My garden of musings

I'll admit, a part of me doesn't think Frozen III should exist, just like a part of me thought Frozen II shouldn't exist. A part of me wishes Disney would stop cranking out sequels, let the fans imagine the characters' futures, and go back to making only original movies.

But still, this clip looks tantalizing to me, and I wish 99% of the Tumblr fandom wasn't already bashing it.

I understand why some fans are complaining that Anna and Kristoff's wedding has to be interrupted by yet another adventure – why can't Anna have just one nice thing in peace for a change? – but I don't like that some of them are already blaming Elsa for it. We have no idea where the mysterious sinister ice lady has come from, or why, and her first words address both sisters Anna: "the famous sisters of Arendelle." To assume it's somehow Elsa's fault is jumping to conclusions.

I've also seen a few people complaining that Anna and Kristoff are having "relationship problems" just because there's a momentary comedy bit where Anna gets annoyed with both Kristoff and Olaf for not knowing how to buckle her dress train, and then Olaf calls Kristoff a "terrible husband" for it. That's a bit of a drastic assumption from those fans! Granted, for all I know, they will have some real issues to work through, but a few seconds of played-for-laughs annoyance and a silly response from Olaf doesn't equal "relationship problems"!

At any rate, I’m very curious about the ice lady. Who is she? What will she do? Will she be a classic, old-school Disney villain, or will she turn out to be sympathetic and redeemable? Could the fan theories that she’s an alternate timeline version of Elsa have any truth in them? Her design does seem influence by the early concepts of a villainous Elsa for the original film, after all.

Very interesting. I wonder if the creative team will try to incorporate some themes from The Snow Queen that didn't make it into the original Frozen into the new movie.

Though if I remember correctly, they said that in the original movie, they saw Hans as the equivalent of the mirror from The Snow Queen, because he acts like a mirror to the people he manipulates, by observing who they are and then telling them just what they want to hear or what will make them do what he wants.

At any rate, another thing I find interesting about what we've seen of Frozen III is that it looks as if it might be borrowing some of the plot structure of Aladdin and the King of Thieves. It seems likely at this point that the movie will start with Anna and Kristoff's wedding, only for the wedding to be crashed by the new villain, forcing the characters to postpone it while they undertake their new all-important quest. But I'll bet that in the end, after everything is resolved, the wedding will finally take place and go off without a hitch, and this will be the movie's finale. Just like Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding.

Stephen Sondheim once admitted that Into the Woods contains a little of his own childhood. According to an article linked on Wikipedia, he claimed that the character of "a father uncomfortable with babies" was his father and that the character of "a mother who regrets having had children" was his mother. But he didn't name the specific characters.

Now, obviously, the "father uncomfortable with babies" is the Baker. His insecurity about helping his wife take care of their son, and his doubt in his ability to parent alone after his wife dies, are central to his character arc in Act II. But which character in this musical is the "mother who regrets having had children"? All the mother characters are flawed in their own ways, and some extremely so, but none of them ever explicitly say that they regret having had their child.

Sondheim famously had a terrible relationship with his mother. In interviews, he described her as an "overbearing, grasping, voracious" woman, who both loved and hated him, and who bluntly told him that her one regret in life was having given birth to him. So, which of the mothers in Into the Woods is she?

The Witch: Now, she never says that she regrets having adopted Rapunzel, and she obviously does love her desperately. The fact that she sincerely loves her is something that sets her apart from other, more straightforwardly evil versions of her character like Disney's Mother Gothel. But still, no other character in this musical better fits the description of an "overbearing, grasping, voracious mother," and even though she loves Rapunzel, it's clearly a selfish, emotionally abusive love. She isolates her from the world, supposedly to protect her but just as much to avoid having to "share" her with anyone, then banishes her to a desert when she finally dares to love someone besides the Witch (although she insists it was meant to be only a temporary exile, just until Rapunzel "learned her lesson"), and tries to put a curse on her when she won't come back to her afterwards, only failing because she's lost her powers. And while in Act II she tries to protect her from the Giantess and is devastated by her death, she still takes no responsibility for how she wronged Rapunzel, but blames the dead Rapunzel for never listening to her, and bitterly declares that "Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose." Maybe in that line, we can read the subtext of "I regret having adopted a child." But again, she never says it outright.

