raisedbymoogles (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raisedbymoogles) wrote2020-07-27 10:07 pm
raisedbymoogles) wrote2020-07-27 10:07 pm
Yelling about Frozen.
I dropped this on PF a couple days ago when I was too tired for filters so I don't know how much sense this makes, but here it is anyway. YEARS late to the party on this particular issue, but cut just in case.
look the whole thing with Anna and Hans was actually brilliant and you'll never convince me otherwise.
his out-of-nowhere heel turn would have lost its absolute gut punch if it had been telegraphed in advance, but more than that, we are meant to be too preoccupied with "wtf Anna you agreed to marry a guy you just met!?" (bit of an unfair brush to tar even the old Disney heroines with, imho, it's like Disney's responding to an exaggerated version of the actual problem in order to deflect criticism) so much that we never think to ask "wtf Hans you proposed to a girl you just met?" Like, we never see anyone question Hans' behavior. Even Elsa* hardly even looks at him in the ensuing argument, it's strictly about her and Anna. After Elsa flees and the snow starts falling everyone just seems so grateful for Hans taking charge that they behave as if he's already Anna's husband. (Seriously where are the Arendelle nobles? The regent? They had to have had a regent, if Elsa had to wait two years to be coronated.) Meanwhile, Anna gets shit from everybody, including the audience - just as the writers intended. Since we live in a culture that tends to blame the girl when a guy hurts her, we fall for it every time.
Moving way too fast in a relationship = red flag for abuse, btw. Was Anna foolish to accept Hans' proposal? Yeah, of course. Should she have known better? Look at how she was raised. How the fuck was she supposed to know?
on repeated viewings you can catch little hints about Hans' true intentions, but they're open to interpretation and I think that's what the writers intended too. Hans is very, very good at reading people and showing them what they expect or want to see. Watching him go from his Supervillain Monologue to Bereaved Boyfriend on a fucking dime shows you what an incredible actor he is and that recontextualizes his every scene: how much of that is the real him and how much is artifice? You end up analyzing every word and every microexpression for clues and you get precious little that's concrete, and you could go completely conspiracy-theorist in the attempt. That must be what it's like to get drawn into a manipulator's world - you start to second-guess your own perceptions to the point of uselessness, all while everyone around the manipulator seems to think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
just - Hans is right up there with Mother Gothel and Gaston in the 'Disney villain who's terrifying because the real world is full of people just like them' pantheon.
for what it's worth I don't think Hans is going "Muahahaha Soon My Evil Plan Will Triumph!" in the privacy of his own head the whole time. I think he's very conscious of how people see him, and very much wants to be liked.* He wants to be a king, but he wants to be the kind of king people happily raise up statues of in the town square. He may not truly love Anna, but it is in his best interest that she loves him and so it's in his best interest to treat her well. He doesn't let Elsa get shot in her ice palace because he's surrounded by Arendelle guards who may still consider themselves loyal to her and he needs them and anyone they talk to to believe that he never means her any ill will. The only thing that throws enough of a wrench in the works where he has to show his true colors is when Anna returns asking for True Love's Kiss and Hans realizes - maybe even remembers, just before the moment of truth - that he can't give it to her.
but again, that might be just what Hans wants me to see.
*(Tangent 1: if anyone should have twigged to what was going on right away it was Elsa - Hans's offhand comment of 'no one was getting anywhere with [Elsa]' makes me think that she's been declining marriage proposals since her parents' funeral, and at least one of those proposals had to come from The Southern Isles. Possibly several, if they've got that many sons to try to marry off. But she focuses on 'but you just met him!' instead of 'this is a pretty obvious political play.' To be fair to her it's probably been a while since she's been able to think clearly past the chorus of 'conceal don't feel' and I don't know that Anna would have listened to her anyway.)
