Frozen vs. The Snow Queen

Let it go, let it go... If you know these famous words then more than likely this song is now stuck in your head. Disney's newest animated movie Frozen is a play off of Christen Hans Andersen's original fairy tale The Snow Queen.

Frozen is a story about two young sister's and one is cursed with a power to create snow and ice. The cursed sister, Princess Elsa, eventually becomes queen and all find out about her curse. Princess Anna gets hit by the curse and true love is the only thing that can save her. Of course, true love conquers all.
Now, while this is a film derived from The Snow Queen and there are some similarities to note, there are many differences as well. In this story, it is told in seven separate stories. A mirror is created by a demon that turns makes person see cold heartily, when this mirror breaks fragments find their way into a little boy, Kay's, heart and eye. He leaves his best friend, Gerda, behind to runaway with the snow queen.

Gerda sets out to find her friend and encounters a reindeer on her way who helps accompany her. Her tears warm Kay's heart back up when she finds him at the palace of the Snow Queen.

Disney's strong, empowering Queen Elsa is THE snow queen, but it could be said that she is also Kay. The snow queen plays a very small role in the actual Snow Queen story. The main reasons Queen Elsa is based off her is because she creates snow and has a palace like the one the Queen has, but if you look she is also in Kay's position. Kay is cursed, just like Queen Elsa. Queen Elsa doesn't want these powers, yet she can't get rid of them.

You see a bigger portrayal of Kay in Princess Anna. Kay is cursed and needs someone to save him, as does Princess Anna. Anna is saved by the overpowering, true love of her sister while Kay is just saved by the memory and tears of Gerda. But Princess Anna is the real hero of Frozen. Anna's adventure to find Queen Elsa and bring her home is just like Gerda's adventure to find and bring home Kay. Of course Gerda couldn't have completed her adventure without her reindeer friend as Princess Anna could not have done it without Sven, Kristoff's reindeer.





Disney gives the portrayal of two very strong, independent women in Frozen while the original story is more dark and more about Gerda using other people to try and find Kay. Disney does a good job of adapting a film to work for a children's film. Disney uses implicit ideologies in everyone of their movies, but Frozen is the first film where they have changed their ideologies around. For the first time in Disney history, both women are protagonist and not either are a villain. While Christen Hans Andersen played more off of the fact that you must save yourself but you can get help from loved ones. Disney made such a loose interpretation due to the fact that they needed to change the messages behind their movies to adapt to the time period.