Like millions of little girls across the country right now, my daughter loves to sing “Let It Go,” the big power ballad at the center of my new favorite movie. A lot of people who love Frozen are very anxious about the cultural influence of this song, which has become a huge kids’ smash; some people who agree with me that Frozen the movie is a positive influence are actually saying that the overall impact of Frozen the media property will be negative, because the damage done by “Let It Go” will outweigh the good done by the movie from which it comes.

The problem in a nutshell is that “Let It Go” embodies the cult of self-expression that the movie is subverting, and when the song is removed from the context of the movie and sung without irony, it can actually encourage the cult of self-expression. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me!” sings Queen Elsa. In the context of the movie, when Elsa sings this, it is the first step toward the death of her sister. But now we have millions of little girls running around singing “no right, no wrong, no rules for me!” and it’s not at all clear how many of them have internalized the message of the movie. And if you read what people are writing on the web, while I think there’s a strong case to be made that the overall impact of Frozen on the culture has been very positive, there’s no question that some people are adopting “Let It Go” as an anthem of self-expression without appreciating how the story of Frozen as a whole undermines Elsa’s point of view.

First let’s step back from “Let It Go” and say something about the general problem of which this is a specific case. The general problem is that cultural artifacts do not interpret themselves; they require a culture within which they are interpreted. As a result, each individual cultural artifact can only do as much positive (or negative) work as the culture within which it is situated allows it to do.

Here is an extreme example that illustrates the point with shocking clarity. When the movie Schindler’s List was in theaters, the Washington Post carried a story about a high school teacher who took his class to see it, hoping they would learn some powerful lessons about evil. But several of the boys in his class took nihilistic delight in watching the Nazis slaughter Jews – when the camp commandant started shooting prisoners at random from his window, they shouted things like, “Pow! He got him! That’s so cold!” Etc. They reacted this way not because they were fascists or anti-Semites, but simply because they had been conditioned to experience movies about people murdering each other as an opportunity for recreational enjoyment.

“Let It Go” is not at that extreme, but I can see why people are concerned about it. Still, I think the comparison puts things in perspective. In a culture that is in so much trouble that even Schindler’s List can be an occasion of evil for some audiences, it is simply too much to expect that any positive cultural artifact will not affect some people negatively. Indeed, the more trouble the culture is in, the more we should expect this. Thus, as the need for good cultural products rises, so does the extent to which we should expect to see them abused.

The appropriate conclusion, I think, is that we should not be too troubled by the abuse of “Let It Go.” This is the price you pay for releasing a cultural product of any kind into a chaotic culture.

In the particular case of “Let It Go,” there is something that makes the real value of the artifact even greater, while increasing the likelihood of its abuse. This is the ambiguous nature of the song itself. Objectively, this is a strength, not a weakness. As I’ve written before, what makes Frozen so powerful is that it acknowledges the individual’s legitimate claims to dignity, justice and freedom. Because Queen Elsa is fleeing from real injustices, we are right to feel good that she is finally free – even as the deadly seed of willfulness is mixed into her celebration.

This is what makes the movie’s confrontation with the cult of self-expression real and costly. Frozen is not subverting a cardboard caricature of the cult of self-expression, but the real deal. It shows us that cult at its most appealing, not at its least appealing, before taking it on. And this is why Frozen is such a triumph.

A fact worth knowing: from all the interviews and information available on the web, it’s pretty clear that the makers of this movie made major changes to the story after the songwriters turned in “Let It Go” and everyone in the room realized they had something really unique on their hands. The details of the accounts vary, but it appears that Elsa became a more three-dimensional character, and much more sympathetic, after “Let It Go” was written. That makes sense – if you only look at the lyrics and don’t hear the music, you might think “Let It Go” was sung by a two-dimensional villain. Maybe that’s what Elsa was when they handed the songwriters this assignment, and the songwriters did too good a job letting her have a real human voice.