*(Tangent 2: Hans may or may not have made up or exaggerated the story he tells Ana about 'my brothers pretended I didn't exist for two years', but I wouldn't be suprised to learn in any subsequent installments that the Southern Isles royal family isn't the healthiest environment to grow up in, especially for a younger/youngest of many kids. (Unlikely he'd lie about the size of his family, that's easily checked.) There's this toxic combination of 'being spoiled' and 'being unimportant/only useful as political currency' that would be rampant in that environment. I won't go so far as to say 'that's why he's evil' but it may explain a thing or two. Being likable may well have been a matter of survival for him from a very young age.)
look the whole thing with Anna and Hans was actually brilliant and you'll never convince me otherwise.
his out-of-nowhere heel turn would have lost its absolute gut punch if it had been telegraphed in advance, but more than that, we are meant to be too preoccupied with "wtf Anna you agreed to marry a guy you just met!?" (bit of an unfair brush to tar even the old Disney heroines with, imho, it's like Disney's responding to an exaggerated version of the actual problem in order to deflect criticism) so much that we never think to ask "wtf Hans you proposed to a girl you just met?" Like, we never see anyone question Hans' behavior. Even Elsa* hardly even looks at him in the ensuing argument, it's strictly about her and Anna. After Elsa flees and the snow starts falling everyone just seems so grateful for Hans taking charge that they behave as if he's already Anna's husband. (Seriously where are the Arendelle nobles? The regent? They had to have had a regent, if Elsa had to wait two years to be coronated.) Meanwhile, Anna gets shit from everybody, including the audience - just as the writers intended. Since we live in a culture that tends to blame the girl when a guy hurts her, we fall for it every time.
Moving way too fast in a relationship = red flag for abuse, btw. Was Anna foolish to accept Hans' proposal? Yeah, of course. Should she have known better? Look at how she was raised. How the fuck was she supposed to know?
on repeated viewings you can catch little hints about Hans' true intentions, but they're open to interpretation and I think that's what the writers intended too. Hans is very, very good at reading people and showing them what they expect or want to see. Watching him go from his Supervillain Monologue to Bereaved Boyfriend on a fucking dime shows you what an incredible actor he is and that recontextualizes his every scene: how much of that is the real him and how much is artifice? You end up analyzing every word and every microexpression for clues and you get precious little that's concrete, and you could go completely conspiracy-theorist in the attempt. That must be what it's like to get drawn into a manipulator's world - you start to second-guess your own perceptions to the point of uselessness, all while everyone around the manipulator seems to think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
just - Hans is right up there with Mother Gothel and Gaston in the 'Disney villain who's terrifying because the real world is full of people just like them' pantheon.
for what it's worth I don't think Hans is going "Muahahaha Soon My Evil Plan Will Triumph!" in the privacy of his own head the whole time. I think he's very conscious of how people see him, and very much wants to be liked.* He wants to be a king, but he wants to be the kind of king people happily raise up statues of in the town square. He may not truly love Anna, but it is in his best interest that she loves him and so it's in his best interest to treat her well. He doesn't let Elsa get shot in her ice palace because he's surrounded by Arendelle guards who may still consider themselves loyal to her and he needs them and anyone they talk to to believe that he never means her any ill will. The only thing that throws enough of a wrench in the works where he has to show his true colors is when Anna returns asking for True Love's Kiss and Hans realizes - maybe even remembers, just before the moment of truth - that he can't give it to her.
but again, that might be just what Hans wants me to see.
*(Tangent 1: if anyone should have twigged to what was going on right away it was Elsa - Hans's offhand comment of 'no one was getting anywhere with [Elsa]' makes me think that she's been declining marriage proposals since her parents' funeral, and at least one of those proposals had to come from The Southern Isles. Possibly several, if they've got that many sons to try to marry off. But she focuses on 'but you just met him!' instead of 'this is a pretty obvious political play.' To be fair to her it's probably been a while since she's been able to think clearly past the chorus of 'conceal don't feel' and I don't know that Anna would have listened to her anyway.)
*(Tangent 2: Hans may or may not have made up or exaggerated the story he tells Ana about 'my brothers pretended I didn't exist for two years', but I wouldn't be suprised to learn in any subsequent installments that the Southern Isles royal family isn't the healthiest environment to grow up in, especially for a younger/youngest of many kids. (Unlikely he'd lie about the size of his family, that's easily checked.) There's this toxic combination of 'being spoiled' and 'being unimportant/only useful as political currency' that would be rampant in that environment. I won't go so far as to say 'that's why he's evil' but it may explain a thing or two. Being likable may well have been a matter of survival for him from a very young age.)