“Frozen”‘s Hidden Agenda!

Recently I read the blog post “Frozen: Not Gonna ‘Let It Go’ When Movie Advocates Gay Agenda” and it was basically a holy experience.  I did find a small flaw in her logic, though (besides the fact that she claims that society takes money from gays…which if she’s talking about the expensive price of staying trendy, then yes she’s right. Otherwise, I think she means vilification. See below..might be a little small…sorry…I’m bad with technological thingies…but if you click on it, it shows up clean and clear…)

Her logic claims “Frozen” promotes the gay agenda, but she’s wrong.  What she’s sadly missed is that the movie is pro-Mormon all the way: it’s actually secretly against SEX–sex before marriage.  What follows below is all of the woman’s evidence, with some slightly different conclusions drawn.

Elsa was born with a power that her parents taught her is not acceptable to the public, and that she must carefully control its expression, at all costs, hiding it from public, even her own sister, because it holds dangerous possibilities. Elsa’s magical powers cause her great shame from the outside world: desire for sex, forbidden by society outside of marriage…only whores have sex before marriage. And they always get pregnant.  Always.  Because they let the devil into their vaginas.

As Elsa’s power grows, she has trouble controlling it. Her parents close the castle to the public, and lock Elsa away so no one will discover her powers. She is separated from her sister; they cannot even play: demonetization of people who like sex because they let the devil into their vaginas.  If only society was so good as to lock ALL of them up in their rooms…that would traumatize them enough not to try and have sex again!

Elsa is forced to live alone being controlled to believe she is filled with the potential for evil. Her Anna also feels the sadness of this dysfunctional family driven mad by parents who LOCK THEIR DAUGHTER IN A ROOM (which the good woman of aforementioned blog says is simply “authority” children should not fight against): sex outside of preordained socio-religious institutions is harmful to the person, family and society.  Just look at what premarital sex brings upon our land: people who feel feelings!  Terror be to the fools who let themselves feel stuff!

Elsa and Anna’s parents die, so Elsa will become queen when she reaches the appropriate age.  She continues to fear her powers because she was never taught how to control them, only fear them: tries not having sex before marriage, but it’s all a sham.  She practically jizzed all over her coronation accoutrements she was so horny…icy…horny.

Meanwhile, her sister Anna is looking for a man, a husband man, because that’s the only acceptable kind of man a woman should be looking for: heterosexuals are free to pursue happiness through marriage, but ONLY marriage…anything else will lead to arctic blasts and snow in Florida.  FLORIDA!  We are currently reaping the terror of allowing people to marry late and have sex before it.  We are a society of heathens!

Elsa is afraid that people will discover what she believed to be the evil inside her. (Stay in the closet.) Anna, however, tries to wed anything with a penis (including a horse, I’m pretty sure….): heterosexuals are free to pursue happiness in marriage, because she’s a slave to society.  Note how she tries to get marry, but ends up getting screwed (and not in the sexy way)… How anti-marriage is that!?!

Anna finds a man worth marrying, but the mean and cruel Elsa who’s all about the sex without marriage says NO: judgment of only sex in marriage, she tries to convert her sister who is hopelessly bound in social norms. Stupid betch.

Elsa loses control of her emotions and her powers, revealing her true self to everyone. Elsa runs away because she has been discovered as a whore!

Now, this is a significant turn-around-message, because the sex before marriage movement consider themselves victims, enslaved by the judgments of religious  marriage advocates who keep them from what they want.  The religious marriage advocates make condoms cost so much!  Make lube so expensive! Cause people who want to make sexy decisions doubt the legitimacy of those decisions!  Oh peril! Oh shame!

People fear Elsa, but her sister knows she must be good at heart, so she goes to find her.  However, the town is now thrown into chaos because she has upset the town with her whore ways, breaking up marriages, leaving behind babies at every corner!  Abomination! Elsa, on her own, feels free and practices her powers and has sexy time with herself–masturbation now being the new evil.  I can’t imagine a clearer symbol of dildo usage than the giant phallus she creates out of ice to live in. She’s living in a friggin’ dildo!!!  When Anna finds her, Elsa is afraid what she will think, and then disturbed to realize she has thrown her town into eternal winter.  She is confused and alone and separates herself from everyone even further.  More distorted messaging, by making society, or those considered pro-marraige to question whether or not they should have gotten married before having sex. Because sex before marriage demons have no control over their desires, to expect moral behavior is unloving, cruel and ignorant, because what you’re asking is impossible. Being the victims of such abuse, they are forced to seek refuge in loneliness, in order to be who they are.

