Beware the frozen heart

When listening to the Frozen Broadway cast recording the other day it really got me thinking about the original fairy tale of The Snow Queen and how the two compare. This isn't anything I've done any research on as I want it to be my own theories without outside influence, and I'm sure it's not a new topic at all but it's something I wanted to share my own thoughts on anyway!

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen is probably my all time favorite fairy tale, and it's something I go way back with. I'm Danish and grew up on Andersen's works as a child and so they hold a lot of personal significance to me, and when I was in my foundation year of art school for my big final project I decided I wanted to illustrate my own version of The Snow Queen.



The artwork is really old and kind of embarrassing to me now (I actually plan redoing it entirely as a personal project for my portfolio) but it was a labor of love as The Snow Queen is an epic in length for being a fairy tale, and a lot of background research went into everything and it got me one of the highest grades in my class. Which is all to say that I'm intimately knowledgeable of the original story.

I've been a huge fan of Disney my whole life and was hugely involved in the fandom in the early '10s when it was all forum based (I love forums, I wish they'd come back! They were so perfect for fandoms as they were so community driven but had the benefit of being moderated by people and not automated systems so no one could be an asshat or be unfairly censored). I knew Disney had a long history of trying to adapt The Snow Queen dating back to the 1930s, and multiple times it had come into production only to be shelved due to the dark and episodic themes of the novel. So when it was finally released in 2013 I could hardly wait and went to the very first screening that I could. And I hated it!! Yeah, big twist - what is now one of my favorite movies I did not get along with on first viewing. I remember people gushing about it and I just did not get the hype as all I could see was a bastardization of my favorite story.

Obviously I expected Disney to alter the source material but I couldn't see any of the original story in Frozen and that was what put my nose so out of joint. It wasn't until I saw it again by chance in 2015 that it really hit me emotionally and I was able to separate it entirely from the source and appreciate it as it's own thing. Since then I've collected all kinds of merchandise, cosplayed as Elsa at cons and at the Disney parks, Disneybounded as the characters and collected limited edition dresses based on their costumes, and traveled all of the way from Europe to see it on Broadway (OK it wasn't my main reason for going to NYC, Aaron Tveit in Moulin Rouge was, but I still paid an obscene amount to see it!) In fact it's probably fair to say at this point that Frozen has come to mean more to me than the original Andersen tale which just feels nostalgic to me now more than anything else.



Despite my love of both, I haven't really thought too much about how the two stories cross over and share similarities as like I said, I prefer to keep the two separate as they are so different. Other than Elsa being a Queen with ice powers, two of the background servants being named Gerda and Kai, and there being a reindeer as a main character, there really isn't anything immediately obvious that points it as being an adaptation. Even the overarching themes aren't really the same; in The Snow Queen the main message is good verses evil and the importance of innocence - the Snow Queen represents temptation, and Kay only becomes vulnerable to her when the mirror shards have entered his heart and eye and changed his view of the world to a more adult, cynical version. This is hugely important and actually really relevant to Frozen when you look a little closer, but Frozen is generally about true love and the effects fear and isolation can have on both a person and a community. The Snow Queen also has a lot of Christian influence, but I'm not mad that Disney took that aspect out.

The Snow Queen (which can be read here) actually begins with a magic mirror that distorts everything it reflects by reducing everything pure and good into nothingness and magnifying everything ugly and evil. A group of trolls (!!) try to fly the mirror up the Heavens to "make fools of the angels" but as the mirror gets higher and higher into the sky it shatters and falls back down to Earth.

Kay and Gerda are child neighbors who have grown up playing together and are as close as brother and sister. Shards of the magic troll mirror fall onto Kay, one piercing his heart which turns it to ice (!), and another that gets caught in his eye and distorts his view of the world into something ugly and contemptible. He's mean to Gerda and is generally a bit of an asshat for seemingly no reason, which is possibly why no one but Gerda seems to care when he suddenly goes missing. When Kay is out playing on his sled by himself, the Snow Queen pulls up in a carriage and kisses him so he can no longer feel the cold and takes him to her palace in the North. This is the only real appearance of the Snow Queen in the whole novel and her motives are completely ambiguous. In her palace she gives Kay a puzzle of broken ice shards and tells him that if he can spell out the correct word then he can become his own master, so he settles down on the frozen lake and gets to work.



