With the hashtag #GiveElsaAGirlfriend, Twitter users are campaigning for Frozen 2 to declare Elsa the first openly LGBT Disney princess. Sign me up. (via the Independent)
So, in the Frozen tie-in book, A Sister More Like Me, it’s mentioned that Elsa loves geometry.
While at first this seems like a throwaway piece of trivia about Elsa, her interest in geometry makes a ton of sense when you think about how she was able to construct her ice palace. At first, I didn’t put much thought into Elsa being able to construct a beautiful (and structurally sound) ice castle like it was nothing, but when you consider that bit about her love of geometry, it provides an actual answer as to how she was able to do it.
Geometry is used a lot in architecture and construction, as knowing what shapes to use plays an important role in making sure a building is structurally sound. The very first thing Elsa does when making her castle is creating a center point to ensure the structure will be balanced.
And when she actually begins to build the castle, we see a myriad of shapes being formed and used.
Finally, Elsa uses the term “fractals” in “Let it Go” (“My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around…”). A fractal is a geometric term that describes a set that displays a self-similar pattern and is often used to catalog snowflakes. The fact that Elsa knows and uses this word really speaks volumes about her knowledge of geometry.
Tl;dr– Elsa used math to build a sweet-ass ice castle.
Okay, but pause. Pause pause pause.
DISNEY PRINCESS, NAY, QUEEN, LOVES MATH
GIRLS ARE OFTEN DISCOURAGED OUT OF STEM FIELDS.
How many girls can we save from the assumption of “girls don’t do math?”
“You know, Queen Elsa likes math. A special kind, called geometry.”
“You know that one part in Let It Go where Elsa says her soul is in fractals? She’s talking about a kind of math used in measuring snowflakes.”
“Did you know Elsa uses math to build her castle in Frozen?”
How many girls want to be Elsa?
Keep this factoid stored away in your brains. USE IT.
Girls do so like math. Even higher math. Queen Elsa is one of them.
So I was going to write a post talking about Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting The Swing, which is, as you all know, business as usual around here. Now, the first step in any art post is finding a high-quality image, which put me on Google, which in turn led me to this.
And this is–I mean. Look, this moment slipped my mind, all right? I saw Frozen once, was deeply unimpressed, and never thought about it again. I forgot that it contained a blissfully unaware nod to a dirty painting.
Yeah. Surprise! The Swing is a dirty goddamn painting.
Duh, you say, that guy’s looking straight up her dress, but that’s mid-range dirty at best, this is eighteenth century France, the aristocracy got dirtier than that on their way to breakfast. And presumably also at breakfast. A swing isn’t good enough! More filth! Better filth, you demand, beating your hands on the table.
Well, let me just assure you that you are looking at genuinely fun dirty, and hopefully that holds you over while we take a little trip into background. Buckle in for a very French story.
Sometime in the 1760s, painter Gabriel François Doyen, fresh off the success of several large-scale religious paintings, was contacted by a “gentleman of the court”, who had seen his work and been moved by it. Pleased by the attention, Doyen went to meet this courtier, and discovered him at what he later described as “a pleasure house”, entangled an an amorous embrace with his mistress. The following exchange, related by Doyen to a writer friend of his several years after the fact, went something like this:
“Monsieur Doyen, I was so moved by your work! The angels, the colors, the piety. Its beauty is unrivaled!”
“Well, that’s–very kind of you. Although I do…that is. If you and your–ah, young lady would rather I returned later–”
“Nonsense, sit down, sit down! You should be as comfortable as we are.”
At which point Doyen, more or less trapped, did pull up a chair, although presumably not without giving it a surreptitious wipe with his handkerchief first.
The young aristocrat, whose identity is unknown, was apparently so impressed by Doyen’s religious work that he hoped to commission the artist for something decidedly less religious.
Just try to imagine it: Doyen sitting on the edge of some louche-looking parlour chair while a young man in a highly noticeable state of undress cuddles with his equally nude lady friend and describes what will surely be a masterpiece.
“I should like to see madame–” (history doesn’t tell us if he booped her nose here, but I like to imagine he did) “On a swing, being pushed by a bishop. But you will place me in such a way that I will be able to see the legs of the lovely girl, and better still, if you would like to enliven your picture a little more…”
Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, that Doyen would have gone a little pale at this and made his excuses, but hilariously, he appears to kind of get into it, all of a sudden suggesting, “Ah Monsieur, it is necessary to add to the essential idea of your picture by making Madame’s shoes fly into the air and having some cupids catch them.”
