Frozen 2 If you've seen all the reviews for Frozen 2, generally, it's well received, praised for its heart and story and all that good stuff. But there's this deep undertone of the movie that, as far as I can tell, hasn't been dissected. Frozen 2 takes us deep into the unknown, but much do we take for granted just how unknown the deep truly goes. Wait, what? Let's start with this. Have you ever heard of a thing called the Last Airbender? Specifically the show, not the movie. Excuse me, thinking of the movie just... Okay, anyways. Frozen 2 essentially develops on that narrative, reimagining the idea of Avatar and the four elements into this enchanted world. The four elements are not found as benders, however, but are still reflected by beings or spirits made up of their respective element. Elsa, the last Icebender, essentially experiences her own personal transformation into the Avatar by the end. And in a nod to both Airbender and the Legend of Korra, she is not only the bridge between the elements, but the human and spirit world as well. I swear, the only thing missing in this movie is probending. Well, wait, maybe she does a little bit of that? Now, of course, I'm not trying to say that Airbender was the originator of the four elements. Truly, that concept is found rooted in ancient philosophy and religion of the Greeks and Egyptians. And if we really want to get into what they believed, they didn't invent the elements either. That's God's handiwork. But I digress. Frozen does a beautiful job of bringing those ideas that Avatar captured so well and putting them into a frame of reference that is unique unto itself and carries a certain magic that just feels familiar as we progress throughout the story. As mentioned, we see the elements themselves come to life in their own unique ways. Most notably and true to form would be our friend, the Fire Salamander. For those unfamiliar with ancient Greek alchemy, the Salamander was actually the symbol of the Fire elementals. Someone at Disney has done their homework. Along with this adorable critter, we also see a Water Horse, which they fully borrowed from the King of Cups in Patchter Row, the wind from the game Flower by that game company, and my favorite, the Rock Biders from Never Ending Story, returning for their role as the Earth Spirit. Now, moving on from the elements concept, another curious decision to build into the fundamentals of this movie was to incorporate the work of Dr. Emoto, very heavily. I mean leaning into it hard, may body slamming the audience with a continuous stream of lines, mostly from Lafou, wait, sorry, Olaf, about how water has memory and it remembers everything. And honestly, I'm not at all upset about that. Actually, if there's one way to get human consciousness to wake up to a new idea, it's to get that idea in front of billions of people and then repeatedly tell them over and over, and that is precisely what Disney has done here. Now I know there's probably some who are out there going to be very upset about this, because some people believe that Dr. Emoto was a bit quacker-doodle. So it's worth noting that the science here is more than a little legit, and I'm not just talking about Emoto. Recent discoveries by a German group of scientists demonstrated that water was able to carry a microscopic pattern based on the surrounding environment, carrying the pattern and integrating with future patterns it received over time. I won't get into the specifics here, but I'll put a link in the comments if you want to learn more. Ultimately, the study showed us that water really does have memory, and that water can pick up and store information from all of the places it's traveled through, connecting people and places through time by the memories that it carries. Ah, how beautiful. And we can take this even deeper. If we consider this from the lens of Greek alchemy and the relationship of the element water to our emotional bodies, then we can see that it is our emotions through which memories are stored. Think about it. Emotionally invested in some big life event. It means a lot to you, and you have no problem recalling it. But try and remember what you had for lunch like seven weeks ago. Unless it was a particularly memorable lunch, I mean maybe you just happened to sit down for a meal with, I don't know, the Avengers. With the exception of those instances, things like this generally get faded out of our minds in favor of the things that mean a lot more to us. And this brings us to where Frozen 2 gets deep. And I mean deep. One of the main themes of Frozen 2, if not the mainest main theme, is that of a social commentary on the relationship between the indigenous cultures of the world, and, well, white folk. And they released the movie just in time for Thanksgiving 2. Of course, they've done it in a way that's very tasteful and accessible. Considering the root subject matter here is the mass genocide and suppression of an entire civilization that gave us pretty much the world we have today. And that can be a rather uncomfortable part of life that most people don't like talking about. But here's where the unknown lights up with spiritual sparkles. Traditionally, in many ye old symbolic languages, such as the tarot, for example, the elements are often represented by special items. In the instance of the tarot, we have the cups, wands, swords, and pentacles or discs. These are the water, fire, air, and earth elements, which of course are metaphors for our emotions, our spiritual willpower, our minds, and our physical bodies. Towards the finale of Frozen 2, during the big reveal where we see how the war between the two cultures broke out in the first place, we see it was, well, just like it was in real life. Malicious intent from the white people leader who was afraid of the natives because they used magic and decided to kill them. But at the moment of this big reveal, we see the way it happens, the general with a sword standing over the native leader holding a cup. I don't think we can get a screenshot of this scene in particular just yet, so here's a patchman version instead for now. As we just explored, the swords reflect the element of air, which is the mind and thoughts, and the cups are the emotions and the feelings. When you really dive into the tarot, it also explains how when the mind is not tempered with peace, it can become an instrument of suffering, confusion, and cruelty. To see for the indigenous leader, they could have given him anything. He could have been smoking a peace pipe, playing a drum, or whatever, but the producers gave him a cup. Why? The scene and story is a description of cutting off from one's feelings and looking at the world through a limited perspective, and this action is rooted in fear. This subtle, yet powerful imagery shows us what happens when we create from a place devoid of feeling. Without empathy or an emotional connection to ourselves or others, we lose our compassion and then our humanity. This is doubly made powerful by knowing that the ace of cups, the root of emotion, is labeled as compassion. Gee whiz, tarot so cool. And finally, much of the plot is based around this large dam that was built by the general as a really a false gift, weakening the magical forest and the people who dwell there. The dam itself is a reflection of the barrier that society has installed, which limits us from truly being free to express ourselves, keeping the magic within us trapped inside. I say that society has installed specifically because it was not the current generation who built the dam, but several generations prior in the movie, indicating that all of us are born today into a world that conditions us to think a certain way about life. And it's up to all of us to go back into history, discover the truth about who we are, where we came from, and change our future with new information. In addition to that, the movie also explains how to solve this problem in another way, through the character Christoph. Sure, he spent the majority of the movie trying to get hitched, which at least it's the man's swimming as opposed to the woman, which let's face it, is over done. But there was one part where he was singing with Sven the reindeer, and the song ends with Sven singing Christoph? Back down your guard! And this is how we break our own inner emotional dams. Stop being so uptight and defensive, and open your heart to love. My very last point. Am I the only one who noticed that Elsa fully teleported at the end? I mean, look, she's way up here in the North Isles. The dam breaks down here and goes rushing to Airendel with like crazy momentum. And within a split second, she's there just in time to stop the flood. And then the water just completely vanishes, like we don't get to see that it probably would have bounced off the rocks and came back, but no, that's fine, it's just gone. Anyways, at the end of the day, I'm certain that even with everything we've covered, we could still go a lot deeper here. But hey, it's a start. If there's something else you noticed in this movie, share it in the comments below. Also, this is the beginning of a new series. Let us know what else you'd like to see the spirituality of, and we'll talk about it soon in another episode. Thank you very much. See you next time.