The Cold that Bothers Us

The Pixar conquest of Disney—the ongoing effort by the new recruits from Pixar to change the Mouse House's shallow culture of self-indulgence and self-esteem with something much more morally serious—has been an uneven battle up to now. But Frozen is an unqualified victory for Pixar's morally serious and culturally edifying storytelling, and its stratospheric success with audiences and critics may well turn the tide of the war. It's a profound movie on many levels.

The most obvious lesson of Frozen—the one made explicit in the movie—teaches viewers that love is not about how you feel. It's about putting other people's needs ahead of your own. This theme by itself profoundly inverts the old Disney culture; it's a big win for the Pixar invaders. But Frozen not only makes this point, it also traces some wide-ranging consequences. It shows us why people are investing too much importance in romantic love relative to other kinds of love, like sisterhood. The responsible grown-ups who tell you not to burn down everything else in your life for the sake of "true love" are not your enemies; they're your friends. They're the people who really love you.

When Enchanted subverted these same fairy-tale conventions—getting engaged to someone you just met—it was only going for laughs. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of laughs in Frozen. It's the funniest movie I've seen in years. But there are not a lot of laughs on this particular subject. Frozen is not overturning the Disney view of marriage for fun. Frozen is playing to win.

Everybody's a Fixer-Upper

That theme alone would be enough to make Frozen an early contender for the most culturally regenerative movie of the year. But there's more going on.

Under the surface, Frozen deals with two other subjects that are, if anything, even tougher for our culture. One is the corruption of human nature. It used to be that pretty much everyone agreed there was a systematic moral dysfunction in human nature. Christians hold to this teaching in an especially strong form, of course, but we are by no means alone. Aristotle believed it, as did Kant. There is a whole song in Frozen about how nobody is what he ought to be: "Everybody's a Bit of a Fixer-Upper." The villains in Frozen are willing to kill, but the main threat to the heroine's life actually comes from the selfish actions of a sympathetic character—someone who loves her. This person, we are repeatedly and emphatically assured, would never harm her. After the potentially fatal blow, the question emerges: how could this person possibly do this? The character held up as the voice of wisdom gives us the answer: because all people have that selfishness inside them, and under the right circumstances, it will surface. Even to the destruction of those we love most.

This theme, of course, relates to the main message that love is not about feelings. We prioritize our own feelings rather than other people's needs because other people are so disappointing. And our lives fall apart when we prioritize our own feelings because we are just as disappointing as everyone else.

We Need Each Other

The other submerged theme in Frozen, one buried even deeper, is the tension between social rules and individual freedom. Without giving too much away, I can say that Frozen is the movie Brave was trying to be. Here's what Brave attempted to say: society needs rules, and individuals who are not well served by the rules must learn to subordinate their own desires to the good of their neighbors as embodied in the rules. At the same time, social authorities must recognize that the rules should accommodate the needs of individuals—including the needs of those unusual individuals not well served by the same rules that serve everyone else.

There was internal conflict over Brave at Disney, and it shows. But Frozen succeeds brilliantly where Brave faltered—better, perhaps, than Brave could have. Because in Frozen we see what happens to individuals who try to flee from society in order to escape its rules. They fall apart. Their lives become arbitrary and meaningless. And they learn to hate. "The cold never bothered me anyway," Queen Elsa sings as she builds an ice castle to live in, alone, at the top of a remote mountain. She doesn't realize that the cold is seeping into her heart.

We all need freedom, but we also need each other. See this movie.

(taken from The Gospel Coalition website. Also read this article if interested.)

Psalm 34

This is not how I feel right now. In fact I feel much the opposite, and I'm struggling a lot. But this is my prayer right now, my cry for faith.

"I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul will make its boast in the Lord;
The humble will hear it and rejoice.

O magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together.

I sought the Lord, and He answered me,
And delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to Him and were radiant,
And their faces will never be ashamed.

This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
And saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him,
And rescues them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

O fear the Lord, you His saints;
For to those who fear Him there is no want.

