Frozen: An Unexpected Heat in China
Frozen was a phenomenal animation in 2013. For Disney company, Frozen was a creative trial: the movie exploits beautiful songs to demonstrate characters’ emotions, like Let It Go. Such a beautiful song helped Frozen grab the audience’s attention. Moreover, With the help of genius marketing, like the business for Frozen products, Frozen walked to the whole world.
Also, Disney spent a lot of energy and money to invest in filmmaking, which finally produced a fantastic animation with tons of details and dreamy scenes. Soonly, Frozen swept across the world and earned great applause from children in various countries, especially in China. All of sudden, Let It Go was sang by numerous people and spread on the Internet; most girls talked about Elsa and tried to conjure a snowman.
Granted, great marketing and filmmaking are essential for the success of Frozen. However, these two factors are not enough to make Frozen become a phenomenal animation in China. What makes Frozen earn great popularity is the cultural implication behind the storyline.
First of all, 2013 was the year when the Chinese government imposed the Two-Children policy, in which a couple could raise two children rather than just one child. In this political circumstance, many families were considering raising another child. As a result, the family connection, especially the sibling connection, was a heated topic in China at that time. Frozen embraced this topic perfectly. In Frozen, it was the love between sisters that saved each other, rather than a romantic kiss given by a prince. Frozen conveyed a sense that sibling connection was a valuable treasure for children, which could make them support each other without parents. Therefore, with the impending Two-Child policy, Frozen offered Chines parents a sense that it is necessary to raise siblings in a family.
Secondly, Frozen broke the “value limitation” in the Chinese film-television industry. Specifically, the Chinese government had tight control over Chinese film-television programs. The Chinese government wanted to make sure the entertainment industry conveyed the “right value” to the Chinese audience. In other words, the main characters should be kind, mild, and smile at everyone. Also, the main characters, or the positive characters, should be ready to forgive anyone whatever these bad people did before. In turn, the negative characters should be extremely evil and dangerous: these bay guys are ready to kill anyone to achieve their own goals. To sum up, the Chinese government thought the good people should always be good, and the bad guy should always be bad. Such “right value” makes characters perfect, but unreal. However, in Frozen, the heroine Elsa was not a perfectly kind person: she was somewhat dangerous to other people because of her mysterious magic. Thus, Elsa was a new stimulus for the Chinese audience: a character was not perfect but was complicated and real.
Finally, in Frozen, Elsa faces problems about self-identification, which is also the problem faced by the Chinese youth. Elsa dares not to show her true self because she is afraid to be seen as a weirdo. Also, Elsa has to take responsibility for the queen. In fact, the Chinese youth has a similar situation with Elsa. As China is developing rapidly, the Chinese youth is in an indispensable period with a lot of new opportunities and values. Therefore, a gap appears between the Chinese youth and their parents. For example, most Chinese youths demonstrate a great acceptance of LGBTQ, while LGBTQ is still a ban for most Chinese parents. The Chinese youth always face the conflict between their own identification and their parents’ expectation. This conflict, on the other hand, derives from the rapidly changing Chinese society. Thus, the Chines audience, especially the Chinese youth, has great empathy with Elsa, which further push Elsa and Frozen into the Chinese audience’s heart.
