OK, watched the movie tonight... mostly reacted the same way I always do to animated Disney films. Enjoyed it but only to a degree. However... that said.... the Let it Go sequence had my crying like a baby. Yeah... I get it, girls...beautiful song to sum up an awful lot for a lot of us. Yeah.
A little background on Disney. Under good old Uncle Walt, Disney used to be an extremely reactionary and conservative company based in Orange County California. During the sixties and seventies they were noted for being difficult on anyone from an alternative lifestyle.
But during the eighties something happened. The entire upper management and creative teams were taken over by a crowd of minds from New York and Broadway. The same minds that wrote and created Broadway musicals. Many of these people were not conservative nor reactionary and were very definitely "alternative" in lifestyle, and many were gay (as is most everyone working on Broadway and in particular in the world of Musical Theatre. Not that there is anything wrong with that at all. I worked with many of these people for years have many close friends in that community and love them all dearly. The theatre world is a very tight and supportive family regardless of lifestyle).
Now, remember all the hoopla about how Mayor Guilliano cleaned up NY by getting tough on the low life... Ha... no way...!!!
Laughable.
Ridiculous.
Ask anyone who was actually living in NY at the time and paying attention.
It was the Mouse.
Disney arrived in New York wanting to put Lion King on Broadway. The old school theatre owners in the theatre district (43nd St to 50th) turned up their snobbish noses at the theme park people.
Now the theatre district used to extend way further south, but 42nd street had become such a cesspool during the 70s and 80s (peepshows, hooker, hustlers etc) that the theatre audiences would not go South of 43rd.
Or so everyone thought.
Disney started buying buildings and boarded up old theatres south of 42nd. They completely refurbished one in the high 30s and opened Lion King... and guess what? People came, came in droves... Disney laughed all the way to the bank.
They continued pumping money out of the Mouse's bottomless pockets into midtown, gradually buying out out the scum and forcing them out of midtown.
Today there is a Banana Republic on 42nd street, a Toysrus on Times Square, and the last time I was there, last summer, Times Square on a Friday night, far from the deserted, run down, cess pool it used to be when I was living near there in the early 80s, was packed with tourists and families and screaming kids and troops of Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!
It felt exactly like a Disney version of New York.
Personally, I miss the old, edgy, slightly dangerous and unpredictable NY of old, and the days of Lou Reed and the Velvets and Warhole and muggings and CBGB's.
Sigh....
Anyway... to return this long ridiculous foray into history to it's original source...Frozen... I am of the opinion that Elsa' big song is less about Ice Queens and CDs and most likely more specifically penned by someone of gay leanings dealing their coming out. Nonetheless, the song is crafted and performed so beautifully, that it matters little if at all what the intent of the writer may or may not have been. The song functions superbly on every level and serves equally anyone dealing with coming out of any kind of a closet, including many of us on this board.
It may have been paid for by the Mouse, but this particular song came straight from the heart.
And Sammie, dear ones... well Sammie cried all through it.