viz.dwrl.utexas.edu Open in urlscan Pro
146.6.15.81  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

POST http://viz.dwrl.utexas.edu/old/content/frozen-anatomy-gaze

<form action="http://viz.dwrl.utexas.edu/old/content/frozen-anatomy-gaze" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="search-theme-form">
  <div>
    <div id="search" class="container-inline">
      <div class="form-item" id="edit-search-theme-form-1-wrapper">
        <input type="text" maxlength="128" name="search_theme_form" id="edit-search-theme-form-1" size="15" value="Search ..." onfocus="if(this.value=='Search ...'){ this.value = ''; }" onblur="if(this.value==''){ this.value='Search ...'; }"
          title="Enter the terms you wish to search for." class="form-text">
      </div>
      <input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Go!" class="form-submit">
      <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-vdJigiK2SMov7yuxtn1tsD-b7jBJDdzpMhV7jCrUjPg" value="form-vdJigiK2SMov7yuxtn1tsD-b7jBJDdzpMhV7jCrUjPg">
      <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-search-theme-form" value="search_theme_form">
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

VIZ.

Visual Rhetoric - Visual Culture - Pedagogy

 * visual theory
 * teaching
 * views
 * images
 * blog
 * ransom






SITE INFORMATION

 * About viz.
 * About our contributors
 * Contact us
 * Login


RECENT BLOG POSTS

 * “Rueful Reluctance:” An Unwitting Cat Owner’s Search for Meaning Among Memes
   2 years 36 weeks ago
 * Bringing "Rip Van Winkle to Life," Part III
   3 years 3 weeks ago
 * What's Haunting Dove's Real Beauty Campaign?
   3 years 3 weeks ago
 * Reaction Shots and Reader Response at the Purple Wedding
   3 years 4 weeks ago
 * Developing Austin for the Future
   3 years 4 weeks ago
 * Processing Extraordinary Tragedy in Ordinary Days
   3 years 4 weeks ago

 * 1
 * 2
 * 3
 * 4
 * 5
 * 6
 * 7
 * 8
 * 9
 * …
 * next ›
 * last »


BLOG ROLL

 * Blogging Pedagogy
 * Digital Journalist
 * The Blogora
 * Kairosnews
 * information aesthetics
 * No Caption Needed
 * Sociological Images
 * David Rumsey maps
 * A Collage of Citations
 * Wired Campus
 * DWRL
 * In The Loupe
 * Inside the Box
 * Art Resources-UT-Austin
 * Kind of...
 * Rural Image Co-op
 * The SIP Blog
 * We are Constance
 * Visual Culture Blog


FROZEN: THE ANATOMY OF A GAZE

Submitted by Scott Garbacz on Wed, 2014-01-29 09:00

Image credit: The Guardian

The first song composed for (but ultimately cut from) the recent Disney
blockbuster Frozen explicitly engages with Disney's presentation of female
characters. In the song, entitled "We Know Better," young princesses Elsa and
Anna lay out a laundry list of objections to the traditional idea of a "Disney
Princess." The film's two heroes refuse to be the sort of princess who "always
knows her place," insist that a real princess “laughs and snorts milk out her
nose," and maintain their right to mention “underwear.” Though whimsical, the
film sets out its heroines' priorities: the only things they take seriously are
their sisterly friendship and the political demands of ruling the realm. In
climactic two-part harmony, the girls promise to "take care of our people and
they will love / Me and you." If films like Tangled and Brave taught Disney that
their princesses can (quite profitably) take center stage without dressing up as
boys, Frozen insists that its female leads will be more concerned with national
policy than with the clothes they wear.

The film's feminist aims were reflected in early reviews. NPR discussed the
film's hit single, and the message of empowerment that many tweens heard in its
lyrics. Social media exploded with a list of "7 Moments that Made Frozen the
Most Progressive Disney Movie Ever." On the other hand, Frozen came under fire
for perpetuating some of the worst tropes of the very "Disney Princess" genre it
mocks. From critiques of Elsa's embodiment of Disney's Madonna-whore dichotomy
to concern over the ridiculous gender dimorphism of its CGI character-models,
the movie collected criticism as well as praise from feminists. Frozen was often
compared unfavorably to Lilo & Stitch, a movie with its own fascinating
treatment of social narratives.