Because that, in the end, is what makes “Let It Go” so powerful, and the power of “Let It Go” is what makes Frozen’s subversion of what “Let It Go” stands for so powerful. People in real life are not movie villains, who have all the wealth and privilege in the world, but won’t be satisfied with anything less than global domination. They suffer, and often they suffer unfairly and unjustly. They turn to evil not out of megalomania but simply because they want dignity, justice and freedom, and see no other way to get it. As the song “Fixer-Upper” tells us, Elsa’s choices are not extraordinary but very ordinary. This is what human nature does when natural love relationships (especially in the family) are obstructed.

And what about my daughter? I sat her down and talked it over with her. I explained that Elsa says and does some good things during the song (“like making Olaf!” she exclaimed) but she also says and does some bad things. After we talked and I reminded her of where “Let It Go” leads in the story of the movie, she understands. So now she sings “Let It Go” and I don’t worry, because she knows that “no right, no wrong, no rules for me!” was a bad thing for Elsa to say.

The deepest failure of the culture is not that there’s a lot of bad stuff out there. That’s a symptom. The real failure is that parents don’t know what they believe and why they believe it, watch what their kids watch, and talk to them about it. If we did that, the bad stuff wouldn’t matter as much, and in a generation it would fade away because our kids would grow up into people who don’t buy the bad stuff.

But, for the moment, we don’t do that. All the more reason we need Frozen, “Let It Go” and all, to help us remember to be that kind of people.

Today, TGC carries an interview with me on my new book, Joy for the World, which releases in about a week. Here’s a taste:

You need organizational Christianity—most fundamentally the local church, but also all the other kinds of institutions committed, as institutions, to advancing Christ. These are the only places where the special work of the Spirit in the hearts of believers can fully reach expression in shared life—where we can have koinonia that permeates the rhythms of the organizational culture and shapes our rules and policies. We need these places to ground us and to equip us, and also to carry out certain special functions the mission of Christ requires.

But that’s not where people live most of life. Most of life takes place in a culture we share with unbelievers, and if we’re not building people up to practice discipleship and spread the joy of God in those places, we’re mostly wasting our time. By definition, organizational Christianity can’t carry the joy of God into those structures of culture outside the church; we need a mode of Christian cooperation that’s more organic, something that subsists in our relationships and personal interactions rather than formal institutions.

If you haven’t seen The Lego Movie, go see it. It’s hilarious. The entertainment value is well worth your money. I expect that some of the pop culture gags in this movie will be referenced by nerds around their digital water coolers for some time to come. And the gags are almost all visual, so it’s going to be a lot funnier on the big screen than it will be in your living room.

Don’t go expecting deep wisdom, just go expecting a great time, and you’ll have one.

Now, to business. Do NOT read the rest of this article until after you’ve seen both The Lego Movie and Frozen (subject of my most recent Pass the Popcorn article over at JPGB). Major spoilers lie ahead.

HT

I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.”

And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, “Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?”

After a long pause I replied, “I will go home and write a book in answer to that question.” This is the book that I have written in answer to it.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The thing I liked most about The Lego Movie is not what it triumphantly accomplishes – great comedic entertainment – but what it aspires to accomplish and utterly fails at. The people who made The Lego Movie are smart enough to realize that the central moral teaching of today’s Hollywood culture – “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” – has reached a point where it’s corny, stale and pathetic. Nobody buys that stuff anymore. It “sounds like a cat poster.” The makers of The Lego Movie aspire to breathe new life into it, to restore it to vibrant credibility as a source of moral storytelling, to resurrect it from the grave of mockery and irony and place it back upon its throne as the ruling authority of the culture. And after all their efforts, which are very impressive, they are utterly unable to pull it off. The bankruptcy of “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” remains, in the end, just as obvious as it was when the movie started. And seeing that made me happier than all the jokes in the movie combined.

The enemy’s armor is starting to buckle. Slowly, inch by bloody inch, the cracks are being pried open – by the intrinsic weakness of the enemy’s ideas as much as by anything we do. The Lego Movie made me feel more strongly than I’ve ever felt before: we can really win this thing.

The Lego Movie and Frozen are both examining what may well be the most important question facing our culture. They are not about the culture war as such, but they are about the core question of the meaning and purpose of human life that lies behind the culture war.

