Walt Disney Frozen Themes

NM3224: Cultural Industries

Individual Essay:

Zann Chan Jingwen

A0112845J

W1 [e-mail] 92264491

Introduction

Here I discuss the global hit sensation – Walt Disney Pictures’ Frozen – along themes of critical political economy and globalisation. My analysis follows that Frozen’s explosive success can be largely attributed to Disney’s effective globalisation of the film, which can be considered part of Disney’s move to maintain its cultural hegemony – sparked and fueled by the United States’ neo-liberalist stance.

Frozen’s success

Frozen is a 2013 Walt Disney animated film that follows princesses/sisters Anna and Elsa, in their coming-of-age story. Anna embarks on a mysterious and dangerous journey to find Elsa after she flees having

An implication of neo-liberalism is the widening income gap between the capitalists and the working class, where the rich grow richer at the expense of the poor who stay poor due to wealth concentration in the hands of a few capitalists (Kotz, 2000). Less state intervention allows conglomerates like Disney to have more control over the production and circulation of texts consumed by the working class who have to pay to gain access to them. In this context, we can consider Frozen to be Disney’s newest cash cow, bred to to milk profits from a captive audience. From Frozen merchandise to Frozen princesses at Disneyland attractions and the upcoming Frozen sequel, all these present avenues for Disney to continue exploiting consumer emotions past the film to extend Frozen’s profitability. This constant exposure to Frozen commodities also creates a climate of ritualised consumption that, cultivated long-term via more Disney releases, perpetuates a vicious cycle of consumerism, feeding back into Disney’s

It received much flak from how it seemingly “whitewashed” the princesses of Sami descent (who are largely people of colour), which critics consider to be bordering on modern racism. Notoriously coined “Frozen’s Whitewashing Controversy”, this backlash is in fact not new, and mounts from Disney’s general lack of racial diversity and representation in their films (Tucker, 2014). This exemplifies cultural imperialism – a subversion of globalisation that sees it not so much about the sharing of resources, but rather, the imposing of unequal cultural relationships between countries (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). By “adopting economically peripheral countries to the values and structure of the dominating center” (Hesmondhalgh, 2013), Disney has managed to take advantage of the “exotic appeal” of the lesser-known Sami culture and spun it into a profitable tale that has little to do with the culture per se, aside from superficial elements like the token reindeer and semi-Sami outfits. The Sami minority in Frozen can be said to have been misrepresented in order to make the film more appealing and relatable to a global audience used to Hollywood’s predominantly-white stars, and thereby more profitable for