#the whole deal with versions of rapunzel is a fucking mess too

[starberry-cupcake]

Preparing the fairy tale bit of my workshop is difficult, mostly because one thing is the selection I want and another the one I can do considering the translations I have available and how reliable they are (for all but one of the authors I chose which is in my native language). 

Fairy tale translations are a mess, not only because of dialect changes and specificity but also because every translator adapts them, to some extent. I’m relying mostly on academic translations, which are the closest I can get, and those are most often in Spanish from Spain, which is the best I can do all things considered, even if not ideal. 

I have a collection of different editions and I’ll provide copies of the fairy tales I choose to work with to those who attend my classes, so they don’t have to purchase anything if they don’t want to, but I wanted to have suggestions of editions they can access to if they want, and you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find decent translations in editions that aren’t expensive or difficult to find, even from the Grimms. And when I say “decent” I mean translations that aren’t changing the text to adhere to a certain type of content, like religious or of certain ideology or beliefs. I have some online sources that are very good, but most in English, so that isn’t ideal for them. 

In any case, I chose to work with 10 authors/compilers, 5 male and 5 female (well, 11 and 6 male because the Grimms are two, but you get the idea), in chronological order I chose: Madame D’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Alexander Afanasyev, Christina Rossetti, Laura Gonzenbach, Giuseppe Pitrè & Berta Elena Vidal de Battini. 

I’m picking one text of each, with the exception of Grimm, because class 2 of this module is about Disney adaptations and I’m choosing 2 movies that have Grimm bases so they’re gonna have to read both. When it comes to which version of the tale I chose, sometimes it was due to necessities of what I’m talking about and sometimes due to availability. All in all, yeah, one would think that stuff on the public domain would be easier to access but nope. 

[frozenartscapes]

Frozen 2: A Hope

I have a lot of ideas for how Frozen 2 is going to go. They range from everything from the Southern Isles declaring war on Arendelle to someone stealing Elsa’s magic to our band of heroic misfits going on a wild adventure in search of answers. There are so many possibilities for how a sequel to Disney’s most popular movie since the Lion King could go, but here is just one thing I hope they touch on (but I’m not too sure if they will):

Parents.

Disney has a bad habit of writing parents into movies, only to them kill them off in often traumatic fashion to drive our main heroes forward into the plot. Often these parent deaths have gone down in infamy for being super sad, and so easily remembered by simply stating the parents’ names. For example: Bambi’s mom. Mufasa. Coral. (Ok that last one might not be as well known, but as soon as you say “Nemo from Finding Nemo’s mom who was eaten alive by a barracuda” people know what you’re talking about.) And while there are a lot of Disney parents that do survive the whole film, it should be noted that a lot of them aren’t Disney Princess parents. And even more interestingly, for most of the Disney Princesses, having a dead parent doesn’t actually mean much. The worst that happens is being forced to live with evil stepmothers. There isn’t a push to go avenge the parent, or to fundamentally change as a character after witnessing a parent’s death as what happens in other movies with male leads. In most of the Princess films, at least one, if not both, parents are dead. Snow White: dead parents. Cinderella: dead parents. Ariel: dead mom. Belle: dead mom. Jasmine: dead mom. Pocahontas: dead mom. Tiana: dead dad. Of the official princesses, only Aurora, Mulan, Rapunzel, Merida, and Moana have both living parents, and of them its really only Merida, Mulan, and Moana who have parents that actually contribute anything to the plot aside from: they were reunited with their kid at the end of the movie. (And even then it really is only one parent that drives the plot.)

And, obviously, Anna and Elsa are also in the dead parents camp. Although I will say that them being dead actually contributes a little more to the plot than for most of the others in this camp. If Adgar and Idun were alive, then Elsa wouldn’t be queen. Elsa not being queen means her powers would have never been revealed to the rest of the world, or to Anna. But the late King and Queen contributed more to Frozen than just kicking the bucket in the middle of the North Sea (which is a horrifying way to go, just fyi). It can be argued that they shaped the whole movie, as it is their reactions to Elsa striking Anna that planted the seeds of fear and anxiety into Elsa’s innocent little head when she was only a child. It was their reactions of closing the gates and limiting the amount of contact to the outside world that drove the point home to a traumatized eight year old that she was dangerous, and couldn’t necessarily be trusted. It was how they acted when they first saw Anna cold and still on that ballroom floor that told Elsa over that she fucked up, big time, and that her own parents are fearful of what she can do. 

Granted, her parents were afraid, not just of her but also because their other daughter was injured, and they were dealing with things neither of them were ever prepared for, and they both were still rather young parents who were also likely stressed over keeping their kingdom safe, and also were facing the possibility that said kingdom might want to harm their first daughter should they find out about her powers. So they acted, with fear guiding their judgement. And fear was the enemy.

