Imagine you’re music scholar Howard Ho and you learn that Lin Manuel Miranda mentioned you personally in a Tweet, saying you should review the music of Frozen II…
Well, you get busy and do just that! And it’s brilliant and fun and I learned so much from it, and my already high appreciation of Frozen / Frozen II is raised even more.
Disney is still a giant, money-grubbing corporation, sure. But they have come a LONG way from the racist portrayals of indigenous peoples in Fantasia or Peter Pan. Case in point:
Turns out Frozen and Frozen II is based on, and had the credited participation of the real-life Scandinavian Sami people, whose musical traditions are reflected in the Northuldra people of the film. Or that the dam in the story is based on a real-life dam that the Sami protested when it was built.
In the run-up to Frozen II’s release, I heard “Into The Unknown” many times, and thought it was going to be the big song of the movie. And I did like it, but the film brought riches, so much good stuff. Kristoff’s 80’s love ballad was super-fun. I was devastated by “The Next Right Thing” and absolutely blown away by “Show Yourself”. And now that I’ve seen this review I need to re-watch the whole movie.
NOTES:
- My review of Frozen II, which I wrote back in May having not seen this video.
georgewiman 