Collin Garbarino, of Houston Baptist University, explains:
Garbarino nails it in this piece for The Guardian:
“Our children need to hear that sometimes the act of love has to come from the person who has been wronged. Christ comes to us, and he’s wounded for our transgressions, even though mankind has turned its back on him. God hasn’t given up on us.”
Just like Anna doesn’t give up on her older sister, Elsa.Frozen, Garbarino argues, also echoes images of hell in both Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost. In Dante’s hell, instead of the expected vision of a fiery pit, lies a frozen wasteland. Garbarino notes that Elsa, like Satan, yearns for complete freedom when she sings the Oscar-nominated song, Let It Go.
“No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free!” she croons. “Disney depicts Elsa’s fall in a manner consistent with the western literary tradition’s picture of humanity’s descent into sin,” wrote Garbarino on his blog. “We call license ‘freedom,’ and it enslaves us. Luckily for Elsa, a redeemer is coming to rescue her instead of leaving her trapped in her frozen hell.”
Anna–the person most hurt by Elsa’s selfishness and isolation–takes on great suffering and lays down her life on behalf of the one who had so callously hurt her. This transforms Elsa and reconciles the sisters.
I agree with Garbarino that this is a huge step up for Disney. (And the box office numbers show it’s resonating….almost $700 million in gross receipts and it hasn’t even opened in China or Japan.)