Another Mormon's take on Disney's "Frozen"

This week another Mormon blogger, Kathryn Skaggs, has taken some flack because she had the audacity to suggest that Disney's movie Frozen promoted the gay agenda.

I don't agree with her.  I think Frozen covers issues that might be personal to gays, but I don't think the film promotes their agenda.

Still, I can completely understand where Skaggs is coming from.

I remember the first time I saw the film (I've seen it twice--because I wanted to see it, not because I was dragged to it by children), I sat with my hands clenched throughout the song "Let It Go" because I expected it to promote a gay viewpoint.

Why would I think such a thing?

Well, partly because it has been so common lately for films and television--especially children's films and television--to provide sometimes subtle, sometimes overt messages that bolster the argument that the only thing wrong with the practice of homosexuality is that society (particularly the evil religious fanatical part of society led by the evil religious fanatical Mormons) does not accept the behavior as normal.  If we all just got together and recognized homophobia (with all its shifting meanings) as the greatest evil in the world today, and if we all recognized that bullying of homosexuals is the single greatest cause of death among all races and classes of adolescents, then we could defeat the evil religious fanatics and begin living in our sexual utopia, complete with free and legal marijuana.

Or something like that.

I feel a little bombarded by the message.  So much so that I have come to expect it.

Why shouldn't I expect a gay agenda in Frozen?  After all, the (straight, married) song-writing team for Frozen earned Tony Awards for The Book of Mormon, a musical whose first incarnations were intended to be a response to the Church's participation in Prop 8.  The cute singing snowman was played by the actor who portrayed one of the idiotic Mormon missionaries, who blunders into doing good even though his religion is one of the stupider ones ever on earth.  The singer who sings "Let it Go" is same one who sang Elfaba in Broadway's Wicked.  (That's fodder for another blog, I suppose.)  I liked Wicked, but I liked it understanding that the book it is based on is written by a gay man whose intent is clearly to suggest that what we thought was wrong is not wrong.  (The musical is usually read as a tribute to the lonely, ugly, misunderstood girls growing up in a world in which the competition is weighted in favor of the beautiful and popular--a reason for its success among  female 'tweens and adolescents.)

Add to that the fact that I have been presented with an almost unrelenting message from NBC that Russia is the most evil country in the modern world--even worse than the former Soviet Union--because they (name two or three things, then add) have anti-gay propaganda laws (then add some other evils, like force people out of their homes to build the stadium). 

If you know too much backstory, it might be hard to see something like "Let it Go" and not see some subliminal pro-gay messages--even if they aren't really there.

Personally, I was very pleased with Disney's ability to focus the talents of those who did Frozen, and make a film that is so beautiful and so positive to all children.  It is, after all, the Christ story--a story of personal sacrifice born of innocent, familial love.  It is the most timeless, important story in the world, told either directly through scripture, or allegorically, through a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen.  

I disagree with Skaggs.

But I understand where she's coming from.

Vives les Jeux Olympiques!

For some reason, it seems appropriate to praise the Olympics in French.  If my spelling is wrong (it usually is in French, and increasingly in English), tell me soon.  Or let it ride and make fun of me privately.

I love the Olympics.  I have a special affection for the Winter Olympics, having grown up in Siberia--I mean Southeastern Idaho.  We watched the Summer Olympics with a large dose of jealousy.  We knew we could never compete in the summer games because we could never play summer sports long enough to get good at them.

But winter sports!

I mean, I played hockey outdoors.  None of this wimpy, ice dancing in an indoor rink.  Indoor ice was always soft and squishy and just a little wet.  When outdoor ice got that way (sometime around May), we gave up hockey for our summer job of gaining weight for the coming winter.

Those of my friends who could ski (I never successfully did that on snow) could do it year-round in Idaho.  When the snow turned to water, they water-skied (I did that successfully--once).  Maybe that's why so many great skiers were born in Idaho (Picabo Street, Christin Cooper, Jeret "Speedy" Peterson,,  and Sage Kotsenberg).

But for me, it's all about hockey.  When the games were in Salt Lake City in 2002, I paid to send my daughter to watch obscure hockey games (the only ones we could afford) and made her report back to us so I could vicariously live the moment.  When Russian hockey coach, Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, said that no other medals were as important to Russians as the gold in ice hockey, I thought I had truly found a kindred spirit.  Idaho really is a part of Siberia.  Idahoans and the Siberians truly understand each other.  Yeah, figure skating is really nice, and last Olympics I really got into curling (there is a large part of my heart devoted to all things Canada), and I understand the hunting roots of the biathlon (see my last blog about Bambi's mom), but it's really all about hockey.

I mean if we're talking about the Olympics only in terms of sport.

But they're not really just sports are they?  They are all sorts of things:  cultural exchange, international love-fest, war-prevention strategy, travelogue, history lesson, geography lesson, foreign language lesson (isn't the Cyrillic alphabet fun?  don't you love the idea that "Sochi" can be spelled c--o--upside-down h--backward n?).  I think if I spent the rest of my life just learning every language in the world, I could die in the midst of a spree of fun (all right, I'm an admitted nerd anyway).

As long as I can pause every once in awhile for the Stanley Cup and the Olympics.