By now, unless you have been living in a cave, you must have
seen all or part of Disney’s megahit puberty-analogy Frozen. If you haven’t seen
it…you probably know all the songs…by heart.
If you have any connection with kids, you know the adventures of Anna
and Elsa, Kristoff, Hans and Sven. And while they
all have their interesting quirks, I need to talk about the major problem of Frozen:
Olaf.
Olaf is
a snowman who comes to life magically (we are not told exactly how this
happens, but just go with it) and helps the protagonists solve the problem of ‘eternal
witness.’ We will bypass the problem of
whether Olaf is actually alive, because even he is unsure:
Elsa: Olaf? Are you alive?
Olaf: I….think so!
We will
just assume that he is alive and proceed from there. But other problems become evident within a
few seconds of meeting Olaf. The heroes
Anna, Kristoff, and Sven (the reindeer) are looking for Elsa and they are
wandering through a magic winter wonderland, when all of a sudden they hear the
voice of Olaf the snowman. After some
funny shenanigans, Kristoff and Anna tell Olaf that they are trying to bring
back summer. Notice then what Olaf says:
Olaf: Oh, I don't know why, but I've always
loved the idea of summer, and sun, and all things hot...
Did you
notice the word ‘always…’ Exactly how
old is Olaf? According to the timeline of the movie, he is maybe a day old, but
more than likely he is under 24 hours old.
So….when exactly did he think about summer? How does he even know about
summer? How could he have ‘always’ thought about something that he has never
experienced and really never knew about.
Where did he get the idea of summer? Did he meet other people and they
told him? Or did he read a book (but he would have had to find the book…) We have a couple of options to solve this.
The
first would be to believe in a preexistent
Olaf. We know from the movie’s
prologue that Anna and Elsa used to make Olaf the snowman when it snowed. So maybe his consciousness was stored in that
snowman and he learned back then. The
idea would be then that he would melt back into the snow only to be reawakened
the next time it snowed and the next time Anna and Elsa built a snowman. His life would then be a horrible cycle of
being built and melting over and over again.
Of course there were about the 15 years that went passed when Anna and
Elsa did NOT build a snowman. What was
Olaf doing then? Was he trapped in limbo? Did he know what was going on? Can
you imagine the horror of our poor snowbound friend as he waited and waited to
be come alive in snowman form, but nobody actually built a snowman? That
actually helps create more drama for the song Do you want to build a snowman? We can imagine our poor Olaf silently
screaming out ‘Yes’ in horror and desperation as he watched Elsa ignore Anna’s
pleas to build a snowman.
 |
| Help! I'm trapped in eternal pain! |
But the
idea of a pre-existant Olaf seems to be discounted by the film’s ends. In one of the last scenes, Olaf is about to
melt when he says:
Olaf: Hands down, this is the best day of my life. And quite possibly the last.
Olaf is
aware that he is dying (and even though he laughs at it, we can see that some
sort of finality there). So, he is expecting then to die and go away…so he has
no recollection of being in limbo, so maybe that’s not the answer.
The
second suggestion would be that Olaf isn’t really alive at all. After all, we still have Olaf’s uncertainty
about the question. We also have his
acknowledgement that he has no real active biology.
Olaf: I don’t have a skull. Or bones.
So how
then can Olaf know things (like how to sing or dance, knowing about knocking,
or knowing about love). How does he do
this?
I think
if we go down this route, we have to see Olaf as a projection of Elsa’s unconscious
self. After all, Elsa is the one who makes
Olaf come ‘alive’ and she is the one who continues his existence at the end of
the movie. Perhaps, Olaf represents a
more innocent part of Elsa’s mind, one that that finds joy in the simplest
things. We know that Elsa can sing…because
the entire movie is about the song Let it
Go, although she technically never dances in the film (she pawns the old
guy off on Anna). So maybe Olaf is
simply the projection of Elsa’s inner self.
This would explain Olaf’s sudden desire for Anna and Kristoff and Sven
to share summer with them (Olaf: and you
guys will be there too). Why would
he want Anna there? Maybe Elsa is using Olaf to reach out to her sister…..
 |
| Olaf is frozen.....just like my heart! |
So
maybe….just maybe….we need to go with the third explanation.
Olaf is
really the villain of the movie.
This
explanation requires the same preexistent
Olaf, but sees his apparent non-knowledge of this as a deliberate deception in
order to maintain his existence.
We know
that Olaf is around in the beginning. Elsa
manifests a snow that looks exactly like Olaf. When Elsa gets angry later on
the film, she sets the entire kingdom into a perpetual frozen snow and ice
kingdom.
Who
exactly benefits the most from this?
OLAF!
If the kingdom is in perpetual snow, then he is the only one who is perfectly
adapted to the weather. While everyone
else will freeze, Olaf can walk around unabated and is the only one who can
really rule the kingdom. Besides, if
this was truly Olaf’s plan from the beginning, this helps make perfect sense
of:
-Olaf’s
reluctance to tell Anna where Elsa was (Olaf:
Yeah, why?)
- His
disobedience as he bursts in on Anna and Elsa’s conversation
- His
desire to get Anna away from the trolls before they can help her (Olaf: why aren’t you running?)
- His
interference with Anna and Kristoff (Olaf:
I guess Kristoff doesn’t love you enough to leave you behind) In this understanding, that last line can
only be read as a devious plot on Olaf’s part to keep Anna and Christof apart
so they can’t kiss and make summer come back (he assumes, like most of us that
the act of true love was the true love’s kiss).
 |
| Behold the face of horror!!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment