I apologize this is so late in coming to you. I wanted to get this out around Christmas Eve, but alas.
This Sunday, I will most likely post a review of Tom Woods’ Diary of a Psychosis. Then, the following Sunday, January 14, I will return to Herodotus.
I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year.
Without further ado…
Without ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Introduction
I would make a terrible movie critic.
Special effects? “That was a cool explosion” would be my most intelligent comment.
Camera angles? As long as it doesn’t make me motion sick.
The musical score? I rarely ever notice there’s music.1
The actors showed a range of emotions and talent throughout? I don’t care. More importantly: did they blow something up?
I truly take the escapism experience of movies seriously. Give me a movie where the good guy goes on The Hero’s Journey, the good guy wins, the good guy single-handedly explodes the evil army/corrupt government/mafia/alien invasion/demon horde,2 and the good guy gets the girl in the end, and I’ll give you my money.
No subverting my expectations. No attempts to make me “check my privilege.” No making me think about the meaning of life or question my morals. No forcing me to watch the movie thirty times to maybe understand it. No killing off characters I’m emotionally invested in. Just give me pure, mindless fun, with some happy tingly feelings thrown in for good measure.3
I would make a terrible movie critic indeed.
As you can imagine, I rarely watch movies anymore—especially in the theaters. The only movie I’ve seen since 2018 was Office Space.4
And that wasn’t because of the lock downs. Even if our benevolent overlords hadn’t locked down planet Earth, I still wouldn’t have gone to the movies.
Having said all of that, there is one type of movie that I, a failure of a movie critic, let get under my skin.
And that is the movie that bastardizes the original source material I enjoy.
A movie came out in 2013 by the name of Frozen. You might have heard of it.
Personally, I’ve never seen it, but I know: 1) it became more popular than Barack Obama for a few seconds; 2) there was an uptick in violence that year because people would not stop singing that “Let it Go” song; and 3) it had some hidden Illuminati message about it being “okay to be gay” or something.
Whatever.
The thing that burned my biscuit about this movie was that it was supposed to be some sort of adaptation of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. As in, of Andersen’s Fairy Tales fame. The man who wrote The Little Mermaid,5 The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, and other stories familiar to us.
So, having found that out, I read a synopsis of the movie… and I was not impressed.
In usual fashion, Hollywood stripped out all of the Christianity from the story, turned the Snow Queen into some misunderstood and persecuted woman because she was “different”,6 made the “act of true love” be some sort of “sacrifice” by the sister (which was not only not a sacrifice, because there were no permanent consequences, but it was also an intentional thumbing of the nose at what normal people think about when they hear “act of true love” in fairy tales—a man saving the woman he loves at great risk to himself), and featured a song that was about as deep as a plate.
I shouldn’t be surprised though. Hollywood can’t adapt the original story into a movie. That would require courage, creativity, and more importantly, morals.
An Introduction to the Original Story
The story of The Snow Queen opens up with the Devil. Even here, translators try and sanitize the story a little by saying it was a hobgoblin or a pixie or something. Some get closer by calling it a demon. However, in the original, it was the Devil himself.
Anyway, the Devil comes up with quite a mischievous scheme:
One day he was in a high state of delight because he had invented a mirror with this peculiarity, that every good and pretty thing reflected in it shrank away to almost nothing. On the other hand, every bad and good-for-nothing thing stood out and looked its worst. The most beautiful landscapes reflected in it looked like boiled spinach, and the best people became hideous, or else they were upside down and had no bodies. Their faces were distorted beyond recognition, and if they had even one freckle it appeared to spread all over the nose and mouth. The [Devil] thought this immensely amusing.
His minions then think it would be hilarious to fly the mirror up to Heaven and see what images it would produce. However, the goodness of Heaven is so pure, the mirror is unable to handle it and shatters into millions of pieces. The shards, as big as glass panes or as small as grains of sand, spread all over the world. Some of the shards are made into window panes or spectacles which distort the world of those looking through them. However, some shards stuck into the eyes and hearts of people which began to distort their view of the world and their very thoughts.
The story then shifts to a small village and focuses on the main characters of the story: a girl named Gerda and a boy named Kay. They’re next door neighbors and best friends. They enjoy the flowers, play outside, listen to grandma tell stories, and read picture books.
One day during the winter, however, a shard of the mirror gets lodged in Kay’s heart and a grain of it gets stuck in his eye. Suddenly, he’s a different boy. He begins to find flaws in the flowers he once admired. He thinks all the games and activities he normally does are now stupid and childish. He mocks the grandma as she tells her stories. Worst of all, he begins to be mean to Gerda and decides she is not fun to be around anymore. Instead, he wants to spend all of his time with the older boys in town.
He played quite different games now; he seemed to have grown older.
Following the example of these boys, he takes his sled and some rope out into the town square so he can hook onto passing carriages and sled through town. However, he ends up hooking onto the sled of the Snow Queen who drives him out of town and back to her palace way up north. She kisses his forehead and he forgets about the cold, his hometown, and even Gerda.
The town presumes Kay to be dead and for a while Gerda believes this. However, when Spring comes and the sunshine and willow trees tell her Kay is still alive, she believes them and goes out on a journey to find him.
I think that’s a good introduction. I strongly encourage you to read it for yourself. It’s a very short read and can easily be done in a thirty minute sitting (at most).
You can read a public domain translation of it here.
How the Mirror Corrupts
One of the interesting aspects of the story is exactly how the evil mirror distorts. It biases the person toward one way of thinking and looking at the world by doing two things:
It minimizes the good and beautiful
It amplifies the evil and ugly
The results of this is basically the loss of wonder, the loss of creativity, and the loss of the sacred. You see this most noticeably in Kay when the bits of mirror lodge in his eye and heart.
The flaws in the roses are magnified and Kay responds by breaking them off. When he sees Gerda’s alarm, he responds by breaking off more.
By contrast, Kay finds the snowflakes flawless and admires their geometric designs.
Kay makes fun of Gerda’s picture book.
Kay imitates and mocks the grandmother when she talks to the children. He also imitates all the people in the village as he walks down the street and earns a reputation for being clever.
Kay shuns Gerda—who is practically the embodiment of childlike innocence and faith—in favor of playing with older boys and acts mischievously with them.
Kay can no longer use his imagination and now only imitates or ridicules. He stops seeing the wonder in the world and can only see the material. Kay’s “growing up” is equal parts becoming cynical and becoming what we might call rational.
The greatest display of this transformation comes when he is face to face with the Snow Queen herself and it freaks him out. What Andersen does here is very interesting:
He was very frightened, and he wanted to say his prayers, but he could only remember the multiplication tables.
The shards of the mirror cause Kay to forget his religious education, but remember clearly his secular education. His faith is minimized while his arithmetic skills are amplified.
It continues however. When Kay takes a closer look at the Snow Queen, he becomes enamored:
Kay looked at her, she was so pretty; a cleverer, more beautiful face could hardly be imagined. She did not seem to be made of ice now, as she was outside the window when she waved her hand to him. In his eyes she was quite perfect, and he was not a bit afraid of her; he told her that he could do mental arithmetic, as far as fractions, and that he knew the number of square miles and the number of inhabitants of the country. She always smiled at him, and he then thought that he surely did not know enough…
The shards of the mirror cause him to see the Snow Queen as the perfect embodiment of the feminine. He wants to impress her. He shows off how many facts he knows, his math skills, his mental acuity. When the Snow Queen just smiles at him amused, he feels utterly inadequate.
Many men fall apart before a woman they consider the ideal of beauty. They try to show off the best sides of themselves before this ideal and feel they fall short. Anything less than an expression of admiration makes them feel condemned, worthless, belittled.
However, like Kay, this ideal of beauty is something the men imprint on the woman and skew who she really is in their hearts. Kay had actually encountered the Snow Queen earlier in the story—before the shards of the mirror stuck in him. In other words, when he still had his religious devotion and childlike faith. His reaction? He was frightened of her. He saw her for who she really was: a dangerous entity. He saw beyond her physical beauty to her true essence. After he was tainted by the mirror shards though, all he could see was her physical beauty.
Those are just my inserting pop psychology into the story though. I think what Anderson was really try to do here was contrast Kay’s behavior toward the Snow Queen and his behavior toward Gerda.7 In front of the Snow Queen he shows off to her and wants her approval. By contrast, he is cruel toward Gerda and doesn’t care about what she thinks of him (recall what I wrote above, that when Gerda showed alarm at his breaking off the roses, he responded by breaking off more). The mirror shards diminished Gerda and made her an object of scorn. At the same time, they amplified the Snow Queen and made her an object of admiration.
The audience knows, however, that the real beautiful one is Gerda, not the Snow Queen. Gerda is no match for the Snow Queen in terms of materialistic beauty and powers of seduction. However, Gerda is the superior one due to her virtue and faith.
How Gerda Triumphed Over Evil
This scene I’m about to describe is probably one of the biggest reasons Hollywood could never do a faithful adaptation of The Snow Queen (the ending of the story and, more importantly, the character of Gerda herself, are other big reasons).
After a long journey, Gerda finally makes it to the domain of the Snow Queen. She’s poorly dressed for the cold elements though and she’s all alone. None of the friends she’s made along the way can go with her into the Snow Queen’s domain.
Suddenly, she’s attacked by snowflakes that take on the forms of all sorts of hideous and dangerous creatures. These are minions of the Snow Queen and they are trying to stop Gerda from reaching the palace. Then this happens:
Then little Gerda said the Lord's Prayer, and the cold was so great that her breath froze as it came out of her mouth, and she could see it like a cloud of smoke in front of her. It grew thicker and thicker, till it formed itself into bright little angels, who grew bigger and bigger when they touched the ground. They all wore helmets, and carried shields and spears in their hands. More and more of them appeared, and when Gerda had finished her prayer she was surrounded by a whole legion. They pierced the snow-flakes with their spears and shivered them into a hundred pieces, and little Gerda walked fearlessly and undauntedly through them. The angels touched her hands and her feet, and then she hardly felt how cold it was, but walked quickly on towards the Palace of the Snow Queen.
It’s Gerda’s religious faith that helps her overcome the agents of the Snow Queen. More importantly, it gives her the power to approach and enter the Snow Queen’s palace.
You see what I mean that Hollywood could never do a faithful adaptation of this story?
I also wonder if there would be an audience for a movie like that in this cynical day and age of ours. How many viewers would be incredulous when they watch on their screens a little girl, being surrounded and attacked by these hideous snow creatures, suddenly fold her hands and pray, almost silently at first, “Our Father who art in Heaven…”? And then it works! Her breath transforms into these majestic warrior angels and they proceed to slaughter the snow creatures. Then, Gerda triumphantly walks into the palace of the Snow Queen.
I can only imagine the responses that would garner—especially from the “movie critics.”
I want to write more on The Snow Queen—especially about the ending. However, I will hold back. I hope you will consider reading this story. The ordeals that both Kay and Gerda go through and how they end up by the end of the story is very thought provoking and heart warming.
If you want further encouragement, The Snow Queen was probably one of C. S. Lewis’ inspirations for The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. You’ll quickly pick up on which of Lewis’ characters were modeled after the characters of The Snow Queen.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos Anodos
Thumbnail: Kai and Gerda. I found the image here, but it appears to be an illustration by Vladislav Erko.
1Unless it’s The Lord of the Rings.
2Complete with cheesy one-liners. If there’s no cheese, then don’t waste my time.
3Books are, for the most part, a different matter. It’s through books where I do most of my thinking and reflecting. I’m not interested in doing it with movies—especially movies produced by an organization as vapid as Hollywood. “Shut up and entertain” sums up my attitude toward movies.
4My friend found out I hadn’t seen it and felt obligated to correct what he thought was an egregious error on my part.
5Which is completely different from the Disney animated movie. And, quite frankly, better. The live action Little Mermaid? I don’t know what you’re talking about. No such movie exists.
6Ironically, from what I could tell from the synopsis, this misunderstood but generally good woman was actually harming a lot of people with her actions. Yet, we’re suppose to believe that some prince with political ambitions was the real bad guy of the story. Who’s more evil? The man who has aspirations for power or the woman who is slowly freezing people to death? Duh, it’s the man, obviously. The woman is not responsible for her actions—no matter how genocidal they be. Why? Because it’s 2013 you neanderthal.
7And his grandmother as well, who seems to be some sort of feminine personification of religious wisdom. Much like the personification of Wisdom in the biblical book of Proverbs.