In the end, that uselessly old idea that love heals all things, and now Elsa is suddenly able to control herself–for no good reason. Now she’ll only have responsible out of marriage sex!  Who does that!?! Certainly not Mormons.

For me, this is probably one of the most disturbing messages of the movie, Frozen, and of course, the bottom line in the twisted marketing to normalize anti-church behavior: the problem is whores, but we’re made to fall in love with the whoriest whore in all of animated movies ever!  Elsa’s a whore!  She must be stopped!  Don’t have sex before marriage!  Save yourself!!!

Aside –  One thing that struck me as I was writing this was a line from the original blog post: “For those who would say that if you look for something hard enough you can find it, in just about anything.”  She’s right.  What she missed was the argument in favor of things she actually believes in the movie, choosing to focus on the negative.  I hope others choose to focus on the positive, like not raising whores, and teach their children to do the same.

The Scavenger Hunt

Happiness In Grief

I have been struggling through the death of my sister, who just turned 29 this August and died two months later.  Her death hit close to home for everyone around her, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my family and her friends to cope with this situation.  What has been so difficult is finding the right soundtrack for my misery.  I love music and I download it constantly and listen to it whenever I get the chance.  I’m a teacher and you can find me jamming away in the morning before school starts when I should be making connections with students, on my prep periods, and at cafés after school grading.  I listen to music on my commute, when I run, when I read, when I write, when I blog.  It is always there in the background.  What I didn’t realize until a few months ago was…

View original post 933 more words

Love After Death

Lovely little piece.

Happiness In Grief

To recap if you’re stumbling across this site for the first time: my sister, Alex, died two months ago.  I’m trying to get over it.  I’m having trouble.  This is a blog of my attempts to find happiness in the world through my grief.  There.  Now you have it, back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Sorry for all those who have faithfully read the first few blog posts and didn’t need those first four sentences at all.  It’s over. Now:

This all started two nights ago.  Friday.  I’d gone to a cafe around five o’clock to get some grading done before Friday night, the night when I do nothing significantly different from any other night, began.  There’s always the promise of some dastardly deed, some collegiate-style obscenity that might happen, some high school level prank.  Sadly, the life of a teacher often kills all desire to commit such acts while…

View original post 870 more words

Better Than Eat, Pray, Love

Happiness In Grief

Warning/Admission of Guilt: I have never read Eat, Pray, Love. I have not seen the movie “Eat, Pray, Love.” I have had many questions about whether or not to underline versus quotation mark movies, and I have landed on the side of putting them in quotation marks, if only because Roger Ebert did it…and if anyone should have known, it would have been Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert wrote, “‘Eat Pray Love’ is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue, and it mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat.”  Even though I was told I should read “Eat, Pray, Love” before my trip to Bali, I didn’t.  I took my sister’s advice. My sister said, “I hated that book. The movie was worse.”

The Love portion of “Eat, Pray, Love” took place in Bali, where my sister was…

View original post 914 more words

Jerks Are Everywhere, Talkin’ ’bout Death, Eatin’ Sandwiches

Happiness In Grief

I’m one of those jerks who talks about death.  Writes about death.  I never, never,never, talk about death.  That would be wrong.  I just sit in the lunch room and stew over my mess of nerves, and my regular compulsion to cry and I think to myself, “I want to talk about death with someone. I should have a frank discussion about the mind-numbing feeling of grief that disengages me from the most basic of humans facts…like that one time I forgot I was in the bathroom…on the toilet…doing my business…started crying…and completely forgot why I was there.”  I want to tell someone at work this, but then I’d be the guy who may not have remembered he was in the bathroom.  Side note: I always remember when I’m in the bathroom at work.  It’s a great place to hide and get away from people. I have admitted…

View original post 670 more words

Photographing the Dead

Happiness In Grief

If I could photograph the ghost on my shoulder, I would.  Polaroid, Instagram, iPhone, I wouldn’t care.  I just want the proof so I can go around and shove the picture in people’s faces and make them believe that my misery is not my own creation, but cause by something else.  All I want is to pretend that I am not the victim of my own feelings.  That my sister is causing them, and she is still some being that is at fault.  I only want to be blameless.  I only want to be happy.  I can be neither.