In this post, however, I'm not particularly interested in praising or condemning
Frozen so much as in understanding how it works. In particular, I want to draw
attention to a visual contradiction that I see energizing much of Frozen. On the
one hand, the the film claims to be a reversal of what we expect from a Disney
film. On the other hand, in its meticulous computer animation actually displays
a deep reliance on the sorts of traditional, emotional-powerful images created
by Disney and other culture-makers over the years.

Take, for instance, the following freeze-frame, an image featured in various
promotional materials, including (as seen below) Disney.com's website for the
film:



Image credit: Disney.com

This image is particularly powerful because, in its essence, we have already
seen it a million times in previous fantasy films and cartoons (though never,
perhaps, executed with such icy beauty or complexity.) A young protagonist gazes
upon an exotic, striking location, while the viewer's gaze is drawn along the
explorer's eyeline through careful image composition. At the top of the image is
a distant, female beauty, more of an icon than a person; Elsa's face is an
indistinguishable blur, looking over her elegantly-clad shoulder as her dress
swirls about her.

Such an image announces its continuity with previous riffs on the same motif,
such as the scene where Prince Phillip hacks his way towards his future wife's
magical castle in Sleeping Beauty, or the scene where Alladin's titular hero
looks out at the city of Agrabah while dreaming of the life lead by its
princess, Jasmine. Indeed, the parallels from the former seem particularly
striking. Frozen is the first "ultra-widescreen" Disney fairytale since Sleeping
Beauty, and Eyvind Earle's detailed, decorative background work on Sleeping
Beauty stands as a predecessor for the elaborately ornate (yet
often-threatening) nature of Frozen's arctic scenes. 



The two protagonists' red, flowing capes are also suspiciously similar. Image
credit: Evensi.com

If Frozen shares much in common with Sleeping Beauty, it also follows T.S.
Eliot's dictum that "immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." The most
obvious shift is one in the characters' gender and motivation. Where Prince
Phillip seeks merely to rescue his love and obtain the obligatory "happy ever
after" of marriage, Anna's goals are doubled--even doubled against each other.
She seeks to be reunited with her sister and thereby restore their family bond,
but she also wants to save the realm from her sister's magic, a political task
that places the two of them in a (potentially) adversarial relationship. Within
this freeze-frame, then, it is fitting that Anna herself is duplicated. While
Elsa's body faces away from the reader and seems ready to confront Anna, her
reflected gaze points vaguely to the right of the image, her mouth slightly open
in uncertainty. This doubling might also be seen to echo Anna's larger
character-arc, in which she longs to be the heroic masculine figure capable of
saving the realm from Elsa's sorcery, but also wants to be the beautiful
ingenue, "Fetchingly draped against the wall / The picture of sophisticated
grace." Anna is no prince charming--but she sure can dress for the role.

One thing is certain. In aligning the viewer with Anna, Frozen both re-creates
and revises one of Disney's most oft-repeated images. Whether this hybridity
represents a feminist deconstruction of a powerful gender stereotype or a
hypocritical "feminist" gesture in a story mired by inherited images and old
forms is a philosophical question beyond the scope of this blog. That such a
question might emerge from a single freeze-frame in a popular Disney film,
however, is a testament to the power and complexity of images, even those images
that flash momentarily on the screen in one of the year's many blockbuster
entertainments.

Tags:
 * body image
 * Disney
 * Disney Princess
 * fantasy
 * female gaze
 * Feminism
 * hero
 * iconography
 * male gaze
 * The Princess is in Another Castle

 * Scott Garbacz's blog
 * Add new comment
 * 


COMMENTS


SLOPPLINESS IS NOT COMPLEXITY

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2014-05-27 12:13.

I've seen Frozen far too many times than I'd like to admit, being the father of
three girls.  I've seen it enough to realize that the music drove this movie and
not much else.  It quite honestly may be the worst one released in the post-Walt
era. 

I don't mind dynamic storylines and characters for my children.  The story does
not have to be as simple as, say, Sleeping Beauty.  In fact, Mary Poppins gave
us just that.  But do not conflate the sloppiness with which this movie was
assembled with complexity.

 * reply


GREAT POST!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2014-01-31 23:02.

Thanks for this fascinating rumination on Disney's use of iconic images even as
it attempts to challenge its own outdated politics! The shift in the way Disney
movies handle images of castles might be an interesting place to go with this
insightful line of questioning. I wonder how (or if) the shift from hand-drawn
to CGI in major American animators figures into this conversation?

