Frozen 2: We Wouldn’t Let it Go
Writing in this week’s Observer about the cultural phenomenon that is Frozen. “The original 2013 movie took more than $1bn at the box office and more than that in merchandising, became Amazon’s bestselling children’s film DVD of all time, solely based on pre-orders, and pushed Elsa, the name of the ice princess who can’t control her powers, into the top 100 names for British babies. At the height of Frozen’s success, the waiting time to see Elsa at Disney World, Florida, was four hours. Serena Williams once claimed to have watched the film 3,000 times.
I don’t think I can quite beat that but sometimes it felt like it. Our family was gripped by Frozen mania long before the term “basic” fell into common usage. At the time, in 2013, our children were aged three, seven and 10, so we were essentially a Frozen marketing focus group. At first, Frozen was comforting and bonding, even slightly profound in its Oprah-esque message of self-belief and resilience. Then the soundtrack drove you slowly but surely to the boundary of sanity. Still, the children’s passion for it grew. The three-year-old loved Olaf, the snowman who never wanted summer to come because then he would melt. The seven-year-old could imagine she was a princess who could shoot ice from her fingers. And the 10-year-old got to pretend his interest in it all was purely ironic. The parents, by now bludgeoned into dumb submission by the repetition of frozen fractals spiralling all around (Let It Go, bridge), simply appreciated any DVD or CD that the three tyrants would not argue over.”
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