Disney Frozen Comparison

“Disney and its Creative License”
Many, if not most Disney movies are merely adaptations of stories centuries old. Some are more closely based on their original counterparts than others. For example, Disney’s Cinderella bears strong resemblance to the Grimms tale, albeit a less graphic telling. The process of “Disneyfication,” or the cleaning up of original fairy tales, can be seen in practically every movie the empire has released. Frozen, one of Disney’s famed princess movies, claims to be based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, but the comparison is loose at best. Disney’s Frozen is barely derivative of The Snow Queen because it has been so heavily Disneyfied. Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past four years knows that Frozen took the world by storm in 2013 with its powerful anthem, “Let it Go” and its unconventional ending. The Frozen obsession which has swept our culture quickly and entirely left me curious about its roots. In the quiet halls of the McCain Library & Archives, I sat down and began to read The Snow Queen. In the beginning, the differences seemed minimal. Rather than a set of royal sisters, Elsa and Anna,

It may have pulled themes from Andersen’s classic, but it is certainly not the same story. The Snow Queen was pushed through a Disney shaped cookie cutter, killing off the parents, centering around a royal family, sweetening the characters, and adding quirky sidekicks, and the result was Frozen. To their credit, the new age story does challenge some traditional archeypes of women who need saving and charming princes who harbor no bad intentions. This is part of what makes Frozen so widely popular. Overall, Frozen is certainly Disneyfied, but not necessarily in the ways we as consumers have come to