So much in Frozen happened because of Adgar and Idun. So much of who our main characters were happened because of Adgar and Idun. There are so many possible “what ifs” because of Adgar and Idun. And so far, there has been nothing addressing this.

The musical is actually doing a better job, from my understanding. So far in the lyrics of songs like “Monster” and “Dangerous to Dream” we can see that Elsa still values a lot of what her father thinks of her, despite him being dead. She still looks to both of them for answers they might not even have, but regardless can’t respond or even hear her because, well, they’re gone. And this is where Frozen (movie version) kinda loses it for me in the later acts. Because there were some pivotal moments there when Elsa should have been demanding of herself what her father would think of her, or Anna demanding how her parents could do what they did, or even what they did because not once in the movie was she given an explanation - a real one - as to why any of this even happened. That has been left for us fic writers to fill in, a thousand times in a thousand stories, to the point where I doubt we’ll ever see an actual sit down between the sisters where Elsa tells Anna exactly what happened: the accident, the separation, why it all happened - everything. At this point, it’s just assumed the characters know it because we know it.

But they’re missing a huge opportunity here. Because there is a lot of emotional baggage left by their parents’ lives and deaths. Because yeah, the separation was shitty. But you get the sense during “For the First Time in Forever” that the separation was never meant to be as permanent and drastic as it became. While they might have started it, Elsa took it and ran. At some point her fear became too much for even her parents to help her with, and things were never the same again. But it’s clear that neither Adgar nor Idun wanted it.

They weren’t bad parents. Misguided and fearful at times, yes. But not bad. And they very easily could have been written bad. They could have been awful to Elsa, forcefully locking her in her room or even the dungeons after what happened to Anna. They could have continually driven home the “you’re nothing but a monster” mentality themselves, rather than leaving it for her to develop on her own out of her guilt. They could have neglected her, mistreated her, hell, they could have even cast her out into the cold, wolf infested woods and said “Have a nice life, witch!”. But they did not. They remained patient, and loving. They we shown to be trying, trying to help in whatever way they thought was best. It wasn’t always the best ways, but they didn’t know anything else. And you sure didn’t see those stupid trolls giving them any pointers. And the most obvious time we see this is moments before we never see them again:

Look at how supportive they are. How trusting and confident they are in their daughter when she can’t be in herself. How they both have that warm, reassuring look in their eyes that truly says that they mean it. The know Elsa will be fine. They know she can do this. They love her so much and they know she can do this.

And just like that they’re gone.

Elsa never hugged them goodbye.

Anna only said to them that she’ll see them in two weeks.

I know it’s been three years in universe since the deaths of the King and Queen, but given these two and, Elsa especially, how long they hold onto things that hurt them like that, I don’t think they should be as over it as it seems.

Let’s start with Anna. 

Anna had the benefit of being able to actually touch her parents. She was able to rush up to them and throw her arms around them. She was able to interact with them in a casual and friendly manner - much more like a daughter and her parents. While they were probably very busy, they still likely had time set aside for her. They were kind, and loving. They always seemed to know best. They trusted her, and loved her. They were her family after her sister seemingly shut her out of her life. Then they die, taking every secret and everything they never told her with them. The only person left who knows anything is Elsa. And Anna won’t even find out that there are secrets until three years after their deaths. Until that point she still thinks of them the same as she always did, but after? She just found out they lied to her. For most of her life. Sure, she might have figured something was up when they kept making excuses up for Elsa, but how could Anna have possibly predicted the real secret? They didn’t trust her at all, at least not with information as vital as that. They may have been trying to keep her safe, but at what cost? Look at how messed up Elsa is, and their parents just let that happen?

But she can’t ask them about it. She can’t go racing up to them and demand why, just why any of this had to happen. She can’t yell at them for not trusting her, or for freaking Elsa out, or for even closing the gates in the first place. She can’t gain any closure from them, the people responsible for everything, ever again because they aren’t coming back. She can scream at their tombstones until she’s blue in the face but that won’t make a difference. Her parents aren’t even buried there.

Anna’s the kind of person who needs answers. After everything that has happened in her life, she needs that closure. But she’s not going to get it from them.