Flying shoes, he said. Essential, he said. Remember that for later.
In the end though, for whatever reason, Doyen decided not to take the commission, and passed it to Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who took the idea, looked at it, decided “too tame.”
Now, the only thing he really changed from the initial idea was the bishop. The man pushing the swing is now just a dude. A significantly older dude than the young man in the foreground, though, which is notable. We don’t know for certain why this alteration was made, maybe Fragonard didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the church. Or maybe he just sucked at drawing vestments.
The old not-bishop is hidden in shadow, holding the rope of the swing, his age and restraint rendering him unimportant. This is an image for the young and passionate. The girl on the swing leaves the trees behind, flying with her knees open towards the statue of Cupid, who holds a finger to his lips, signifying the illicit nature of this encounter. And like, make no mistake, this is an encounter. Our unnamed aristocrat lies on the ground, twined around with blossoming undergrowth, his eyes directed beneath her skirts, and his arm erect, reaching for what he sees. He holds his hat in his hand, a funny little detail until you remember that in late 18th century erotic art, men’s hats (and their bared heads) were often directly analogous with their dicks. No one ever said Rococo was subtle, okay.
The swing (and the young lady on it) are at the peak of their movement, all fluttering pinks and the soft, sinuous curve of her body beneath the glistening silk, and just as she’s gone as far as she can go, positioned over her lover’s outstretched arm, with her toes pointed at Cupid–her shoe flies off. (A missing shoe, by the way, and a bare foot, were neck-and-neck with the broken pitcher in the French Symbols Of Lost Virginity Sweepstakes.)
All of which is to say, The Swing is a painting of an orgasm.
I almost don’t know where to take it from here. Um, let’s see. Well, this became an iconic image of the Rococo period, thanks to the rich colors, freedom of movement and the finished image’s contagious joy. Mostly-contagious, anyway, Enlightenment philosophers hated it, presumably because they weren’t getting laid. But it really is hard not to smile looking at it. That girl’s having a great time.
Such a great time, in fact, that Anna from Frozen probably shouldn’t be reenacting it. Even with both her shoes on.
Well… I mean, considering Anna’s hoping to hook up at that party, it might not be TOTALLY inaccurate……..
‘Fox & Friends’ claims that ‘Frozen’ empowers women by saying all men are fools and villains, and is therefore bad for society and harmful to little boys. For the love of god.
here for your daily chuckle: our buddies over at Fox make a convincing argument that Frozen — and, in fact, media in general! — is a threat to masculinity and “real men.”
“When we bring our daughters to see Frozen or whatever the movie is we often have our little boys sitting there. Is this message helpful? We want them to know that they’re essential. We want to raise heroes. We want to raise real men.”
It’s kind of worth watching just for the ridiculous-ness and very odd connections they draw between different events. One of their chosen clips for showing how the films encourage us to see men as “evil and cold and bumblers” is where Kristoff is telling Anna that when it comes to picking their noses “all men do it.” Score one against the patriarchy. Another point of evil-izing men is that the bad guy is literally, a guy.
Like I’m not even sure what their solution is here. That villains never have a gender??
The dude on this program, completely unironically says: “It would be nice for Hollywood to have more male figures in those kind of movies.”
Cool! That fits right in with actual statistics that say 15% of protagonists in the top 100 movies in 2013 were women. Nothing says male figures are being excluded from media like an 85-15 ratio!
I don’t understand because wasn’t Olaf’s actions of lighting the fire, almost melting and then trying to save her and act of true love and shouldnt that have unfrozen her heart?
oh shit
Because the act of true love has to come from Anna! As soon as she sacrifices herself for her sister, the curse is lifted- nothing Elsa, Kristoff or Olaf did could have helped, no matter how much they loved her, she had to do it.
It would’ve been nice if the trolls had specified that, mind, the ambigious little gits.
A tale from Arendelle. Based roughly on the idea that Prince Hans, had he succeeded in manipulating and murdering his way to the throne, might have actually made a fairly good king (by nineteenth-century standards) once he’d gotten there. Which somehow just makes him even more unnerving.
Warnings: Hans wins, everybody else dies or suffers. (Sorry.) Main characters: Original character
You know, this scene – after Elsa falls to the ground, it’s possible she didn’t even realise Hans was drawing his sword to kill her, that she was so lost in grief she just didn’t register anything. But I think she probably knew she was about to die-
-and, thinking she’d killed her sister, she just didn’t care.