It has been embarrassing.  I have become the victim of mourning, and I have never been a victim.  I have been struck by another car, a driver has thrown their door open into the bike lane as I have ridden by shoving me head first into traffic, with my helmeted head…

View original post 854 more words

Christmas Ghosts and Laughter

Happiness In Grief

I was wrapping Christmas presents this afternoon.  There was father: book.  Mother: iPad accessory.  Friend: book.  Friend: game.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Unroll the paper, measure the gift, pull, cut, trim, tape, trim, tape, trim, tape, tape, tape, ribbon, bow, next gift. After the fifth present it became a mechanical process, almost boring.  Almost…work.  How terrible, no? Terrible to think that emotions of giving, kindness, secrets and surprises would become dread, bother, monotony.

I’ve mentioned before that my dead sister took the job of wrapping gifts very seriously.  She was the one that always made Christmas an all caps, exclamation points, jazz hands affair: CHRISTMAS!!! She would wear the Santa hat, spend hours wrapping gifts, decorate the tree, decorate cookies my mom would make.  She wasn’t much for cooking, but she was all about the decoration.  Cooking was work.  Somehow all the other work she did decorating the…

View original post 853 more words

An Unsung Hero by Michael Smith

 

 

Title:

Author: Michael Smith

Reviewer: Brendan

Rating:  8/10

                An Unsung Hero, by Michael Smith is a non-fiction account of Antarctic exploration.  Set in the early 1900’s, the book catalogs the history behind man’s pursuit of the South Pole, a mysterious and daunting place that was referred to at the time as the ‘last undiscovered frontier’.  Primarily, the book focuses on the wily and glory-seeking men who try to conquer the Pole by becoming the first to reach it, but its real substance lies in its descriptions of the destructive and disastrous nature of trying to go places, where quite frankly, man has no business going.  The sub-zero Antarctic temperatures and its moving glaciers often prove too much for even the strongest of men.

                This book provided keen insight into the limits of the human body. As I sat in my warm bedroom, with the book in one hand and a hot cup of tea in the other, I read about these men sledging through the Arctic snow for months at a time, while enduring temperatures that often dropped to 100 degrees below zero.  I often found myself in a state of awe.  “How is this possible?” I thought.  “These men are crazy!”  I couldn’t help but consider myself ‘soft’ in comparison to them.  On the same token, I deemed myself considerably more ‘intelligent’ than they were, for whom in their right mind would ever sign up to endure something like this?  It was both captivating and entertaining to contemplate these things.  Less exciting, however, was the books lack of description in regards to internal conflict.  The book was written from a third person viewpoint, by a narrator who had no specific ties to any of the experiences.  He was simply a researcher with an affinity for the subject.  This, I believe, limited his ability to get inside the minds of the men who went on the expeditions.  We rarely knew what they were thinking as they endured hardship.  Were some of them on the verge of losing their minds? Did they cry themselves to sleep at night?  Did they pray that they would survive?  These are all things that I would have liked to know.

                Overall, the book provided a compelling read.  It had enough substance and excitement to generate interesting discussion with friends and family who wanted to know what I was reading.  It also provided many opportunities for me to put my book down and surf the Internet for more information on Antarctic travel.  I found myself wanting to know more about the subject.  I would highly recommend this book to anybody seeking a non-fiction book that is manly, adventurous, and informational.

Smoking and other game shows

I’ve been reading almost all day today.  This is the first time I’ve done that in over a year.  I remember the list time I was reading all day was last summer–reading through some of the more appealing Pulitzer Prize winners.  I haven’t kept up that habit this summer, opting for the easier task of watching movies and going to weddings. And then there was the beach house, at this point a holy ground of my life.  I think if I ever thought I was going crazy that place would cure me.

While I was reading, I took a chance to smell my left hand’s fingertips.  They smelled like the handsoap in my bathroom–lavender, I think.  Something flowery like that, at least.  And for a moment I wish they smelled like cigarette or cigar smoke.  I wouldn’t take hookah.  Too sweet.  I could do without sweet right now.  I could do with bitter and dingy.   There was always something about cigarette smoke on the tips of my fingers.  I’d always smell for it in a shower, scrubbing all over my body but using my fingers as the litmus test.

