Interpersonal Relationships In Disney: The Sense Of Self In Frozen

In 2013, Disney’s animated series once again returned with a hugely popular movie, Frozen, and was estimated to had grossed $150,000,000 globally. The story is about a young princess – Anna – on the quest to search for her elder sister – Elsa – who has used her ice manipulation power to freeze the whole nation and change the weather to eternal winter. There are many relationships in this movie, which makes Anna and Elsa’s relationship seem like a bad choice to examine interpersonal relationship, due to the fact that they do not talk and interact to each other as often as the other characters. However, their relationship can be interesting when viewed in communication theories, because the whole movie is about how the protagonist and antagonist escalate and resolve their conflict despite the lack of interaction. Owning to that, this essay will explore these main ideas: The sense of self in Anna and Elsa and their respectively personal communication style, and their conflict base on the work of Devito (2016) and Wood (2009).

Anna and Elsa are family members and at the start of the movie they are really close. While Elsa acts like an elder sister figure who are more composed, Anna is optimistic and full of energy. They sleep in the same room and play together all the time. What build Anna and Elsa’s sense of identity is their interaction with their parents, the King and the Queen of Arendelle. According to Wood, parents can direct their children with words, and this is shown in the movie with Elsa’s case. The disparity between Anna and Elsa only become visible later after the incident in which Elsa accidentally uses her magical power and makes Anna collapsed. Below is the analysis of each character after that