 * reply


PERHAPS

Submitted by Scott Garbacz on Tue, 2014-02-04 14:15.

Perhaps, but I'm a bit skeptical about triumphant progressive narratives,
especially when Disney is trying to tell me how much better it is now than
before. Yeah, the beautiful CGI
Disney-castle-on-the-shores-of-a-mysterious-river logo sequence is more visuall
arresting than the previous flat logo, but does that accurately reflect the
films themselves? Is this castle more impressive or thoughtful or more modern or
more anything, really, than the castle found in Sleeping Beauty? I'm not sure.

I'm more interested in who is doing the animation, how, and with what degree of
artistic freedom than in whether the medium is software code or watercolors. In
some of the best CGI productions, the massive manpower involved seems to result
in a lot of creativity. Take Brave, for instance, which has only an okay script
but whose visuals marry Celtic-themed artistry, technical innovations in the
representation of hair and textiles, and sense of humor quite nicely. I'm not
sure that such a thing has a measurably political effect, but whatever effect it
creates has to be the opposite of the average Hollywood blockbuster, where CGI
artists are generally not respected enough to be told about the movie's themes,
attitude, and nature.

When Joss Whedon personally met with the team that animated The Hulk for
Avengers: Assemble, they were blown away at the opportunity to see themselves as
collaborators. More commonly, I understand that the process is similar to that
used in Pirates of the Caribbean, where the team making the skeletons saw only
soundless prints of the scenes they were supposed to animate. As a result the
movie had CGI skeletons that looked impressive (I suppose) but were jarringly
out of sync with the tone of the rest of the film. So CGI can enable thoughtful
storytelling, or it can enable increasingly thoughtless schlock. And again, I'm
not sure necessarily how much of a difference either makes in terms of shaping
our cultural attitudes. 

 * reply


AND ALSO

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2014-01-29 11:19.

Not really on your point, but my favorite comment on the film was from my
six-year-old son, who pointed out (okay, maybe I said something similar first)
that there isn't really any "bad guy" in Frozen. "People make bad choices when
they're sad or scared or stressed/But throw a little love their way, you'll
bring out their best." That's a pretty radical change from the message of
traditional Disney. I think?

 * reply


ANTHONY LANE'S ARTICLE FOR

Submitted by Scott Garbacz on Wed, 2014-01-29 16:40.

Anthony Lane's article for The New Yorker pointed out the same thing as your son
did. Only he seems to smirk at the movie (and current Disney) for lacking "the
seriously bad guys and the top-grade sidekicks" of previous films like The
Jungle Book. It was a really odd moment. 

[Spoiler alert]


Now that you mention it, though, it's interesting that there are in fact two
villains, of sorts, who certainly receive no love at the film's conclusion (but
who also aren't killed.) Both are lying men seeking to exploit the realm for
their own good (one wants to kill Elsa so he can restore his trade agreements,
the other wanst to kill Elsa and Anna so he can seize direct political control.)
As someone increasingly disturbed at our nation's foreign policy over the last
decade or so, I'm particularly intrigued by the squeaky Duke of Weselton played
by Alan Tudyk. His devotion to regional stability, and his willingness to
remotely command the death of a possibly-innocent figure if she poses a threat
to his national interests, makes him an odd reflection of our nation's own
checkered history of intervening in other nation's politics. 

 * reply




TAGS

advertising art Barack Obama Documentary Photography Feminism film food graphic
design Harry Ransom Center Humor information design new media Pedagogy
photography politics rhetoric of science video visual analysis Visual Rhetoric
youtube
more tags


RECENT COMMENTS

 * you are an asshole
   2 years 29 weeks ago
 * comment notification
   2 years 44 weeks ago
 * Reply to comment | viz.
   2 years 44 weeks ago
 * Sloppliness is not complexity
   2 years 50 weeks ago
 * so interesting
   3 years 4 weeks ago
 * Sick and cruel leave the poor
   3 years 4 weeks ago
 * A quick correction... :)
   3 years 4 weeks ago
 * taking the marxist bait
   3 years 6 weeks ago
 * This was an interesting post...
   3 years 6 weeks ago
 * taking the romantic bait
   3 years 6 weeks ago


This site is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License