Frozen 2: The Mental Health Message

First of all I need to let you know that this is potentially my last ever blog post. The reason for that is I've been looking to make the jump from blogging to YouTube so I'm in the process of working on the YouTube side of things at the moment. I might still post here on the blog occasionally, but it won't be a regular thing any more unless it doesn't work out with my YouTube channel. Please check my social media at the links at the bottom to stay up to date with how it's going. With that said, this week's post is one that I was really excited to write, so let's get into it.

I recently took the opportunity to watch Frozen 2 for the first time, and not only is it a really good film, but I'm also addicted to the soundtrack, and I love the multiple mental health issues it shows. In fact, if I love the soundtrack of something it's usually a good indicator of how much I love the thing itself, regardless of what style or gene the soundtrack is in. Not sure if that's an autistic thing (it probably is) but I'm just putting it out there.

*****SPOILER WARNING*****

The rest of the post contains spoilers from the film, so if you haven't seen it yet it's recommended to only read this after you have.

******************************

The main theme of the film - dealing with change - is set in one of the earliest scenes where Anna and Olaf contemplate the nature of time and how things are always changing. The song Some Things Never Change cements this theme by mentioning how even though seemingly everything is changing (everyone's getting older, the summer is turning to autumn and so on), some things stay the same (they'll always be friends, Kristoff's love for Anna is unconditional and they, as the royal family, will always work towards peace and the good of Arendelle).

It's not so much the theme of change that carries the messages, but more the way each character is affected by it. Anna and Elsa each represent depression and anxiety respectively (not to mention the widely held fan theory that Elsa is autistic, and of course autistics are particularly prone to struggling with change, as well as having more generalised issues with anxiety than the general population). The next song after Some Things Never Change is Into The Unknown, which is Frozen 2's successor to Let It Go. Into The Unknown begins with Elsa hearing a voice and recognising her purpose being to follow it into a journey of self-discovery. She initially resists because she doesn't want anything to change, but during the course of the song she admits that she's out of place as Queen of Arendelle and throws herself fully into following the voice.

It takes Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Sven and Olaf to the enchanted forest where they're initially attacked by the forest's guardian spirits. Olaf's song When I Am Older is next, which sticks with the theme of changing with time, but I also interpreted it as Olaf being in denial that things are currently bad as he sings that it'll all make sense when he's older and "This isn't bad, it's good." He later starts to accept that not everything is good and that - as the old saying goes - "it's ok to not be ok" when Elsa sends both him and Anna away and he realises he's feeling anger for the first time. I guess it could also be interpreted as alexithymia, but I think that's too obscure a condition to be addressed in one of Disney's most successful film franchises, so I think denial is more likely.

Kristoff spends the film trying to propose to Anna but his efforts keep getting sidetracked by one thing or another. His frustrations and self-doubt come to a head in his 80's rock-style ballad Lost In The Woods where he contemplates whether he and Anna are actually meant to be together since every time he tries to propose something else comes up. The obvious answer is yes, but he shows his heartbreak in this song, while the real meaning behind it is that Sven validates how he feels. One of Sven's lines here is actually my favourite line from the whole film; "You feel what you feel, and those feelings are real."

Back to Elsa for a little bit now when she tries to cross the ocean to reach Ahtohallan. Elsa's anxiety is represented by the storm that's raging and preventing her from crossing. It initially pushes her back to the shore but she perseveres by using her ice powers to create platforms across the waves until she's thrown into the water by the Nokk (the water spirit). She goes on to fight and then tame the Nokk, calming the storm and riding her new horse-shaped companion across the sea to the frozen river of Ahtohallan, symbolising that she has conquered her anxiety through hard work and perseverance.

Once Elsa reaches Ahtohallan and discovers the truth about not only herself but also the Arendellian royal family's past she is frozen solid, mirroring Anna's freezing in the original film, but not before she can send a message revealing the truth to Anna and Olaf who are searching for a way out of a cave that they ended up in after Elsa sent them away. Because Elsa is technically dead at this point, the magic that keeps Olaf alive is no longer there so he flurries away into a pile of snow leaving Anna distressed and alone. This is where her depression is shown by her song The Next Right Thing. It includes the line "Hello darkness, I'm ready to succumb," which is probably about as dark as it gets for a family friendly film. Of course, the film is all about overcoming these mental struggles, which Anna does by breaking each task down into tiny, manageable actions; "I won't look too far ahead, It's too much for me to take, But break it down to this next breath, this next step, This next choice is one that I can make." She escapes the cave and does what she has to do to make up for her family's past and put things right - even at the risk of Arendelle itself.

