Row over Frozen leaves me cold

One of the oddest social media campaigns at the moment is a drive to give elsa from frozen a girlfriend.

That’s right: we’re pondering the sexuality of a cartoon character in a Disney film.

actually, there’s nothing in the story to suggest that Princess elsa isn’t gay, but what was refreshing about frozen was that elsa was a female character who didn’t need a boyfriend, girlfriend or any kind of romance to save or complete her. Nor is elsa portrayed as odd or eccentric just because she’s self-sufficient and single.

Plenty of male characters exist without a love interest, so why should women have to be defined by their sexuality – isn’t it more important that we promote self-reliance and self-worth in children?

i’ve really got no problem with straight or lGBT role models, although i’m not sure we should rely on multinational film studios to supply them. The real stumbling block is that elsa’s struggle to hide her true self is already a metaphor for being gay.

Should all drama make its symbolism clunkingly explicit? Should Sunset Song’s Chris Guthrie walk around the Mearns announcing that all the changes in her life mean she’s really Scotland in the early twentieth century?

or should Tim Burton halt a scene in his forthcoming alice Through The looking Glass so his heroine can explain that, although lewis Carroll never took anything more bracing than a dose of aconite for the sniffles, a whole generation of filmmakers have embraced the stories to tune in and turn on some woozy drug allegories?