On the surface, there is little commonality between GoodFellas and Frozen. One is a violent, gritty chronicle of Mafia life, while the other is an ultra-popular cartoon movie that was engineered to capture the imagination of young girls.
GoodFellas, as others have argued, perhaps Martin Scorsese’s best film, is a smooth, smart, exhilarating immersion into the world of organized crime. Through the perspective of Henry Hill, the story enters the Mob and shows what life is like, with all its luxuries and glamor. It also a compelling and poignantly truthful film; as such, it is hideously violent and ugly.
The transition from exhilaration to disgust reveals the smooth con that could have been orchestrated by Hill himself. Such a likeable kid drawn to loudmouth machismo can be excused for many sins. We want to like him; we’re even rooting for him. Gradually, the accumulation of violent wrongs and degenerative habits produces a hideous man whose selfishness, greed, and violence wreak havoc on those unfortunate enough to come into his orbit. Scorsese’s film, adapted from Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy, is an artfully rendered portrait of crime, its attraction and its ugly consequences.
So, what does that have to do with Arendelle?
Frozen is marketed as vaguely empowering for young girls. Seen as fun and unpredictable, shattering those terrible patriarchal stereotypes, the story follows Elsa and her sister Anna. [Plot points below have been gleaned from a nonspecific cultural knowledge of Frozen not from watching the movie, so accuracy is not guaranteed.] Elsa, who is crowned queen of Arendelle, runs away because she is afraid of her power to freeze objects and people. This mysterious ability, discovered in childhood, is something she cannot control and thus fears.
Sometimes it takes the simplicity of a four-year-old to notice what the rest of us have been conditioned to ignore. A little girl observed, “Elsa is like the White Witch [from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe].” Indeed, the emperor has not clothes! Elsa is very much like the witch, freezing a kingdom in perpetual winter. Does that mean Elsa is evil? Of course not. We can explain this: she discovered this strange ability in childhood and it’s not something she has any control over, so she’s not responsible for it.
Yet, objectively, Elsa and the White Witch (and Henry Hill for that matter) have a great deal in common. Whether or not you think you intend to freeze and entire kingdom in unending winter, the results are dire for the unfortunate beings who happen to live there. More disturbingly, after singing [shouting] about how she’s going to “let it go,” Elsa refuses to attempt to reign in her icy powers at all and unleashes the destructive force on her own sister, almost killing her. Whatever convenient explanations we may have at the ready, the fact of the matter is that Elsa is a disordered person. Sometimes a witch is a witch, even if we dress her up in blue instead of white and give her an explanation for her faults.
GoodFellas, grounded in the grim reality it depicts, carries the story to its logical end. The consequences of sin are paid by the people involved and by the unfortunate bystanders. Frozen, dragging children into sinless fantasy, endorses as good powers that the character fails to control. However compelling Hill’s personal story may be and how understandable it is that he fell into a life of crime, that is no excuse for antisocial, destructive, and unjust actions that he chose to take. By that same token, Elsa, who may be forgiven for innocently discovering her icy powers as a child, cannot be simply excused for causing serious harm to the kingdom she is supposed to rule.
In the end, Hill chooses his self-preservation before all else, betraying his Mafia friend; he is banished from his kingdom of crime to the witness protection program. The glamor for which he lived was over. Elsa, on the other hand, magically undoes the damage of her icy powers, saving her sister’s life with an act of uncharacteristic self-sacrifice. For a moment of heroism, which was not preceded by real change, Elsa receives glory and honor, restored to her reign as queen and cheered for ginning up little ice rinks and fun snow effects.
The moral lessons of GoodFellas carry more veracity and strength than the vapid fantasy of Frozen. The two films attempt to excuse and explain serious defects; one has something powerful to say while the other offers empty promises. If you’re going to show one of these movies to your child, choose wisely. Whether children should be watching either of these films is another question.
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