Just spent an evening seeing what I could see of Frozen on Youtube, and every one of the cuts I watched made me laugh. So I went to look at what I could find of my own first movie, which was also Walt Disney, and it was Fantasia.

Say I’m around five years old, and it’s in a cinema. And I remember my mother saying to me years later that when we got towards the end, I wanted to go home. So I have just played the final section, and having watched it, I am less surprised that I wanted to leave than that I ever went back. This is not light and amusing. It is fearsome and frightening. Comes in two parts so it lasts around nine minutes. And do I remember this? Do I ever! The aim, I suppose, was to introduce us little children to classical music, but perhaps other things as well.

Would you show your children any of this? What I have always remembered about the movie and loved the memory of was the part with the dinosaurs.

Would you show your children this one either? I’m not even sure I should show this to them even now and they have children of their own, who I would also never want them to see these as well.

Better to watch Frozen for all its political correctness, as I discussed in the previous post.

My grand-daughter, Age 5, just sang me this.

I’m no expert on modern music and this definitely does not strike me as brilliantly tuneful, but then again, I grew up with Dylan (but also Peter, Paul and Mary). The lyrics I can, however, follow easily enough.

The snow glows white
On the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I’m the Queen

The wind is howling
Like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in
Heaven knows I tried…

Don’t let them in
Don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal
Don’t feel
Don’t let them know…
Well, now they know!

Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door!
I don’t care what they’re going to say
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway

It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all!

It’s time to see
What I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong
No rules for me
I’m free!

Let it go! Let it go!
I am one with the wind and sky!
Let it go! Let it go!
You’ll never see me cry!
Here I stand and here I’ll stay
Let the storm rage on…

My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back
The past is in the past!

Let it go! Let it go!
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn!
Let it go! Let it go!
That perfect girl is gone!

Here I stand in the light of day…
Let the storm rage on!!!
The cold never bothered me anyway

But I don’t hear what a five-year old girl can hear. So I have now gone looking on the net and found this: What Is the Meaning of Frozen’s “Let It Go”? And bear in mind I haven’t seen the film.

Outside of the context of the story, the lyrics could be applied to anything, which is extremely dangerous. Historically speaking, rejection of established norms, relativism, and finding liberation in these things were key elements of Nazism, as Dr. Modris Eksteins explains in his book Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Indeed, anti-establishment attitudes and belief in relativism were also key to the beliefs of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, according to Paul Johnson in his book Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Nineties.

This is not to say that the song advocates these beliefs. It does not. However, when removed from the confines of the story, the song can easily become an anthem in favor of these destructive philosophies, though it was not intended to be one.

That’s not what’s in the mind of five-year-olds. But there is some sort of hidden rebellion that is clearly implied. And then this came from an answer on Quora:

It’s okay to be yourself, even when the world won’t accept you. In fact, it’s paramount, because if you repress yourself (conceal… don’t feel) you’ll explode, and end up making life much harder for yourself and for everybody else. You won’t be able to control your emotions or behavior until you accept who you are, and are comfortable with it. You shouldn’t have to fit yourself into a box of what is “perfect” or socially acceptable, because you’re never going to be perfect. It’s also okay to remove yourself from everyone else if you need to (though eventually you do have to reintegrate into society).

Maybe this doesn’t mean all that much any more:

2,600,212,202 views 

I game I have never seen before since I was hitchhiking in Europe when it was played, and we arrived in Paris not knowing the score. So we bought a copy of Le Monde where there was a story that filled two columns with everything in it describing the atmosphere at the game and the history of Canada-Russia hockey but with no actual score. But there at the end, there was a two-line para that I could barely decipher as saying that Canada had won the game.

I moved to Australia in 1975 so that the Canadian team has all the players I remember. I wouldn’t know a single player on a single team in the NHL, or even on the Leafs, but here I know everyone, including the announcer who was Foster Hewitt, who broadcast the Leaf games for my entire youth.

And of course, it was that last minute of the game where Paul Henderson – a Maple Leaf – scored the goal that has remained undoubtedly the single most thrilling goal in the history of Canadian hockey. Even as I watched it, and for me it was for the first time, I felt the tension, even though I know how it ended. Who could ever forget?

Might add, that my children are ethnic children, both played hockey (not ice hockey, but hockey unlike grass hockey which is a non-existent nothing to me). I also was at the game when Toronto last won the Stanley Cup. Alas, the Leafs are the worst sports franchise in North America and are unlikely to win The Cup anytime in my own lifetime.

Will just finish by saying that I had the enormous pleasure of playing hockey with my sons when we lived in Canberra. These are the memories that really matter, even more than who won between the Russians and the Canadians back in 1972.