The young lions do lack and suffer hunger;
But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

Who is the man who desires life
And loves length of days that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil
And your lips from speaking deceit.

Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
And His ears are open to their cry. 

The face of the Lord is against evildoers,
To cut off the memory of them from the earth.

The righteous cry, and the Lord hears
And delivers them out of all their troubles. 

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the Lord delivers him out of them all.

He keeps all his bones,
Not one of them is broken.

Evil shall slay the wicked,
And those who hate the righteous will be condemned.

The Lord redeems the soul of His servants,
And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned."

-Psalms 34 

 

Art of Words

"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words." –the Fox "Til We Have Faces"

To Hear or to Listen...

to hear- to be aware of (sound) through the ear; to perceive or apprehend by the ear

to listen- to pay attention to someone or something in order to hear what is being said, sung, played, etc.; to hear something with thoughtful attention


Open your ears, pause your tongue and listen to what's around you. Have you ever heard, do you even know, the music of this world? We speak, we spout words, and I more than many will chatter endlessly, like we don't know what will happen if we stop. But have you ever tried? For even just a moment, step out the door, without a word in your mouth, set a hand to your ear. The wind sings a melody as it dances and swirls through the grass, catches the leaves in the trees and laughs at it's brushing through your hair. The crickets harmonize, if only you're still, and the birds send trills of delight to join the chorus. The squirrels, chipmunks, lizards, they talk through their skittering and scratching. Did you know that sometimes silence has the most voice of all? Sometimes if you just listen, you are overwhelmingly filled with the music in a place where you thought there was no sound.

But not just in nature...

There is another world of which we are often unaware. We are so caught up in the here and now, the us and what we are thinking, saying, doing, in life that we never see past it. And yet...if you think hard enough I'm sure every one of us has caught at least one glimpse of that world, if not more. But we brush it aside so swiftly that it blows from our minds like dust and we give it no more notice. The world of the unsaid is what you cannot even hear unless you listen closely. You heard the bitterness in a boy's speech when he speaks about men...but did you listen to the pain that lies under it because his father never valued him? You heard the calm acceptance of the third place prize but did you listen to the shattering of dreams underneath it? You heard the apology but did you listen to the cry of remorse for a relationship destroyed? You heard the grandiose ideas of a child but did you listen for that hope of someone's endorsement and encouragement underneath? You heard the story of faith given up but did you listen to the time again and again and again before when they tried and were pushed back down? You heard the playful teasing but did you listen to the dart of truth that stung home when it hit? You heard the boasting and overconfidence in the athlete but did you listen to the insecurity that fuels pressure of the image? The list would go on, you know it, I know, and the wind reverses and blows the thoughts back through your mind.

Do we actually listen to what people have to say? What they are saying right now? So often we are busy talking, and saying our own things, or even when we're not saying something we are so busy formulating our responses to what someone else is saying that we never really listened to it in the first place. Stop, wait a moment, and just listen. Listen to the words around you, soak them in and process them, don't reply right away. Maybe if you wait, maybe if you register the words entering your ears you will begin to hear far more than you used to. There is more depth to what most people have to say than we often have any idea. Their ideas, thoughts, irritations, hopes, dreams, depressions, frustrations, joys, sorrows, all started somewhere. We hear the surface level, we see the lens, but we never pause to find out what's behind it. Let go of the you for a minute, let go of your drive to have a reply, let go of your need for something to say and let someone else speak. And when they do...listen... You may have no idea how many people in this world want someone to listen to them. Someone who actually cares enough to put themselves aside and tune in to another person, it's rare in this me-focused world. But that doesn't mean coming up with an immediate response, it doesn't mean criticizing them, it doesn't mean giving them the solutions to their life problems, it doesn't mean negatively judging them after what they say. It means actually listen, really hear what they have to say, and you may learn more than you ever guessed. You may find that there is more pain, brokenness, sorrow, loss and struggle behind the bold fronts than it appears. But if you just scorn the dirty lens you may never see the beautiful pictures a camera can capture, and the incredible workings inside. We all have our problems, and we all don't listen, but by God's grace what would happen if we listened and actually cared about the people around us? And if we took care of the knowledge we listen to instead of trampling it on the ground or throwing it in their face. We're not very gracious, and we're not very selfless. But we can start.