Gerda's distraught at the loss of her friend and decides to go find him. She begins by boat but soon loses her paddles and is left to float until she meets land and is greeted by an old woman who erases Gerda's memory of Kay so that she'll stay with the woman as an adoptive daughter. Which works well, until Gerda spots a rose which reminds her of playing in the flowers with Kay and she bursts into tears, but the flowers confirm that Kay can't be dead as they haven't seen him in the Earth so Gerda runs away. Next she meets a crow who thinks Kay may have married a local princess which turns out to be a false alarm but the Prince and Princess are kind enough to provide Gerda with a carriage and some servants to take her on her journey, but it results in Gerda being taken prisoner by a band of thieves further along. The Robber Girl forces Gerda to be her friend by holding her at knife point which upsets Gerda a lot, but the Robber Girl's captive pigeons tell Gerda that Kay has been taken by the Snow Queen, and the captive reindeer tells Gerda that he knows where her palace is located. The Robber Girl lets Gerda and the reindeer go free and he carries Gerda to Finnmark, meeting the Lapland Woman and the Finn Woman along the way, but Gerda must make the rest of the journey alone as otherwise she won't be able to enter the palace. Kay is unable to recognize Gerda as he's obsessed with the ice puzzle and has turned black with cold, and the sight of him in that state reduces Gerda to tears and she tries to hug him. The warmth of her tears melts the ice in his heart, and now able to feel again Kay cries as he recognizes his closest friend and his tears dislodge the shard in his eye. They leave the palace and travel home together, and although they are grown they keep the innocence of youth in their hearts which is what saved them.

This is a very abridged version, and you can tell that it's very different from the plot of Frozen which I'm not going to detail as I'm assuming that if you've read this far then you already know it, but I wanted to give some background of the original in case you're not familiar.

At first glance there don't seem to be many similarities. It's kind of obvious that Gerda and Anna could be said to be the same character - Anna keeps her innocence, which often comes across as naivety in her agreeing to marry Prince Hans and charging off into the wilderness alone to look for her sister, but it's very clear that her heart is in the right place and like Gerda she meets people that help her along the way even if the cast of characters look a bit different. I've seen Kristoff compared to the Robber Girl which always leaves a bad taste in my mouth - the Robber Girl literally murders people and rubs a knife along the throat of the reindeer to stop him from running away. I can't imagine Kristoff treating Sven like that, and as Kristoff is directly inspired by indigenous Sámi cultures comparing him to the Robber Girl starts to jump headfirst into blatant racism so please consider don't.

For me, it's actually the character of Kay that I find the most intriguing in all of this and how he fits into the cast of Frozen. I've seen people say that Elsa is both the Snow Queen and Kay combined, but that never sat right with me as I don't see any of Kay in Elsa - she has no sudden switch of personality, no task she obsessively feels she must undertake, so I really don't see what that comparison is even based on. But as I was sat listening to the Broadway soundtrack on the train and listening to John Riddle enthusiastically sing Love Is An Open Door with Patti Murin it suddenly struck me - Hans is Kay (I know, several paragraphs in and I finally get to the point of the post, but I had to set it up!)


Hans is a very complex character within Frozen, I'd argue the most complex and it's why he's my favorite as there's so much to unpack and interpret with him. I've always been of the opinion that Disney did him dirty in the movie as one of the reasons he's so complex is because he wasn't originally written as the villain - Elsa was. But after the songwriters wrote Let It Go and discovered Elsa's motives they couldn't comfortably place her as the villain anymore, so made a last minute decision to switch it to Hans. That's why there is no foreshadowing and it's really poor writing and he's generally considered to be such a weak character (which has been analysed many times before and I won't go into, but you can read more here if you need the receipts). With the release of Frozen II Disney made it pretty clear that they now want to portray Hans as a simple black and white villain by calling him an "irredeemable monster", which is sad as it turns his backstory from something complex that could of opened a discussion about his descent, into the Freudian Excuse trope and jeering at him. This feels incredibly tone-deaf to me considering the story arcs of Elsa and Anna and the main themes of personal growth in Frozen, and even goes against statements made by writer Jennifer Lee.

If you're not a fan of Hans and aren't fully aware of his backstory - he grew up the youngest of 13 sons and was abused throughout his childhood. He states this himself in a throwaway comment to Anna about how his brothers "pretended I was invisible, literally, for two years.", which has been followed up in official releases by Disney such as a comic strip and a book called A Frozen Heart which also shows his father as an abusive sociopath. This isn't sympathizing a villain or trying to excuse his actions, but it does add to the layers of his character. It's exceptional and unheard of for a Disney villain to display any degree of self-doubt or ambiguity, so why did Disney originally go to such lengths to give him a traumatic back story just to make him a throwaway villain? Because he wasn't the villain.

There's long been a theory in Frozen fan circles that the trolls are the true villains of the story. They're the ones who encourage Elsa's parents to hide her away and force her to conceal her feelings which leads to her own traumatic experiences, and while they heal Anna they state "the heart is not so easily changed, but the head can be persuaded." This is an example of genuine foreshadowing, and could point to why Hans does a complete 180 after Anna meets the trolls with Kristoff and they sing lines like "Her quote “engagement” is a flex arrangement" and "Get the fiancé out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed!". Also remember the magic mirror in the original Snow Queen belonged to the trolls!