When I smelled the right hand, it smelled clean like baby powder, I slap it on the back of my neck on warm days, and pretend it does anything for the sweat.  I used an spray can air freshener this year in my classroom, something called Powder Fresh.  It smelled exactly like baby powder.  I used to spray it at the floor around the kid who had just farted, and that always eased my worries–but that smell always smells like tabula rasa, indelibly blank and unbelievably clean, simple, and pure.

I wanted to smell used, and thought for a moment I’d go buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke one or three on the porch to ease my worries.  Then I’d take a shower and make sure my finger only barely smelled like impending cancer.

This is a strange thought because I’ve only ever smoked about a pack of cigarettes in my lifetime, and only a few more cigars.  And lately, I haven’t smoked anything but hookah and even that hasn’t been for months. That was my bargain with myself–just hookah, and I’d feel healthy.  Unfortunately, I did feel healthier.

So I thought about drinking, but I only have a bottle of nice wine, and all my other liquor is either sealed in my old bedroom in Tallahassee, sitting in a closed store in Philadelphia, or corked up and staying that way here in my month-old apartment.

Drinking alone and smoking.  Those are my ritualized habits of self-destruction and vice–the activities that will rot my brain and blacken my soul and one day probably send me straight to Lucifer himself for a one-on-one.  If only life would be so cruel to make those a little more popular, I think I’d be a happy man.  But drinking alone sounds a little alcoholic, so I’ve only had one drink this summer, outside the aforementioned weddings.  And a smoker has become such a pariah that even the places that promote public drinking have banned it.

So I was reading in bed, and have been all day, but that felt far too normal and banal and abominable.  I twitch my hands instead and think about ways to help my brain buzz into unfocused splendor.

I’m waiting for the school year to start, to start teaching again, but all I can really think about is the inevitable vice that stress will bring.  I guess I’m preparing my to-be-tarnished soul.  I would watch Jeopardy, or Wheel of Fortune, but I’ve decided to forgo cable this year, and don’t really miss it.  But the ritualized gambling of game shows would, by proxy, take a load off the feeling I have to do something unhealthy.

In waiting for the school year to begin, I’ve been making worksheets and copying out pages of workbooks for the students, to be on top of my game for the upcoming onslaught of inevitable stresses on my time management, patience, and professionalism.  I don’t know, but something about a 16-year-old high school freshman shouting obscenities at me or another adult seems to stretch my civility before 8 AM.  Instead, I wrote six quizzes, a three day project, and a homework sheet this morning before noon.  I hardly didn’t know what to do with myself.

So it goes–the most valuable lesson I’ve learned from my reading.  Thanks Kurt Vonnegut.

I mean, sure.  There are those wonderful themes about racism in To Kill a Mockingbird–but “to kill a mockingbird” doesn’t really sound right in any situation and doesn’t roll off the tongue so neatly as “so it goes.”  It’s become a motto of me, not in the original literary sense of accepting death, but in the sense that teenagers are always going to be teenagers, and teenagers do stupid things and they won’t be happy about the punishments of it.

But I won’t be happy about having to always be around the suck of it, and I won’t always be happy about doling out consequences, and I won’t be happy hearing the troubles of children who think so infantilely for having had such adult experiences, but most days they aren’t mollifying so I find myself stuck in another year that promises to be just as interesting as all the rest.

With students coming, I seem to be smelling my fingertips and wondering why they don’t smell like smoke, and I check up on my stock of liquor, and I think about Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and the $100,000 Pyramid and even Match Game–for no good reason other than that seems to be the show I watched most when I was home in high school and had the time to flip the channel to the Game Show Network.

All the while I try to imagine nothing.

So it goes.

Why old movies aren’t just important, but better than most new movies

I hate, hate, hate people who look at movies–especially older movies–as just a step in the line to the movies we have today.  It’s a slap in the face to life, by extension, and I will explain why. (Foswi, this is primarily for you.)

