Frozen - A Thawing up to Real Love
Frozen is a Disney love story... one with princesses and princes... But it is not the kind of love where the princess kisses the ugly frog who turns into a charming (stud of a) prince and they fall into 'true love', living happily ever after. Rather, it is the kind of story where one goes in search of 'true love' and finally finds 'real love'... For too long the modern world, modeled after Hollywood, has reveled in the ideal of 'true love' which is premised on the idea that there is one person in the world, with whom one will inexorably fall in love and then life will be happy and easy. 'Real love' on the other hand is the idea that you open up the door to your life, let people get close and be hurt and hurt other in the process of find love. In 'real love', born through the crucible of hurt, pain and suffering, one may not so much find love as 'be the love'.
What I really loved about the movie is that throughout the movie the point of tension of finding 'real love' was communicated through the metaphor of opening the doors vs closing doors. 'Open doors' meaning communing with people, hurting (others) and hurting (within) vs 'Closed doors' meaning living lives of seclusion as a queen of your own realms, cozy and safe. The movie starts with the prettiest opening scenes I have ever seen - one of two sister princesses being good friends. The elder sister has a strange power to freeze objects she touches. She unwittingly hurts the younger sister while playing. Their parents, the King and the Queen, fearful that people would think a witch of their elder daughter, decide to 'close the doors' to their castle and let none in. The elder sister herself lives behind a closed door, permanently cut off from the love and affection of her younger sister.
Eventually, the doors to the castle open, but you quickly find that 'opening doors' into people's closed hearts is easier said than done. The two sisters have remained shut out from each other for so long. Can they truly open the doors and find 'real love', even if it would hurt them. What is the real cost to shutting oneself up in ones own cozy world? If someone shuts you out of their world, can you get them to open up? Can 'true love' prevail? Or does it take 'real love'? What does 'real love' that can open heart with closed doors look like? These are the primary questions the movie wrestles with.
The elder sister's ability to freeze things is really a gift, but her parents being fearful of her rejection do not see it as a gift. Instead they put her in seclusion to giver her 'space' to control her power so that she wouldn't hurt other people. In that state of seclusion, her gift turns into a curse. The only way for her to tame her power to a gift would have been to be able to exercise the power in a loving community. If she had exercised her powers in a loving community, she would hurt others, she would be hurt, but through that crucible of pain and suffering 'real love' that conquers all would have developed. The fearful shortsighted parents wanting to make her life 'easy', made a recluse of her and deprived her of possibility of finding 'real love' within communal relationships. Understandably, the elder sister using her powers, builds herself an ice castle and lives in a state self absorbed curse.
God has given all of us gifts, it is through the development of the gifts in the context of 'steadfast covenental relationships' that the gifts would flourish instead of turning into a self-absorbed curse. It is through the working-out of God given gifts, from within the context of steadfast 'covenental' relationships, whether it be marital or parental or filial or friendly, that 'real love' develops. It is in this context that St. Paul said 1 Corinthians 13 that I could have all the gifts in the world, but if I have not love, I am but a clinging cymbal. All my 'gifts' would amount to absolutely nothing.
I could not have dreamt of a day when I would use a romantic Disney movie to exemplify the sort of 1 Corinthians 13 'real love' that St. Paul talks about - the real one that isn't about 'having it easy', but about moving mountains, albiet thorough pain and suffering. In fact, the movie ends with the theme that 'real love' is to give ones life for another, Christlike - by taking up pain and suffering for the sake of another. I left the movie theater wondering if the cultural illusions of the easy cozy 'true love' were melting away? Is there finally, a reckoning that romantic idealistic 'true love' by itself just doesn't cut it? If so, could what we see in Frozen is a cultural thawing up to the idea of 'real love' that is sanctified by pain and suffering? Hear the mountains move???!!! Or is that a bridge too far...
What I really loved about the movie is that throughout the movie the point of tension of finding 'real love' was communicated through the metaphor of opening the doors vs closing doors. 'Open doors' meaning communing with people, hurting (others) and hurting (within) vs 'Closed doors' meaning living lives of seclusion as a queen of your own realms, cozy and safe. The movie starts with the prettiest opening scenes I have ever seen - one of two sister princesses being good friends. The elder sister has a strange power to freeze objects she touches. She unwittingly hurts the younger sister while playing. Their parents, the King and the Queen, fearful that people would think a witch of their elder daughter, decide to 'close the doors' to their castle and let none in. The elder sister herself lives behind a closed door, permanently cut off from the love and affection of her younger sister.
Eventually, the doors to the castle open, but you quickly find that 'opening doors' into people's closed hearts is easier said than done. The two sisters have remained shut out from each other for so long. Can they truly open the doors and find 'real love', even if it would hurt them. What is the real cost to shutting oneself up in ones own cozy world? If someone shuts you out of their world, can you get them to open up? Can 'true love' prevail? Or does it take 'real love'? What does 'real love' that can open heart with closed doors look like? These are the primary questions the movie wrestles with.
The elder sister's ability to freeze things is really a gift, but her parents being fearful of her rejection do not see it as a gift. Instead they put her in seclusion to giver her 'space' to control her power so that she wouldn't hurt other people. In that state of seclusion, her gift turns into a curse. The only way for her to tame her power to a gift would have been to be able to exercise the power in a loving community. If she had exercised her powers in a loving community, she would hurt others, she would be hurt, but through that crucible of pain and suffering 'real love' that conquers all would have developed. The fearful shortsighted parents wanting to make her life 'easy', made a recluse of her and deprived her of possibility of finding 'real love' within communal relationships. Understandably, the elder sister using her powers, builds herself an ice castle and lives in a state self absorbed curse.
God has given all of us gifts, it is through the development of the gifts in the context of 'steadfast covenental relationships' that the gifts would flourish instead of turning into a self-absorbed curse. It is through the working-out of God given gifts, from within the context of steadfast 'covenental' relationships, whether it be marital or parental or filial or friendly, that 'real love' develops. It is in this context that St. Paul said 1 Corinthians 13 that I could have all the gifts in the world, but if I have not love, I am but a clinging cymbal. All my 'gifts' would amount to absolutely nothing.
I could not have dreamt of a day when I would use a romantic Disney movie to exemplify the sort of 1 Corinthians 13 'real love' that St. Paul talks about - the real one that isn't about 'having it easy', but about moving mountains, albiet thorough pain and suffering. In fact, the movie ends with the theme that 'real love' is to give ones life for another, Christlike - by taking up pain and suffering for the sake of another. I left the movie theater wondering if the cultural illusions of the easy cozy 'true love' were melting away? Is there finally, a reckoning that romantic idealistic 'true love' by itself just doesn't cut it? If so, could what we see in Frozen is a cultural thawing up to the idea of 'real love' that is sanctified by pain and suffering? Hear the mountains move???!!! Or is that a bridge too far...