With "Frozen" anointed the best animated picture of 2013 by the liberal din of sin known as Hollywood, the culture-war skirmishes over the film have gotten more intense, most recently with the accusation by Christian broadcaster Kevin Swanson that the movie is part of a Satanic push to indoctrinate children with the idea that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle:
Friends, this is evil, just evil. I wonder if people are thinking: “You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way."... This is fracturing our society and I can see how it might, I can see how some parents might be very strong, they don’t want their children indoctrinated in any way into the lifestyle of sodomy.
Swanson, who, he'll have you know, it "not a tinfoil-hat conspiracist," hasn't seen the movie, but he's drawing on the work of others who've interpreted the film in similar fashion. On one side, you've got Gina Lattrell at Policymic, who calls "Frozen" "the most progressive Disney movie ever," because its occasionally fumbling princess Anna departs from the preternatural grace of her Mouse House predecessors and the glimpse of what she takes to be a coded gay family inside a mountain sauna. (We'll come back to that.) On the other, you've Kathryn Skaggs, a self-described "well-behaved Mormon woman" who claims the film is an elaborate polemic in favor of same-sex marriage.
The fact is, that not one of us would allow a person, contrary to our values, to come into our homes and teach our family many of the principles advocated in the movie "Frozen" -- such as rebellion/disobedience -- as good. Yet, when the same element cunningly creates a medium within to share the same doctrine, which intensely overwhelms the senses, we are blinded -- and rather than put on glasses, we allow ourselves to be mesmerized by the overall experience -- focusing only on the good that we see, or perceive, highlighted for our viewing pleasure.
Given social media's facility in gathering like-minded individuals to take down an easy target, Skaggs was roundly mocked, to the extent that Salt Lake City Weekly's Scott Renshaw was moved to come to her defense, pointing out that no one had ridiculed people who praised the film for having a pro-gay subtext rather than attacking it:
Skaggs was far from the only person who noted that "Frozen" might be more than slightly sympathetic to the Lavender Nation.... And for what it’s worth, I happen to agree with all of them: It’s absolutely possible to see the estranged relationships and Elsa’s rebellion against hiding her true nature as a coming-out story. It’s certainly far less of an interpretive stretch than the “Andy’s mom in 'Toy Story' is Jessie’s grown-up owner” theory that a Pixar enthusiast put forth recently, yet nobody burst blood vessels shame-linking to that interpretation.
To make things even more complicated, some Christian writers have interpreted "Frozen" as a religious allegory, prompting National Catholic Register critic Steven A. Greydanus to write a post entitled "How Christian Is Disney's 'Frozen'? (Not very.)" Although Skaggs backed down under criticism from seeing an explicit wink to same-sex coupledom in the film, Greydanus does see it: His followup post, "How Gay Is Disney's 'Frozen'?" could be subtitled "(Maybe a little?").