A Good One for Mother’s Day, or Why I Like Disney’s Frozen II

Always a Folklorist, , ,
Watching Frozen II

Disney’s 2013 hit Frozen was immensely successful.  I enjoyed it, and the song “Let It Go” was an inescapable earworm for quite a while.  You can hear the song here.  But quite a few people (myself included) were not immediately impressed with the sequel, Frozen II, which came out in 2019.  However, I’ve now watched Frozen II several times on DVD as I’ve whiled away the hours during this pandemic.  Not only has it grown on me, but I now like it better than the 2013 production.  The personnel involved are pretty much the same ones who worked on the first film, with Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck writing the story, along with Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez writing the songs, and Christophe Beck composing the musical score.  But, to me, it tells a better story.  Let me explain why.

First, it celebrates the character and heroism of Elsa and Anna’s mother.  Usually in Disney’s fairy tale films, the mother is absent or replaced by a wicked stepmother.  Granted, their mother (and father) did die in the first film, but, through a kind of internal prequel, we get to see their mother, Iduna, as she interacts with her daughters and also (spoiler) as she saves her future husband, Elsa and Anna’s father.  And, another plus in my book, is the song that Iduna sings to her daughters, “All Is Found.”  This is a a lullaby that Iduna sings early in the movie, in the scene in which the parents tell their daughters about the Enchanted Forest.  It reappears later when Elsa and Anna journey to that Enchanted Forest and meet the Northhuldra people, who also know the song.  That is where my respect for the Disney research into the relevant folklore rises to a new level.

The lullaby is not a traditional one.  Anderson-Lopez and Lopez wrote the song so far as I can tell.  It is very lovely.  Here is Evan Rachel Wood singing it in the movie. There is even a meta comment about lullabies in the movie.  Look for it.  Lullabies are a big part of folklore.  I am impressed that they recognized this.  The person who composed the score for the movie, Christophe Beck, also did a good job bringing in the sound of traditional Sami music.  There are other instances of folklore material in the film—lots of them.   My favorites are the references to the traditional kulning, or herding songs, that inspires the “voice” that calls Elsa to the Enchanted Forest and the traditional pattern on the scarf that Iduna left with Elsa and that the Northhuldra people recognized as their own and then the pan-Scandinavian tradition of reindeer domestication.  The folklore is abundant and well researched.

But perhaps the most obvious folklore connection is to the story source—Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”  Founder Walt Disney had evidently wanted to create a film based on Andersen’s “Snow Queen” since the late 1930s, but it never happened—until much later.  Read about it here.  However, as a folklorist myself, I must say that the plots of both Frozen and Frozen II owe very little to Andersen’s “Snow Queen.”  I reread Andersen’s story from the book on my shelf (book below), and I saw little that informed either of the movies beyond a few common folktale motifs.   The story is similar to that in ATU 425 The Search for the Lost Husband.  But, if you read the Andersen tale (see it here), you will see that there are few plot overlaps with Andersen’s story.  Others have commented on this as well.  But, then, Andersen was writing popular literature.  He was not recording verbatim tales from the folk as would a folklorist.  But he did evidently inspire folks at Disney studios, and that is to our advantage.

Popular printing of Andersen’s tales

So, let me conclude that what I really did appreciate about Frozen II is: 1) that it celebrates mothers, 2) that it uses a lullaby, 3) that it makes use of folklore –and two more things: that it 4) does a good job of representing often neglected “folk groups,” such as blacks, females, the Sami, herders, storekeepers, ice-cutters, etc., and 5) that it emphasizes the importance of “folk wisdom” in such phrases as “do the next right thing.”  To my mind, Disney is both the epitome of rampant capitalism gone wild and also, surprisingly, the representation of all that is still admirable and to be cherished about our collective folklore.  I salute the folks at Disney for trying to meet this last goal with their best efforts in Frozen II. Thank you, Disney.