This is a powerful head-to-head match. The Lego Movie and Frozen are two of the most successful movies of recent years. They rank 96% and 89% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes, a level that few arthouse movies achieve, let alone wide-release, big-budget movies made for mass audiences. Frozen already has a respectable rank among the highest-grossing movies of all time (inflation adjusted), and will probably end up tapering off with total box office receipts just shy of $1 billion. The Lego Movie is well on its way to a similar or (probably) even stronger domestic performance, although it remains to be seen whether overseas audiences (which have flocked to Frozen in huge numbers) will resonate with The Lego Movie’s highly specific pop culture references.

Neither of these movies speaks directly to the issues that divide us. The Lego Movie does not talk about gay marriage. Perhaps more important, neither of these movies is speaking from within a clearly identified cultural subgroup, so no one can “claim victory” based on the success of either movie. If you told me the people who made Frozen were Christians I would not be at all surprised, but if you told me they were secular Jews who had been reading a lot of Aristotle I would not be surprised by that either.

However, the deeper rift that causes the culture war – the issue behind the issues – is self-expression versus self-renunciation. The Lego Movie speaks for self-expression – “everyone is special, if you just believe in yourself!” Frozen speaks for self-renunciation – as Olaf says, “love means putting other people’s needs ahead of your own.” Or how about the dialogue in the climactic scene: “You sacrificed yourself for me?” “Of course. I love you.”

HT

What makes the juxtaposition of these movies even more profound is that each of them is aware of the limitations of its own view, and gives important ground to the other side.

One of the most important scenes in Frozen is the power ballad “Let It Go,” in which Queen Elsa declares her independence from the human relationships that have oppressed her. A few of the verses point us back toward to the larger arc of the movie’s theme – alone on the mountain, she sings, there are “no rules,” “no right” and “no wrong.” That’s going to be important later; it’s the first step toward her sister’s death. But the bulk of the song is strongly sympathetic, and rightly so. For the sake of her people, Elsa has been carrying a great burden her whole life – a burden that has divided her deeply and bitterly from her only remaining family. To carry out an act of love for her sister and her people, she has been forced to live in a world that is totally without love of any other kind. And it is totally irrational and unjust that this burden was placed on her. She is right to feel ill-used; she has been ill-used. However wrong her way of dealing with it may be, she is right to feel that she neither could nor should live that way for the rest of her life.

She sings:

Here I stand

In the light of day!

Let the storm rage on!

The cold never bothered me anyway.

Considering the injustices she has suffered, if your spirit is not soaring for her when she sings this, you have a heart of stone.

Frozen’s championing of self-renunciation over self-expression is so successful because it acknowledges the limits of self-renunciation. It upholds, powerfully, the individual’s need for dignity, justice and freedom, and it offers a vision of self-renunciation within which these needs can be met. It can win converts – and if you read what some people are writing about this movie, you’ll see that it is in fact winning converts – because it meets you halfway. You will not be required to renounce individual dignity, justice and freedom if you give your heart to what Frozen is offering you.

The Lego Movie, likewise, sees the limits of self-expression. The silly self-indulgence that tends to prevail among the professional champions of self-expression is mocked just as mercilessly as the culture of conformity against which they are reacting. As in: “Wyldstyle? Hey, are you that student I had once who was so insecure she kept changing her name?” Or how about when Batman turns on his subwoofers (“DARKNESSSSSS!!! NO PARENTS!!!!”) and Wyldstyle lectures Emmet: “This is real music.” Or the fact that the good guys need to learn to follow rules and work together as a team in order to win.

And then of course there’s Cloudcuckooland. It’s a place of no rules, where everyone is happy. But of course there are actually lots of rules (“no negativity!”), there is no consistency, and everyone is repressing the authentic human emotions that are inconsistent with the self-expressionist utopia – pushing them way deep down where no one will ever, EVER FIND THEM!!! (Thanks to the decay of education under the dead hand of the government monopoly, it is my duty to inform you that the name Cloudcuckooland is not original to The Lego Movie.)

