Frozen gay

2), as the ice around her reflects in pink, purple and blue tones: the colours of the bisexual pride flag.

Here, in dialogue with a magical reflection of her own dead mother, she realizes that the person she needed to learn to love is herself – something many queer people struggle with, especially after they have liberated themselves from a repressive upbringing like Elsa’s.

Yet it is worth revisiting just how her queerness manifests in the animated films, especially in the songs in Frozen and its sequel, and the surrounding debate on representation that has flared up again since Frozen 2 (Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, 2019) was released on Disney+ in 2020.

To recap: Elsa (Idina Menzel) is the queen of Arendelle, a Norwegian-inspired fictional kingdom loosely adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen.

However, this interpretation ultimately clashes with many other queer fans who clamour for Elsa to be shown in a lesbian relationship. The framing of the shot, and his huge size, seems to suggest that he’s a father figure, not just an older brother.

How often do we see such a large family in a Disney movie?

When Elsa finally returns to Arendelle, she does away with her parents’ rules completely and is “able to collapse the binaries that have regulated and haunted her life” (Matos 2014). Why so many, if not visual misdirection to slip the moment past most viewers?

It seems plausible the filmmakers have thrown this moment in to allow sharp-eyed homophile viewers to draw their own conclusions about just what sort of “family” this is.

And we’re going to be seeing more and more of this sort of thing in the future.

In the same way, it's satisfying to see Ethan get a happy ending with the boy of his dreams. The moment is also beautiful, portraying a lesbian couple with their little son. With Frozen, I’m more concerned about issues like Squelched Girl Syndrome and the subverting, in very different ways, of the two leading men.)

However, there’s another pro-gay element in Frozen worth noting that I originally missed: a fleeting but definite suggestion that a minor character has a family consisting of a same-sex partner and a bunch of children.

This was brought to my attention by an interesting article at PolicyMic.com called “7 Moments that Make Frozen the Most Progressive Disney Movie Ever.” The article offers a blend of insightful observations, obvious ones, and, for me, one eye-opener:

5.

They see Elsa as a queer icon because she shows you can be complete all by yourself – without needing a boyfriend or girlfriend to make your story interesting.

Representation of queer themes

Elsa’s story really hits home for a lot of folks in the LGBTQ+ community. Not only that, but Priya also has a crush on one of the boys from the band, which might suggest she's bisexual, a sexual orientation often ignored in the media.

Sabrina Mittermeier is an assistant professor of American cultural history at the University of Kassel, Germany. The story revolves around Luz Noceda, a Dominican-American girl who ends up in the Demon Realm.

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There, Luz makes a small family, becomes a witch, and befriends many magical beings.

Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press. This is a feminist project, as the films’ director, Jennifer Lee, as well as voice actress Idina Menzel have echoed in several promotional interviews: “In these films, the most powerful thing is that she's always trying to find and build the love inside for herself. A year later, the film shows Diazo and Ethan dating.

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Ethan is an amazing queer representation in a film that is also about father-son relationships.

As José Munoz has argued, “queerness is essentially about a rejection of the here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world” (2009, 1). Some people find this really cool. Medium, July 29, 2020, https://secretladyspider.medium.com/elsa-from-frozen-is-aromantic-and-asexual-b36483da9702

Stahler, Kelsea.

Female Characterization in Disney’s Frozen.” Adaptation 13, no.1: 98-112.

Maier, Kodi.