Elsa faces a similar issue, and an entirely different one. Elsa strikes me as the kind of person who would defend her parents’ actions ‘til the end. She thought the world of both of them, but especially her father. She spent most of her life trying so, so hard to be something he could be proud of, trying so hard in fact that she couldn’t even see that he was. Elsa wanted to be something worthy of her parents’ love, and she wore herself thin trying to be that, despite never comprehending that she actually had it. However that mentality came from somewhere, and that somewhere was the accident. For a brief moment Elsa saw fear of her in her parents’ faces. She saw panic and confusion where there shouldn’t be and knowing she was the cause of it. She heard the worry and disapproval in her father’s voice as he demanded, “Elsa, what have you done?” as he entered the ballroom that night. And Elsa never wanted to experience that again.

I don’t believe either Adgar or Idun blamed Elsa for anything, except for that one moment of raw emotion. In that one, tense moment, those words slipped out of Adgar’s mouth. But that one little slip up was enough. And Elsa has to ask herself how exactly she feels about it, because while they may never have done anything to outwardly cast blame on her again, they did have that moment. And that moment could arguably carry more weight because they were acting on instinct, then, and didn’t have the time to put any thought behind their words or actions. And when they did have the time, their solution was to run and hide from their problems.

Elsa needs to look back on her parents’ decisions and ask herself if it really was ok, if it really was for the best. Did they really think everything through, or were there more questions they could have asked but didn’t? Could things have been better had they acted differently? After all, it wasn’t until their deaths that Elsa allowed Anna back into her life. It wasn’t until they were gone that things eventually returned to a much happier state. Were they standing in the way of Elsa’s happiness?

These are all things I would love to see them address in the sequel. But I know they won’t because this shit is getting too depressing. But they could. I’m not sure how they could execute it, but they have a great opportunity to really build Elsa’s character and at the very least Adgar in a Mufasa-esque kind of way. I kind of see it being built in a similar fashion, where Elsa thought the world of him until certain events convinced her that he would look down on her in disapproval (in the Lion King it was Simba believing he killed his father; in Frozen it’d be after Elsa froze the entire kingdom over and ran away). Even after the Thaw, I imagine Elsa would still hold onto that fear of his disappointment, how despite him being dead she knows he wouldn’t have agreed with her actions back at her coronation and he must think pretty poorly of her at this point. She doesn’t want to really face any of the other issues, either, as reflecting on them only bring up painful memories and thoughts. Maybe she does harbour a bit of anger with him and her mother. Maybe she’s frustrated that they were always so patient with her despite believing that she didn’t deserve that. Maybe she slowly must come to the realization that they weren’t right.

But then maybe through something with Pabbie acting as Rafiki, she’s able to look back on her past and theirs and come to the realization that, despite their flaws and hers, they all loved each other, so, so much. If they even want to go full Lion King, have some kind of vision or magical experience where she can see them and talk to them, and maybe even get some closure from them.

My point being, I don’t really want this instance of Dead Disney Parents to really be swept under the rug for nothing but plot convenience. They have a chance to really develop some female characters’ relationships with their parents past the unconditional love, broken only by a spat about romantic interests, only to then be rekindled when said parent dies thing. Given how little screen time Adgar and Idun had versus how much weight they pulled in the movie, this isn’t something the writers should really ignore. They at least need to address it, in some fashion. Maybe Elsa still has nightmares, only these are about a snowy storm swallowing up a helpless ship in the ocean that looks too much like the one her parents left on. Maybe Anna notices little quirks her sister has that relate back to those thirteen years of separation and gets a fleeting moment of anger that her parents let it get as bad as it did. Just something that gets these characters talking about their dead fucking parents.

And who knows? We have a whole short coming up that looks like family tradition around the holidays will be a key feature. Maybe they’ll bring something up then? It would be really weird if they didn’t talk about it, considering Christmas is the season of family and friends and this one will be their first Christmas together again but not a family again because their parents have been dead for three years. (Which begs the question: just how miserable was that castle around this time of year before the coronation but after the King and Queen’s deaths?)

Another final point I’d like to make, as cheesy and overdone as it might be: Adgar and Idun supposedly died in a shipwreck. But there’s technically not really proof of that. We only see the ship hit a wave. Yes, I’m well aware the actual survivability of any shipwreck in a storm that violent is pretty much 0, let alone one set during a time when virtually no one actually knew how to swim but consider for a moment that it is Disney and people have survived worse. What then? I wrote something once about what would happen if Idun survived (which was technically going to be a two parter but I never got around to finishing the second half...maybe I’ll get back on that). But what if it was Adgar? Or both? How would our characters react to that? How would either parent react to that? I know it’s a bit of a stretch but it would create interesting conflict points for our characters. And honestly it’s not that much more overdone than the “character who has special powers has said special powers taken away by the bad guy” storyline. Which, I’m going to be honest, I’ll be surprised if that isn’t in the plot of Frozen 2.

More on that story arc in another post!