But don’t be fooled by any of this. Make no mistake, the heart of The Lego Movie is “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” Like Frozen, The Lego Movie is about the relationship between the individual and society. The two diagnostic questions that reveal the fundamental opposition between these movies are:

1. What is the function of social conventions?
2. What happens to individuals who withdraw from them?

In Frozen, social conventions can be a source of injustice, such as the treatment of Elsa; however, at a more fundamental level they are the necessary context for love, which is what makes our lives meaningful. Consider Elsa telling Anna not to marry the man she’s just met – that’s social convention, too. When Elsa withdraws from the restraint of social conventions, she turns cold and becomes the murderer of her own beloved sister.

In The Lego Movie, social conventions can be a temporary help to accomplishing shared goals, such as the master builders learning to build together; however, at a more fundamental level they are a system of control that inhibits self-expression, which is what makes our lives meaningful. The good guys establish a small set of temporary social conventions in order to accomplish their goal, but their goal is the elimination of the larger role of social conventions as the permanent, taken-for-granted basis of shared life. Those who withdraw from social conventions become (for the most part) free and happy; these liberated individuals make temporary use of social conventions in order to re-enter the world of social conventions so they can liberate others from that world and help them, too, escape from conventions into the freedom and happiness of unlimited self-expression.

Consider two other issues that illuminate the difference. One is the resolution of the villains’ stories. The Lego Movie partakes of one of the most horrible Hollywood cliches: the villain is instantly transformed into a hero once he’s told that he’s special if he just believes in himself. He was never really evil, he was just never told he was a special snowflake. We know this because, astonishingly, he actually says “Nobody ever told me I was a special snowflake!” Well, jeez, buddy, if that was all you wanted, no need to destroy the world over it. All you had to do was ask.

By contrast, the villains in Frozen – even Queen Elsa – are really evil. Elsa is sympathetic, so to make sure we understand, the movie has to have the wise old troll make it explicit that yes, she’s evil. Redemption is possible, but it doesn’t come cheap. “The head can be persuaded, but the heart . . . ” It requires an extremely painful act of self-renunciation. The good guys can help with this – Elsa’s heart changes in response to Anna’s self-sacrificial love for her. But “it is the shedding of blood that makes atonement” (Leviticus 17:11; Hebrews 9:22). And, of course, two out of the three villains in Frozen remain just as evil at the end as they were in the beginning. God bless the makers of this movie for having Anna, not Kristoff, manifest the inevitability of justice. Wham! Right in the kisser! If anybody is ever so foolish as to attempt to murder my daughter, that’s what I want her to do.

A final contrast – small, but worth noting – is the two movies’ view of religion. This is unobtrusive in both movies, but unmistakable.

In Frozen, religious authorities are – naturally, organically, unremarkably and unproblematically – woven into the fabric of the social conventions that provide the necessary context for love. Do not miss the significance of the fact that it is a bishop who puts the crown on the queen’s head. For more than a thousand years that was the central cultural ritual reaffirming that all social conventions (represented by the monarch) exist to facilitate love (represented by the bishop).

Did you catch the view of religion in The Lego Movie? “The prophecy is made up, but it’s also true.” That is precisely the view of religion among the most philosophically advanced advocates of self-expression. It runs right back to the great master and founder of the movement, Rousseau, and since time immemorial it has been the view implicit in all the spontaneous mythological religions (you know, Zeus and Apollo and all that). The whole idea that religion is merely the superstitious holdover of a bygone era, fated to pass away inevitably with progress, was always boob bait. It plays to the prejudices of those who have been wounded by the church – and to our shame, that’s a big crowd of people to play to. But the really great apostles of self-expression have always been pro-religion – as long as it’s religion of a certain kind. Religion in its proper form is “useful narrative.” “These are stories that we find it helpful to tell ourselves,” as I heard one of them describe the Bible. Religion is entirely invented, and yet in spite of the fact that we make it up for ourselves, it still expresses – and uniquely expresses, in ways you can’t get from anything else – a deep truth about the universe. Bad religion is religion that claims to be a real revelation, the actual voice of the divine speaking to man. Good religion is “made up but also true.”