So tell me, tell yourself...

The world around you... do you hear it... do you listen to it?

Words...

Words, winging swift and sure to their mark. They hit with a power that splinters, shatters, crushes and often forever scars. Careless or purposeful, they ring in your ears again and again and again. They echo in your head and you wish you could silence them, but they've done their work. Temporarily you shut them out, but never locked away for good, and at least from time to time they shoot to the front of your thoughts and remind you. Many a soothing balm is applied to the wound, efforts to remove the scar, to so thoroughly erase it that it makes it so it was never there, or at least it lessens the visibility because you so desperately want it not to be. Some will heal, others never will. Harsh, condemning, bitter, sarcastic, reckless, imprudent, unmindful, careless, senseless...whatever the reason behind them, or lack thereof, they do no good, and, far worse, they do damage. Do you think about the words you throw? When you hurl them do they have an aim? Why shoot them when you don't, and don't know the destruction they may do? Why take that aim if when you hit the target you may cause a blow that is bound to be markedly painful if not fatal? Once discharged they lie unfettered and cannot be rebound, you let them loose and they can never be captured again. The only words you can hold in check are those not yet released.

Words, tossed hither and yon, floating around, bumping into each other. Maybe no clear train of thought, no worthwhile purpose. Maybe a sensible progression but they have no pertinence to anything but the here and now. They fill space, take up room, consume the ear, but only temporarily. Then they flicker, falter and vanish. They leave you walking away with nothing. You grasp for them, try to recognize the things you said and heard, to find value, to reconcile the time you spent with the empty feeling you now carry, to appreciate what was put out by you and others. But it does no good, because you are grasping at air. Nonsense, light-hearted randomness, it's often fun and makes you laugh. You throw words into the air, joke, tease, talk...but they are surface and shallow only. What was the reason for them? Was there even one? All words do not require great forethought, depth and substance, and these may do no harm...but they do no good... So it leads you to question why you bring them forward, why you spend precious moments that accumulate into minutes, hours of your life on something that leaves no reward, adds no value to the world around you, has little if any relevance for life beyond these moments, that causes you to walk away having lost something. You can never take back time and what was lacking in your words cannot be brought back to be filled.

Words, pleasant, uplifting and golden, bringing harmony and touching everything to send it soaring skyward, lightened and inspired. It builds one up to hear them, and even more to say them, bringing inspiration and refreshment. They touch you and radiate life. You can see the rainbows of hope that sparkle and glow from words designed to avail and profit. Kind, genuine, cordial, agreeable, generous, mindful, respectful, supportive, considerate, prudent...do you know the joy of heart favorable words can bring? Have you a glimpse of the good you can do when you use words for the betterment of others? The potential that edifying words can bring is sometimes almost unfathomable. They do so much to build relationships, hearten the doubting, refresh the weary, fortify the breaking and cheer the heavy-hearted. Use them...seize them...embrace them! You know what they can do. But how often they are overlooked because it's easy not to be intentional and alive to what is said. There is a hunger and yearning for approval and affirmation everywhere around you. You have tremendous opportunity to encourage and strengthen others. Do you do it? Don't forfeit the moment to bolster those around you. You never know what such words will do and the reach they may have beyond what you could imagine.

...your words...my words...what have they been? What will they be...

Check out this movie project!

Hey friends! I honestly don't know how many people view my blog, and it may well be a very small number since I don't get posts up very regularly. :/ But anyway, I wanted to share about this project with you. Go check it out and consider supporting it! Tell all of your friends who might be interested too! Click here to learn about this fun, animated movie.