Which brings us back to Kay. Sweet, kind, innocent Kay who got a frozen heart and a distorted view of the world when two pieces of troll mirror fell onto him from the sky. Who could no longer see goodness and acted selfishly and obsessively until Gerda melted his frozen heart. And as Anna states to Hans towards the finale of Frozen:


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I'm not saying for definite that the trolls had any part in it but it's definitely interesting, and there are certainly a lot of parallels between the characterizations of Kay and Hans and how it changes their behaviors. One aspect of Hans' character that I've always been intrigued by is how it parallels Elsa - a character who also grew up in an abusive household, although not through malicious intent like Hans experienced, but rather due to over protection and shortsightedness by her parents - and how they both show how abuse can shape a person. For Elsa, it caused low self esteem, isolation, and self punishment, whereas for Hans one could argue it made him act outwards and present himself as he thinks others want him to be seen whilst being emotionally volatile. Or maybe he was just genuinely trying to make a better life for himself away from his abusive family and sensed Anna was looking for the same deal and was happy to marry her until his heart and eyes were frozen by magic trolls which distorted his view and made him behave like a jackass. Maybe.

I guess we'll never truly know, but it's fun to mull over and I enjoy any links I can find between my favorite movie and my favorite fairy tale. And it's why I'll forever be mad that Hans got such a rush job treatment as he has the potential to be an amazing character. He’s emotionally damaged and an arrogant and vindictive dick, but this doesn’t make him evil. I like that he's ambiguous and morally grey and how that forces the audience to question whether they can trust him. As in reality, most people are like that.

Yet another scene that parallels Kay and Hans - at the beginning of The Snow Queen Kay looks out of the frost covered window and sees the Snow Queen beckoning to him, and here was have a big pointed scene of Hans looking out of the frost covered window at the storm Elsa created - whilst being an ass to Anna, much like Kay was to Gerda (who we've already established is Anna!)

All that you touch and all that you see

When I was preparing to travel to New York I knew that I was going to want to stage door, but I'm super socially anxious and wanted something more to say to the actors than joining in the chorus of "you were wonderful!" So I decided that my artwork could make a good conversation point and wanted to gift some out. Some of my artworks are digital, but for the traditional pieces I don't like the idea of just giving away the originals, especially as you don't really know whether it's going to be appreciated or discarded. I'd hate for something I worked on for 5+ hours to end up in the garbage or thrown in a box with a thousand other fan works and barely looked at. I don't mean for that to sound any kind of way, I just think it's realistic to think like that as these people can't keep everything that they're handed as it would be too much. I decided to get some prints made up, but I didn't want them to look like prints as that feels a bit self promotion-y and gross rather than "here's a thing I drew that I want you to have because I'm a huge fan of you". So instead I had some giclée prints made on cotton watercolor paper as they look like originals and are nice and tactile. It was my first time ever having giclée prints made and it was so exciting seeing them! I love how they came out so much!!

My Wicked drawings are digital and have very dark backgrounds, so to help them look at home and more like traditional pieces I painted some watercolor washes in appropriate color schemes to replace the solid color backgrounds, and because I save all of my digital files with their original layers I was able to simply cut and paste the characters over the top. Because I use a lot of texture on my digital artworks I think this method really worked! I'm obsessed with the level of detail the giclée was able to pick out in my artworks too, usually I just have postcards made of my stuff which aren't super clear. I'd really love to sell something like this at some point as I think they'd look so nice framed together.





I was also seeing Moulin Rouge (which I wrote about here) and wanted to give something to the two leads Aaron Tveit (as he's my all time favorite actor) and Karen Olivo. I hadn't drawn any Moulin Rouge artwork at that point (which has since been rectified!) but I had a ballpoint pen portrait of Aaron so created something similar for Karen. I kind of hate how the Karen print came out tbh, but that's on me because I messed up the levels when I was preparing the file. There's a reason I usually photograph my art over scanning it and that's because I suck at making it look ok! I love the Aaron one though, it looks identical to how it looks in my sketchbook and there's so much detail in the giclée print that you can see every pen stroke and ink blob mark and it looks like an actual original and not a print. And as I only met Aaron it ended up being for the best anyway! He was really kind and gracious and seemed to really like it (and I forgot to tell him I even drew it until he asked if I had, doh! My brain just fell out at having him actually standing in front of me. So much for having my artwork as an icebreaker!)




Giclée print on the left, original drawing on the right. I even added the same tape to give it that extra authenticity 👌
I just wanted to share these pictures though because I loved how they came out so much! Because giclée prints are so expensive and I'd never had the originals to directly compare to before getting my own artwork printed up it was difficult to work out if it was worth the added expense, but now I'm a total convert!