The Problem of Olaf

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! 

   But this doesn’t explain the need to keep Olaf around at the end of the movie.  Elsa could have just made him go away as she came the realization that she loved her sister and could be emotionally reunited with her.

                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!!! 

                And so you see…there is a problem when it comes to Olaf and his existence.  No matter how you cut it…Disney has some ‘splaining to do.

Making Sense Doesn't Make Sense

Tonight, as I write this, my heart…and the heart of the country…is heavy with the news of yet another senseless act of violence.  This time bombs went off in the city of Boston as residents celebrated the time honored tradition of running of the Boston Marathon. Three people, including an eight year old, are confirmed dead with many more injured.  The full extent of this event is only truly beginning to come to light and it may well be months before we know what triggered this event and who was responsible.

The internet is already beginning to respond.  From the vindictive “I hope they find whoever did this and make them pay,” to the conspiracy theories, “we all know this was done to please someone’s god….” The politicians lay in wait to see not only who they can blame, but how they can profit from this terrible crime.  People on the left, including Michael Moore, hope they can pin this on the Tea Party and warmongers on the right are hoping this can lead to renewed efforts in the War on Terror.

In the midst of this are people who are looking for answers.  How do we begin to understand this horrific event?  How do we explain the actions of those who are so consumed by hate that they must destroy life?  How can we believe in a God that would allow such horror?

When events like this happen, the pundits and the counselors await the verdict of America’s new high priests, dressed in their psychological vestments to explain away the horror we’ve seen.  We await the word on the Newtown shooter, Dr. Gosnell, the Aurora shooter to see what was wrong with them.  When the word comes down they suffered an illness, or that they were filled with anger, we are relieved.  There was something wrong with them and this alleviates our minds and the world makes sense once again.  Until the next time.

Christian theologians are also relieved when they can blame a mental disorder, or a unique situation, as it seemingly gets God ‘off the hook’ as it were.  We then ignore the larger and necessary questions of the presence of evil, the absence (or presence) of God, and the responsibility we all play in events like this.  In the days ahead we will hear rehashes of tired old Christian apologies for the presence of evil in the world.

We want so desperately for the world to make sense, to play by some rules.  We want clear cut dividers so that those who do right are rewarded and those who do wrong are punished.  We want to live in a world where we don’t have to explain to our children why an eight year old boy is dead tonight, or why a doctor could be allowed to butcher babies for thirty years, or why a man shot up an elementary school, or why…..well, just fill in the blank.

So we explain and we contort and we try to arrange the world in a way that makes sense.  And I think we need to stop.  I think God wants us to stop trying to make sense.

Think about it…the things we make ‘sense of’ are things we are no longer shocked by, things that no longer affect us, and things we no longer try to rectify.

We make “sense” of homelessness by understanding economic law. This gets us off the hook and we are not longer passionate about helping the poor.

We make “sense” of war and we are no longer bothered by the ethical ramifications of killing people.

We make “sense” of STD’s and sexual behavior so that sex loses the intimacy it was created for, only to become something to do to occupy an hour.

We make “sense” out of the cross by reading Pauline theology and we use big words like ‘substitutionary atonement’ to forget the horror of the cross and the suffering of Jesus.

When we make sense of a thing like Boston, or like Dr. Gosnell’s house of horrors we can retreat back into the fantasy of our world. We can pretend that the world we live in isn’t broken, that there isn’t something fundamentally wrong. 

But the reality is that our world IS broken.  There is a violent streak that runs within people that makes an event like Boston possible.  We may see tidbits of it every day in ourselves: greed, lust, selfishness, anger, and a whole host of evils.  We make ‘sense of them’ too and we explain them away, and say, “I’m only human….” or “I’ve had a long day,” or “It’s not like I’ve killed somebody…”

When we make sense of it, we grow comfortable with it…and that is the one thing we cannot  be.  God does not want us to be comfortable with it, or to make excuses of it, or to make sense of it.

Psalm 120 is one of my favorite Psalms and it is a Psalm that I turn to in moments like this.  It is written by a Jewish person, living in exile away from his home.  He is among a people whom he considers to be violent and is never at home with them.  We are told that he lives in Meshech, a place that he considers less than desirable, because the people who live there are violent and nasty.  This place is not his home and he knows it.  He is reminded of this on a daily basis and we can hear the lament in his words, “woe to me that I sojourn in Meshech.

 At the end of the psalm he writes of the great disparity that he has, “I am for peace….but they are for war” (v. 7).   The psalm leaves you hanging. There is no explanation of why these people are for war, and there is no ‘making sense’ of it.  Rather, you are left with a rather unsatisfactory ending.  You are left with the psalmist, yearning for peace and never at home with your neighbors.

There is no ‘pat’ answers when it comes to evil and suffering in this world.  Even our greatest theological constructions should cause us to reflect again on the world.  God does this on purpose, so that we don’t grow comfortable with the values of this world.

We live in a violent world, as today’s events have demonstrated.  We live in a world in which people are intent on hurting one another and profiting off of that hurt. We cannot allow ourselves to excuse this type of behavior or to grow comfortable with it.  As God’s people, we must strive to live out God’s virtues: to care for everybody, to be a beacon of nonviolence, and to offer people a true sanctity of human life.

We mourn these actions tonight because we know this is not how life is meant to be.  Tomorrow we begin to rebuild once again the broken pieces of this world in a never ending construction project.  Some of us may be tempted to give up and walk away.  Others will be fervent in trying to make sure the pieces never fall again.  Both attempts are wrong. We will strive as hard as we can, never growing comfortable, but knowing that God is with us to help us pick up the pieces once again. 

Too long we have all lived in Mescech…and today is a reminder of this.