wish-your-sister-talked-to-you" kind of a way, but that's the only reason why I feel any connection with her as a character. I am a younger sister as well as an older one, and she does not connect with me at all, nor can I think of good things about her.
Anna's Cons:
- She's rather "boy-crazy" (1 John 2:14-16, Proverbs 6:25)
- In the song For the First Time in Forever, there's a line about finding romance. That is NOT how we are supposed to look at life and boy/girl relationships. What ends up happening to Anna when she thinks that she found the perfect person for her? Hans ends up being a con man who is using her for her position in the royal line. He wants to marry her, kill Elsa, and then become king. Anna didn't know any of this, she had only met him once, didn't realize that he was only saying what he knew she would like (see Love is an Open Door), and accepted his proposal.
- She doesn't respect authority (Mark 12:17)
- She asks Queen Elsa for her blessing of their marriage. Elsa, who shows some amount of earthly wisdom, says, "you can't marry someone you just met this day!" Anna goes crazy and decides that, blessing or no blessing, she will marry Hans, of the Southern Isles. This also falls under the above con, but seriously, most of Anna's actions are ridiculous. She doesn't think about what she's doing.
- She's impulsive (Proverbs 14:29)
- This again falls under the above two. She wants to marry Hans so badly that she starts an argument with Elsa and tears her glove off of her. This causes Elsa's powers to go off the hook, and Elsa's fleeing Arendelle.
- After she causes this huge scene, she decides, on impulse, that she is going to run off after her sister and do this huge "rescue". She had good intentions, but she didn't "plan her work and work her plan". She almost gets herself killed.
These are just a few of the things that are seen in Frozen. If I tried to get to all of them, it would take way too long and we would never leave. I personally think that if we watch movies for movies and not for morals, there is nothing wrong with Frozen. Even though we see in it that being boy-crazy can get you hurt and that not showing love to people can cause problems for you, that does not mean that it was formed on a Biblical, moral basis.
Thank you for reading!
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