The Baker's Wife: Well, since the Baker is the character partly based on Sondheim's father, it would make sense for the Baker's Wife to be based on Sondheim's mother. And while her entire motive in Act I is to have a child, in the opening scene of Act II we see that it hasn't brought her the endless joy she thought it would. Having to actually raise the baby is stressful, especially because her insecure husband never helps her take care of him: this stress is undoubtedly part of what leads to her fling with Cinderella's Prince later on. And in the song "So Happy," she's a part of the ensemble who sings "Wishes may bring problems, such that you regret them..." But in the very next lines, she reaffirms (possibly trying to convince herself?) how happy she is to have gotten her wish, and insists that she's "going to be the perfect mother." She never outright says that she regrets having a baby or shows any resentment toward her son (just a little toward her husband). And while she obviously has her flaws and morally gray areas, she's certainly not "overbearing, grasping, voracious." In interviews, Sondheim insisted that the Baker's Wife was meant to be the sympathetic heart of the musical, and that her death is supposed to be devastating to the audience... not, as some critics assume, a punishment for her adultery with the Prince. It seems hard to reconcile his sympathy for her with the negative feelings he always expressed about his mother.

Jack's Mother: Well, she is overbearing, and she complains constantly about her son's stupidity. But at the same time she loves and protects him fiercely and never implies that she regrets having had him.

Rapunzel: Hmmm... She barely even acknowledges her own baby twins, except to cite having had to give birth to them alone in the desert as one of the traumas the Witch inflicted on her.

Well, I suppose it depends on whether her mother was already pregnant when she made her wish for a child as white as snow, or whether she became pregnant afterwards. If Snow White was born exactly nine months after her mother made her wish in winter, then she would have been an autumn baby. But if the queen was already far along in her pregnancy when she made her wish, then Snow White could have been born in the spring, and she could have been born the following winter if the queen became pregnant several months after her wish.

Well, the Grimms' hazel tree on the mother's grave, and the white bird that perches in it and throws gowns and slippers down to Aschenputtel, is a beautiful image, with the implication that her mother's spirit helps her even long after her death.

The animal companion who is killed, but who helps the heroine from beyond the grave much like the mother in Aschenputtel, is also an especially poignant and touching variation. For example, the fish in Ye Xian, the red calf in Rushen Coatie, or the bull in Katie Woodencloak.

I also like the Finnish variant, The Wonderful Birch, that combines the above two themes. It portrays the Stepmother as an ogress who turns the heroine's real mother into a sheep, and then has the unsuspecting father slaughter her; but after the heroine gives her sheep-mother's bones a proper burial, a birch tree grows from the spot and drops gowns and slippers down to her.

Another helper I especially like is the gooseherd from Tattercoats: a very interesting magical helper in that (a) he's a boy, (b) he's the heroine's best friend long before he reveals his magic, and (c) he casts his spells with a magic flute. (I think Mozart would have liked that!)

The Jewish variant where the heroine's helper is the Prophet Elijah disguised as an old man with a magic stick is another good one.

The three hazelnuts from the Czech variants, which each crack open to reveal a gown and slippers, are charming too, even if they lack the emotional connection of a person or animal.

The funny thing is, I think the movie does a great job of showing Quasimodo's friendships with Esmeralda and Phoebus. Quasi's feelings for Esmeralda are based very much in real friendship, not just infatuation with her beauty and charm, and we also see Quasi and Phoebus grow from initial tension, to commitment to working together for Esmeralda's sake, to genuine friendship by the end. The trio's reunion scene after Frollo's death and after Phoebus saves Quasi from falling, first with Quasi and Phoebus's hug, then Quasi and Esmeralda's hug, and then of course Quasi joining Esmeralda and Phoebus's hands, seems just as meaningful to me as any romance. Even though Quasi doesn't "get the girl" in a romantic sense, he does have her in the way that really matters, as a close friend, and Phoebus hasn't taken her away from him, but only brought more friendship into his life.

