Do not get me wrong. I love Disney’s enchanting movies very much. In any of their productions the music always moves me, the characters never fail to charm me, and the storylines have supported my imagination since my childhood. Now, I’ve heard certain concepts concerning some of their movies before; most of which I’ve found myself able to overlook. However as I flippantly threw on a Spotify playlist of Disney’s greatest hits to play in the background as I packed for college, I became very disturbed with one song I had paid no mind to before. It was “Fixer Upper” from Disney’s “Frozen.”
I still don’t understand what’s changed from all the other previous times I’ve heard and even sung this song, but as I was folding my T-shirts, the phrase “The way to fix up this fixer-upper is to fix him up with you,” set me off. One possibility stems from all of the self-evaluation I’ve had the time to do over the summer; which results in the thought that if the adorable trolls were to singing to a guy about me, telling him the way to “fix” me (I’ll get to the issue of flaws presented in the song in just a minute) is to just be with me, I would be emotionally and psychologically scarred.
I assume this is the part where I state that I am neither a doctor nor specialist in either the fields of psychology or love, but I know me and I know what I’ve been raised to believe; that I do not under any circumstances need a man to be happy. I do know that relationships (both romantic and platonic) tend to develop and mature the best when they are between two independent people; otherwise any dependency tends to overstep boundaries.
What I want to say is tricky. In one hand, I don’t want to say that we don’t need other people to help us grow and improve ourselves; because we do, very much so. In the other hand I believe it is imperative we understand that a romantic relationship (such as this song suggests) is not an appropriate platform for the amount of growth and self-improvement we’re talking about.
This is where you get to ask “What kind of growth are you getting from the song; Don’t they just make fun of his feet and hair and then there’s like something about the reindeer?” Actually, funny you should ask. The longer I look at this song, the more concerned I become. I like Kristoff, and I hate to say, but his “familial” band of friendly rock trolls just start bashing on the poor guy! Do they not understand the weight of some of these grievances? As the song progresses, so does the intensity of Kristoff’s flaws, including but not limited to his apparent inability to stand in courage and his “isolation” as “confirmation of his desperation for human hugs.” I dare you to read the song and tell me you’d want to start off a relationship with someone that was overrun by some of these flaws that should bring up some red flags.
Not to mention, Kristoff finally has enough and declares another issue, Anna’s previous engagement.
…
Can I just say that these trolls might actually be sitting at “bad guy’s” table for lunch? Because their response to Anna’s engagement, is to shove it “out of the way,” like it’s no big deal. I don’t care how magical you are trolls, you don’t get to (literally or emotionally) push two people together and ignore an entire engagement thinking it’s a “flex-arrangement” just because you “don’t see no ring!”
Really this song is all sorts of confusing because then the trolls try to end it by singing true love brings out the best (which is VERY different from covering up or “fixing” character flaws) and that “we need each other to raise us up and round us out.” We know from watching the rest of the movie that it is the true love between sisters Anna and Elsa which conquers all, (I assume that’s what the ending of this song was supposed to point to) and thus, I feel the points I have covered in this article about the song “Fixer Upper,” reveal that it does not align with true love and therefore does not whole-heartedly fit into the rest of “Frozen.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to call this song ungodly or even necessarily skip past it when I watch the movie (although it wasn’t even one of my favorite songs in the movie to begin with) but as I eluded to nearing the beginning of this article, I feel the underlining message could affect hearts and self-images of both genders of all ages. It almost tricked me. Don’t let its catchy tune trick you or your loved ones.
