In the two-minute teaser, Elsa stands alone on a stormy shore before running at the towering waves and turning them to ice. By the end of the trailer, which also features her sister Anna and friends Kristoff and Olaf, the younger sibling has drawn Kristoff’s sword and is leaping towards an unknown assailant hidden from view.Disney has been much criticised in the past for peddling gender stereotypes to the most impressionable of audiences: Children.
Male executives, directors and writers simply tend to create fictional worlds from their own point of view – worlds that explore issues relevant to them. This paucity of fair representation is detrimental to generations of young women and their vision of themselves – their ambitions, motivations, goals, and their place in society.
Back in 2013, Frozen did break a few stereotypes and raise a few eyebrows. A tale of two sisters, one of whom possesses the magical power to turn everything she touches into ice, it explores female power, creativity and the way in which society traditionally perceives both. Importantly, Frozen is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen – a tale about an evil queen living in a remote kingdom, capable of freezing hearts of human beings which only other human beings can thaw with love.
Yet the magical power Elsa possesses in the first film still has connotations of harm as she has no mastery over it – it just happens in her, and she is afraid of it.The teaser trailer for Frozen II promises to remedy this situation as Elsa is shown to use her powers to tame the waves and extinguish fire with jets of ice. Meanwhile, a different Anna – less knockabout, more serious – is also revealed as she determinedly wields a man’s sword to protect those around her.