The effort to resuscitate self-expression, as I said, is very impressive. But it fails, and I think the failure is pretty obvious.

It was daring of them to go so far out of their way to make the message so overt and so corny. They see that only this will do. The message really is corny – in real life, enough people have been hurt by “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” that the bloom is off the rose. People have seen through it. I don’t mean people are in active rebellion against it; for the most part, they’re not. But they’re also not drawing any spiritual sustenance from it. It’s not inspiring. It’s not uplifting. The “useful narrative” is no longer useful.

This is what The Lego Movie attempts to reverse. They wear the corniness of it on their sleeves in order to disarm us. They get us laughing at it in order to establish that they, too, have “seen through it.” They’re in on the joke. Just as Frozen is not asking you to give up dignity, justice and freedom for the individual, The Lego Movie is not asking you to give up your sense of superior wisdom and ironic detachment from social convention. Don’t worry, The Lego Movie is saying, you can still laugh at cat posters. That’s okay! We do too!

However, especially in the scenes between the two human characters, the movie goes on to say: But do you see why that message was powerful in the first place? After all, there would have been no cat posters to begin with if “believe in yourself!” had not resonated with people at a very deep level. Something real, something deeply important to what it means to be human, was behind all those moronic cat posters that you and I both laugh at. Nobody laughs when a father comes to realize he has valued the integrity of his Lego collection more than he has valued the personality of his son.

And yet . . . and yet . . . the ending is just so obviously unworthy of the aspirations. First of all, the plot resolution is totally unsatisfying. The instant conversion of the villain into a hero when he is simply told he’s a special snowflake is the obvious crux of this. But it is also clear in the outrageously arbitrary transition of Lucy’s girlfriend status from Batman to Emmet. With Batman’s totally unexplained approval! Who would have expected that a movie so reverential toward Batman could so utterly emasculate him? The movie’s inability to give us a satisfying ending reveals, I think, the bankruptcy of the underlying worldview.

(And notice the objectification of women involved in her “girlfriend status” throughout the movie. “It’s totally serious, my boyfriend will beat you up if you make a pass at me!” And in the ending, it is taken for granted by all parties that the guy who saves the world is entitled to the girl. She is, from start to finish, a trophy. The culture of self-expression always ends in the objectification of women, because that is what the natural sexual desires of both men and women produce when they are not channeled by a culture of self-renunciation. But I digress.)

At a deeper level, the movie never really transcends the subordination of belief to irony. Granted, as I said, part of the strategy is assuring us we don’t need to give up irony. However, for The Lego Movie to succeed, we would have to walk out of the theater feeling, in spite of our irony, that we really can believe in ourselves. And this I do not expect to have been the case for very many people.

I expect so not only because of my own experience with this movie. I am too heavily inoculated against “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” for my experience to be a safe predictor. I expect it primarily because the movie produces no new language of self-expression. To pull this off they would have had to have given us a new way of saying it, a way of affirming the message that hasn’t been ruined by irony. But they don’t. Right up to the very end, they’re still repeating “everyone is special if you just believe in yourself!” and all the other tired old formulas that they themselves have just spent the whole movie mocking. They have given us nothing to think or say about the meaning of our lives that is not, primarily, an object of ridicule.

In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton wrote that a civilization enters decline not when its bad things get worse, but when its good things lose their power – “its cures do not cure and its blessings refuse to bless.” The Lego Movie proves that the cult of self-expression has become, for us, the cure that will not cure and the blessing that will not bless. Frozen proves that self-renunciation could become – “for the first time in forever!” – the renewed cultural source of a renewed civilization.

Frozen. Go see it. Not optional. More here.

It’s the question that gets asked any time there is a tragedy, any time the world experiences something awful and heart-breaking, any time there is a painful experience. The question is not new; it’s been asked since the beginning of time. Page after page has been written attempting to the answer the question satisfactorily, psychologically, theologically, but the fact that books continue to be written on the question shows that few are satisfied with the answers given thus far.

