Frozen - "Let it go"; or, The Perils of Purely Individualistic Freedom

To begin with, I’ll admit that there was a lot of cultural overexposure to Frozen and “Let it go” in particular (and apparently “Do you want to build a snowman?” whenever it was snowing), so I can imagine it can be difficult to separate the song from all of that. It must be even more difficult to do so given that most of the attention that the song has received and most of the ways it has been understood are largely misguided or at that very least incomplete, and that not enough attention has been paid to how the song’s message fits into the movie as a whole. That being said, I think that Disney’s Frozen is a great movie in general and that it possesses a great speculative truth that is worth examining. 

(I include a link because, while I doubt there are many people left who aren't familiar with this song, it will be worthwhile to review it as we go since, as Hegel says, what is familiar and well-known is often not well known precisely because it is familiar.)

Ok, by far the most common way of treating the song is as an anthem of liberation. In a sense this is correct: in the movie it does represent Elsa’s liberation from the deeply repressive circumstances in which she was living (and to which she was resigned), as well as the liberation of her powers and her own self-identity from those circumstances. But the fact remains that Elsa is only partially (or perhaps only outwardly) free from these things: Elsa is not really socially free insofar as she is still forced to avoid all contact with people, including those she loves; she is not really free to exercise her powers as she doesn’t really have control over them; and she is not really free to be who she wants to be insofar as she is still ruled by fear and doubt. This is the reason why “Let it go” actually comes quite early in the film, basically capping the first act (the second act is probably the adventure to get to Elsa’s castle and the rest is the third act) by encapsulating all of the problems/issues Elsa and Anna will have to overcome in order to be really free. It is easy to miss all of these things—and miss how the song plays into them—however, because of how rousing and powerful the song is. (The impressiveness of the accompanying visuals also contribute, although as we shall see even they don’t send as clear-cut a message as they might seem to.) 

So to begin, “Let it go” is an anthem of liberation, but it is an incomplete or at least largely negative form of freedom, and the way that this form of freedom is valorized misses what is problematic about it and what is precisely at issue in Frozen as whole. The first part of the song is fairly straightforward in presenting the initial liberation going here: Elsa goes over the details of her emotional struggle to repress her feelings and hide her powers for the sake of everyone else, and the newfound sense of release that has come from letting all of that go. This is a positive development compared to the emotional catatonia Elsa has been shown suffering from (particularly the scene of Elsa at the end of “Do you want to build a snowman?” which is completely brutal). But the next part of the song is where the limits of Elsa’s freedom become clear:

It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I'm free

It is fitting that this part of the song introduces some up-tempo strings since, as the lyrics make clear, it is all about the self-affirmation that comes after getting free from the hold of external pressures and expectations. But the fact that Elsa’s newfound freedom leads her to recognize “No right, no wrong, no rules for me” means that this freedom and self-affirmation are also dangerously ungrounded. 

The visuals during this part represent this very clearly: as Elsa comes up to an enormous chasm in the mountains she uses her powers to create a stairway of ice across it. Significantly, the bridge doesn’t initially span the chasm, it only extends a little ways over it, and only goes further as Elsa crosses it. I think that this image speaks to the seemingly ungrounded or boot-strapping quality of freedom when viewed in purely individual terms. Elsa’s freedom is a precarious achievement hovering over the abyss: unchecked by and indeed unrelated to anything outside of the self, is likely to end up being at best merely empty, and at worst self-destructive. What follows this song bears witness to this—the emptiness and sterility of Elsa’s ice palace reflects the quality of her life totally on her own, and the events that follow Anna’s encounter with her shows its self- (and other-) destructiveness.

We can also include Elsa’s striking costume change in this category of telling images: the dramatic nature of the change along with its placement at the end of the song, gives the impression that Elsa’s transformation is complete. However, the ease and speed (and, perhaps too obviously, the sheer externality) of this transformation speak to its superficiality—changing what’s outside may be important, but its not nearly as difficult or as important as changing what’s inside. That this is the case here is particularly obvious given the extent to which it sexualizes a character whose emotional development is way too stunted to really have any sexual component. The ending of the movie—affirming the liberating and positive power of sisterly love rather than focusing on the romantic—confirms that Elsa is still at the beginning of her development arc during “Let it go.” The rest of Elsa’s development in the movie will be learning that freedom does not come from separating herself from everyone (and from her own feelings), but from learning to live with them and with herself, i.e., love. That is something she can only do by not just letting go of her fears (because they will come back) but by working through them.