I am a staunch historian, and I thoroughly believe in the value of studying history.  If you do not, you might as well stop reading this blog.  We’ll just never get along.  To that extent, is it useless to study ancient warfare in a modern context?  Are there no pracitical applicable lessons to be learned from tactics that defy era, technology, or weaponry?  I think you out there in someplacewhereyou’restaringatacomputerscreen should be thinking to yourself, “No, there is value in knowing that stuff…”  Because  you’re right.

Or, let’s think of this in terms of books.  Does it make sense to stop reading  Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, The Lord of the Rings, Black Boy, Brave New World, Romeo and Juliet, The Giver, etc. just because there are the Harry Potter series, the Twilight books, the Time Traveler’s Wife, and various James Patterson and Stephen King books topping the New York Times Bestseller list?  Should we leave the past behind and only allow only what is new and pretty and shiny to be let in?

I think not.

The problem is the genre of film allows this to easily happen.  And many people who watch movies (or passively read about movies) tend to think only the little that is said without thorough investigation into the actuality of history.

Point 1: Michael Bay is awesome…but not really.

The Island

Michael Bay, as many know, is the champion of all things pretty, and mind-numbingly explosive.  After all, you don’t make a name for yourself with blockbusters like Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, The Island, Transformers, and Transformers II (directed all by Bay) without some level of skill.  I mean, seriously.  That’s an impressive list of movies, with impressive DVD sales, and everything.

But let us be honest.  The movies star nice looking people, blow a lot of things up, include heart-racing, adrenaline pumping, action and car chases (or meteorite destroying drill malfunctions, what have you), and fun technological advances.  They’re like James Bond films…just without James Bond.

These movies have made millions.  They have loyal fans of adults, teenagers, and children alike.  They’re fun to watch, made millions in the movie theaters.  But they suck.  They have no deeper meaning, make me thoughtful in no way, and generally make me dumber, because I actually could have been learning something while I was wasting time watching pretty people run around.

Point 2: There is more to history than just history.

Citizen Kane

A friend of mine (after reading a former post of mine) responded thusly:

I’ll disregard the opinion of anyone who thinks Citizen Kane is great for anything more than its innovative transitions and camera angles.

While said tongue-in-cheek, there is, I know, a part of him that believes this to be true.  And this is why I am angry.  I love Citizen Kane, in the same way I love Schindler’s List.  Sure it’s a little on the long side, but the story is great, the acting is believable, the direction is flawless, and the overall impact: unforgettable.

The ease with which Americans, modern people, I’m not sure who this list should (or actually does) include, forget the past when it comes to movies is disturbing.  Yes, movies are more entertaining today.  Movie from yore are a little boring.

Except that’s not true.  I defy anyone to watch The Apartment and not be complete enraptured.  Peeping Tom is one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever seen.  (If you have a Netflix account, I believe it is streaming live.   You should go watch it now.  Better than Drag Me To Hell.  Creepier.  Stranger.  More interesting.)  And you know what, It Happened One Night is the quintessential romance that cannot be improved upon in a modern way.  There are just old movies that age well, and have stayed good for a reason.  Citizen Kane is one of them.  Beyond the transitions and camera angles. (We’ve all heard the “Oh my gosh, there’s a ceiling” reaction.)  But let’s talk about the role the dining room table plays in the movie.  Did you ever think about that? Or how about the scene where Welles types out the rest of a horrible review of his wife’s disastrous operatic debut?  The acting is top notch, better than Sean Penn in Milk.

I am struck by many things.  Here’s a short list:

• People today seem so averse to watching older, or just pain old, films.
• People tend to devalue the impact of older movies because modern counterparts tends to be more engaging, which they equate with “better.”
• People tend to devalue the fact that most older movies have a deeper theme than most modern movies, even modern movies based in classic stories.

This is why the market for older movies should be booming, not dying away.  This is why people should actually sit down and become their own movie reviewer.  If you take the time to watching a movie a week, you’ll watch AFI’s Top 100 movie list in less than two year.  Probably less than a year, considering you’ve seen a lot of them.

Why is it people are so ready to agree, or disagree with the statements of critics and film historians, but are so rarely willing to make their own original statements about the movies themselves.  People, you, staring at your own screen.  Say what’s on your mind.  Be willing to say Citizen Kane sucked, but don’t you dare say it’s boring without backing it up.  I’m not about opinion’s with no evidence.

Just have an opinion, and make it your own.