Then when he comes outside, and the little girl hugs him and the crowd celebrates him, it's just the icing on the cake, pointing toward a future where he'll find even more bonds with others than the two excellent ones he already has.

That does sound awkward. It sounds as if she's too afraid of offending anyone by liking the "wrong" characters.

If I met her, I would advise her to understand the aspects of each heroine of color's portrayal that some people consider problematic, but not to let it make her discount the representation altogether or stop her from liking the characters.

After all, not everyone agrees about what counts as problematic or not.

I just watched a YouTube video made by a black girl, complaining that the Disney heroines of color are almost always in stories specifically about their cultures (at least in part), which couldn't play out the same way in ay other culture, and which seem to exist partly to teach audiences about those cultures. She argued that this "others" those heroines, and that Disney should make more fairy tale movies with a Princess who just happens to be of color, but where the plot has nothing to do with her culture or ethnicity.

Yet a long time ago, I read an article criticizing the 1997 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella precisely for having a black heroine in a fairy tale that has nothing to do with her ethnicity. They argued that it's not "really" good representation for black girls, because it just puts a black girl's face on a white girl's story, with no elements of black culture or any specific experiences of young black womanhood.

I doubt this one comedy short inspired the whole discourse, especially because it was only uploaded two months ago and I think the discourse is older than that. But it's definitely a symptom of it.

Now of course this skit is comedy, so it's exaggerating Quasimodo on purpose. But if anyone really does think Quasi's attitude about his own ugliness is whiny self-pity, then I wish they would try to imagine what it would be like to have his deformities, in a medieval setting where people tie him up and throw vegetables at him the one time he dares to venture out of the bell tower. And more importantly, what it would be like to be raised by Frollo, who constantly reminds him of how monstrously hideous he is and tells him he's doomed to be hated and feared by everyone except Frollo himself.

I agree!

I know.

I have no idea where it comes from. Maybe ableism. Maybe victim-blaming for his emotional scars from Frollo's abuse. Maybe difficulty accepting a male hero as sensitive and vulnerable as he is. Or maybe they’re so eager to defend Esmeralda and Phoebus from fans who insist that Quasi should have “gotten the girl” that they feel the need to paint Quasi as more flawed than he is and frame him as a “bad choice.”

As it happens, the other day when I was reading posts about Star Wars, I saw one post that complained about how some fans to insist that Anakin's love for Padmé is just a toxic obsession from the start, rather than a true and beautiful love tragically doomed by his wrong choices and fall to the Dark Side. The OP pointed out that whenever Anakin expresses any desire for himself and Padmé to live happily together, those fans say "You see? He's selfish! If he loved Padmé the right way he would only care about her happiness, not his own!" As if wanting mutual happiness with your spouse weren't natural.

That reminded me very much of some of the bad takes I've found about Quasimodo – or specifically, one. It was a YouTube video analyzing "Heaven's Light" and "Hellfire," which argued that by singing about how Esmeralda has made him happy and filled his tower with "heaven's light," Quasi is "only thinking of how she benefits him, not unlike Frollo." This supposedly contrasts with Phoebus and how he focuses on helping Esmeralda, which is supposedly why Phoebus is the "good choice" for her while Quasi and Frollo are both "bad choices."

As if when Quasi sings that song, he hadn't just helped Esmeralda in a huge way, by helping her escape from her imprisonment in the cathedral, even though it means saying goodbye to her and not knowing when or if he'll see her again! As if it weren't only natural for a lonely, abused, self-loathing person, who's never had a human friend before and thought he never would, to be overjoyed that a caring friend (who also happens to be a beautiful woman whom he's infatuated with) has come into his life! How is such a thing remotely comparable to what Frollo expresses in "Hellfire"? And I'm pretty sure that the only reason why we don't hear Phoebus thinking of how Esmeralda "benefits him" (as they put it) isn't that he's so incredibly selfless, but just that he doesn't have a song about her!