Elsa unfreezes with the wrongs of the past put right and rushes to save Arendelle from the impending flood by creating a wall of ice at the very last second. Earlier in the film it was revealed that there was a mysterious 5th spirit of the enchanted forest (the other four being earth, wind fire and water), which at this point it's made clear that it's Elsa as the ice spirit. So Elsa has now discovered who she really is, where she belongs, and why she was so out of place in the magic-less Arendelle. Going back to the fan theory that Elsa is autistic, this revelation and Elsa's journey strongly mirrors a late diagnosis of autism (much like my own) and is extremely relatable to a lot of the autistic community.

I've really enjoyed writing this post (to the point where I think it's official that Frozen is now my new special interest!) and I hope you've enjoyed reading it. Don't forget to hit the Follow button in the side bar and follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: A screenshot of Elsa holding Bruni (the fire spirit) in her hand. He's a small, blue lizard with a white underbelly, big eyes and a happy smile. The caption at the bottom reads "Frozen 2 The Mental Health Message". I chose this screen shot purely because Bruni is cute AF.]

Social Robot

My name is Dave, and I am a social robot.

What I mean by that is, as much as I hate to admit it, I rely heavily on words and phrases that I've picked up from other people, TV, YouTube videos etc. My day job is to help customers via online webchat, and in the webchat world this kind of phrases are called canned answers or canned responses. I've always felt that I don't really have an opinion on most things, but I'm starting to realise that it's more that I do have opinions and feelings, but I don't always have the words to express them. Either that, or I don't care enough to have an opinion. Sometimes when I hear people talking about a certain topic I'll take a word or a phrase that I've heard them say that most closely matches what I feel and either repeat it back to them in the conversation to show that I agree with them, or I'll use it next time I'm talking to somebody about that topic. I think politics is probably the main topic that I've done this with because until a few years ago I really didn't have a clue about it. Not that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to politics these days, but I definitely understand more than I did.

This use and recycling of social canned responses is part of autistic masking, but it's also a way to learn about things for me. It gets me involved in the conversation (or what little conversation I generally take part in...) and helps me to pick things up and learn that way. And I guess the fact that most people don't share a lot of my interests probably helps with the masking side of things in that they don't know that it came from a game or a film or something like that.

Not all of my canned responses came from other places. I came up with some of them myself (although they were usually short) and I have been picked up on using the same words and phrases a lot in the past. One that I remember when I was a kid was that I used to "Yeah, fine" a lot and my dad joked that I should have a button to press so that it says it for me. Looking back it probably sounded a bit dismissive but it was the quickest and easiest way for me to express that whatever we were talking about was ok. I never was one for talking lots.

The term "social robot" itself came from a book I read probably around 10 or 15 years ago about how to meet women. The writer used it to compare the performance of meeting people and obeying social rules of "popularity" to how you would normally be in every day life. I feel that being a social robot is better suited to autistics in reference to masking for survival and to get through social encounters with neurotypicals. A lot of us have actively spent time studying social rules and observing neurotypical behaviour so that we can learn the behaviours and communication methods that we can then perform rigidly in our robot state to pass as neurotypical. I personally haven't done a lot of conscious studying of people, although I do definitely pick up bits and pieces as I go through life and they sometimes become so ingrained in me that I can't always remember where they came from, or that it even came from somewhere else in the first place. This is similar to (or maybe part of) how many autistics including myself have confessed that they don't know where the mask ends and where they begin. I would go into masking in more details but it's not something I've really got my head around yet in terms of how/when I do it, so I've asked somebody for a guest post about it from their point of view which should be coming up soon.

In the meantime, as always, please hit the Follow button in the side bar and follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Black silhouette of a toy humanoid robot on a white background. Under the silhouette is the word "Autism" in rainbow colours, and under that is "Social Robot" in black.]