But what if the point is not so much about the answer, but about the question? Philip Yancey, in his new book “The Question that Never Goes Away” points out that while many in scripture ask “Why God,” God never gives a direct answer, and neither does Yancey. And yet, the repetition of the question throughout Psalms and the rest of Scripture demonstrates that God has heard the question, even inspired the question in the Bible, but has chosen not to answer. “Why, God? Why, God, are you not answering my question of “Why, God?” What is the point of a question that we know God hears, even affirms, but does not answer?

1. The question assumes brokenness

We ask the question when something unexpected takes place. Few ask the question “Why, God” when a drug-addict overdoses. We assume we know the answer to that scenario. Rather, we ask the question when tragedy strikes, when an unexpected death occurs, when something other than the norm takes place. We have assumptions as to how our lives will go, idealistic thoughts to be sure, but we have the expectation that we will all die in our beds in old age having led good, full lives. But how do we explain the people killed by drunk drivers? The drunk driver died for their own poor choices, but why the others? The devastation seems so random, so inexplicable. Good families, loving parents, young children, all killed by someone else’s act of stupidity. Cancer and other sicknesses strike young children who are supposed to be young and carefree. These are what cause us to ask “Why God?” And the very fact that we ask the question shows that we have an intrinsic understanding that this is not how it is ‘supposed’ to be. We have an innate sense that this world is broken and messed up. In a word, we know that the world is fallen. This evil was not “supposed” to happen. When we ask “Why God?” we are agreeing that this world is tainted and corrupted, cursed and disordered by the ravages of sin. This is not Eden; this is not paradise. What this is is not what should be.

2. The question assumes an answerer

Those outside of Christ ask the question, but they assume that someone has the answer. They ask because they assume that there even is an answer! And there is; it’s even an answer they already know deep down: whatever prompted the question shouldn’t have happened; it isn’t right. This world isn’t right. And yet, even knowing that the world is not right, even knowing this world is messed up and corrupted by sin, we still ask the question because we assume that the one who has the ability to answer the question has the power to change it. We ask not just so that we will know, but so that the one who is ‘responsible’ for this will do something about it. Even those who lack faith in Christ ask the question because they believe someone or something knows “why” and can do something about it! Their question even reveals the assumption that the one in control would care enough to do something about it. Otherwise, what’s the point of even asking?! And the great news of the Gospel is that there is someone who knows, and He has done, is doing, and will do something about this problem of evil!

3. The question assumes an answer we will agree with

So then why doesn’t God give me the answer? We admit what God has said: this world is corrupt. We even know that He has the answer. So why no answer? And to be honest “all things work out for good” is not that big of a comfort in the midst of the tragedy. Try telling any father that his daughter was tragically killed so that the father could grow spiritually. Thanks a lot, God but I want my daughter back. The reality is that we know that there is an answer and we know who has it but He is not giving it. And the truth is, we know that the answer is not one we would like. I have six children, but if God told me that one of them had to die so that every person in Africa would come to faith in Christ, I guarantee you I would say “no” without a moment’s hesitation. We ask “Why, God” because we really think that God is going to give us an answer we will agree with. How do you Job would have felt if God told him that all that tragedy happened because God had a wager going with a fallen angel? I guarantee Job would not have liked the answer. In the midst of the tragedy, when we cry out “Why, God” why someone assume we would like the answer if God gave it. But that’s not true at all because we are as affected and broken as our world! Knowing “why” will not make us feel better.

What we are really saying when we ask “Why, God” is either “This hurts, God” or “I disagree, God.” The solution to both of those is faith. Faith that admits this world is broken, and only God holds the answer. Faith that admits I disagree with what God is doing because this hurts. Faith that hopes in the future when this pain is gone, when the world is remade in perfect order. Faith in that time when we will be able to look back on it all and not only understand, but also agree. Until then, we ask the question “why” in pain and in faith that there is an answerer, and one day, we will not only agree with the answer, we’ll worship the answerer for it.