Frozen takes heat over ‘gay messaging’
Disney under fire (again) from U.S. fundamentalists
“You wonder sometimes if there’s something very evil happening here.” COLORADO PASTOR KEVIN SWANSON
If you can believe Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson, Disney’s latest animated hit is homosexual propaganda.
Swanson, who hosts a popular Christian radio show, has told listeners the Oscar-nominated Frozen is “very evil” and the work of the devil. He also accuses Disney of being “one of the most pro-homosexual organizations” in the U.S.
Attacks on the studio by the religious right are nothing new. But the assault on Frozen seems truly to come out of left field, given that other commentators have lauded it as pro-Christian. The current uproar, which has moved from the Internet to mainstream media outlets around the world, shows little sign of subsiding as the movie becomes available this month on DVD and Blu-ray.
What is it about Disney — an organization many would see as a bastion of free-enterprise family values — that gets up the nose of so many U.S. conservatives?
And remember — their adult ranks alone number a formidable 120 million, the Hollywood Reporter says.
Swanson has many axes to grind. He was warning a few months ago that anyone purchasing Girl Scout cookies was endorsing lesbianism and abortion.
He has mused publicly about stoning gay participants in the Super Bowl parade and has claimed that God’s wrath against homosexual activity, abortion and Colorado’s legalization of marijuana triggered the state’s massive floods last year.
He has been called a crackpot and worse by liberal bloggers. But he remains unmoved by such assaults — and he’s not the only one who thinks Frozen contains a hidden gay agenda.
“You wonder sometimes if there’s something very evil happening here,” Swanson told his listeners.
“I wonder if people are thinking: ‘You know, I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way.’ ”
Bestiality? Really? It seems Swanson is taking a cue from National Catholic Register film critic Steven Greydanus, who said in a recent blog that not only is Frozen full of gay themes, but it tolerates indecent behaviour between man and beast.
Greydanus is deeply suspicious of the cuddly relationship between stalwart hunter Kristoff and his loyal reindeer, Sven. It’s true, they are an affectionate couple — indeed, they even share in eat- ing a raw carrot. There also those suggestive lyrics in the song Fixer-Upper:
“His thing with the reindeer — that’s a little outside of nature’s laws …”
Another ally in the campaign against Frozen is Kathryn Skaggs, a crusading grandmother who seems to have started the whole thing rolling with her blog, A WellBehaved Mormon Woman.
After having been dragged by her grandchildren to see Frozen on three separate occasions, she had no doubts about the true intent of the moviemakers: The film industry’s “very best talent” had been enlisted “to allow liberalism to indoctrinate children” — more specifically to brainwash youngsters into accepting same-sex behaviour as normal and maybe make them gay themselves, she says. Skaggs sees “gay messaging” in the character of Elsa, the movie’s troubled snow queen, whose unique but dangerous magical power of being able to create snow and ice leads to her being ostracized by her subjects and even by her family — the equivalent, Skaggs suggests, of the “demonization of homosexuals by society.”
And to give Elsa a happy ending, in which she is ac- cepted for what she is, for Skaggs constitutes more of the film’s gay agenda. Furthermore, her lack of interest in dating is a dead giveaway. For Skaggs, she must be a lesbian. Elsa’s spunky younger sister, Anna, the real heroine of the film, is also suspect. For Skaggs and other detractors, she’s too independent, too resourceful, too much a symbol of feminism to be a harmless cartoon character.
And besides, her love for her sister shows far more passion than her scenes with males — so therefore for these detractors, there’s only one conclusion to be drawn from this. Gay incest, anyone?
But Collin Garbarino, an assistant professor of history at Houston Baptist University, suggests Frozen might well be a better allegory for the Christian gospel than the C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Garbarino, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, sees Anna as a Christ-like figure determined to redeem the bewitched young queen and suggests the movie echoes the visions of hell depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno.
The religious right’s indictment of children’s entertainment doesn’t always focus on Disney. But the studio remains the main target because it has been the most family-oriented business in Hollywood for 80 years and has an immense influence on popular culture.