Mother’s Day 2020

Family Connections, , ,
My mother, Loretta Dolby

I miss my mother every day. She was a truly marvelous person. I wrote this song–“The First One”–shortly after she died eighteen years ago. Loretta Dolby was bright, creative, caring, gracious, loving, musical, patient, hard-working, always fair, insightful, nearly always smiling, and above all warmly and intensely engaged with everyone around her. At age sixteen, she lost her own mother and took over the role of mother to her toddler age sister, helped her father and brothers on the farm, and set aside her own plans for college for a while until she could work, borrow, and scrimp her way through Manchester College. She became a teacher and taught fourth graders for many years. She married and had five children. I was the fourth. My life has been immensely blessed by having her as my mother and guiding light.

Relationships during Covid-19

The Handel Seminar Continues, , ,

Handel blog 15*

Forgive me, please forgive me

From Katherine:  I recently heard from a much younger friend about her difficulty in maintaining a good relationship with her longtime boyfriend during this pandemic.  I can imagine all kinds of scenarios that are especially stressful—all the way from people isolated all by themselves to families overwhelmed by too many people in too little space.  My friend’s situation was one in which just the two of them were suddenly spending a lot more time together.  Tempers flared, old jealousies reemerged, bad habits aggravated—you get the picture.  Believe it or not, I thought of one of Handel’s operas that I recommended she watch—both as a diversion and as a kind of couple’s advice.  Remember our discussion of Handel’s Partenope?   You can order a DVD of the production we saw here.

Let me quote what Ross said about it:  “Maybe part of the reason Handel was compelled to put on this opera was that he appreciated the advantage that having a loyal partner could bring.  After all, at the close of the opera, the four main characters all seem to have learned something about what makes a marriage relationship good.  Maybe Handel was resigned to enjoying such a relationship vicariously—through the lives of his dramatic characters.” (p. 321) As I recall, Forella jumped in to tease Ross about unexpectedly promoting the virtues of marriage, or something like that.  What’s the story, Ross?

From Ross:  Well, you know the dust had hardly settled on my marriage’s demise.  What can you expect?  But I still believe what I said then.  It is a good opera, and the production we saw was great—although I do agree with some of the reviewers who complain about the filming for the DVD.  Still, Handel really did give each of the characters arias that honed in on the problems of love relationships.  My favorite aria was “Ch’io parta” where the hero asks, “must I part?  I go, but leave with you my heart.”   A great song, even in Italian. Here is Philippe Jaroussky singing it in concert. I liked this lighter opera better than the ones that emphasized some sort of serious historical issue.  Handel would have been a good musical theater composer—like Richard Rogers—don’t you think?

From Alison: Yes, “Ch’io parta” is a wonderful aria.  There were several other really good arias in that opera.  What I find interesting about that particular aria is that its music was recently cast in a pastiche opera—The Enchanted Island—as a song expressing an amazingly effective plea for forgiveness at the end of the drama.  Prospero sings, “Forgive me, please forgive me.”  You can see more about the Met production here.  Actually more than half of the songs used in that pastiche were from various Handel operas.  You can see the list of arias here. The creator of the opera, Jeremy Sams, said that he found Handel’s works the best source for the songs he included in his pastiche.  Handel’s arias seem to really work as love songs. 

From CD:  Indeed they do.  And I loved they way they included Handel’s “Zadok, the Priest” when Placido Domingo entered as the god Neptune.  But best of all, in my opinion, was the song that took the Handel aria “Pena tiranna” from Amadigi di Gaula and rewrote the words as “We like to wrestle destiny.” Prospero sings, “Seeking forgiveness, hoping for harmony, I have sown discord where there was none. Heartbreak and discord where there was none. . . . What have I wrought here, ah, what have I done?” You can read the full libretto of this new English language pastiche here. 

From Katherine:  I think I will watch that Met production of The Enchanted Island again—and tell my friend about it as well.  But it is well worth going back to Handel’s Partenope for some lessons on how to manage relationships during this time of coronavirus.  I think his characters in the opera learn that what is needed is patience, empathy, forgiveness, and a little playfulness.  Handel—the self-help writer.  Stay well, everyone.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.