#[[ musical elsa is the only valid elsa & you can't change my mind ]]

[timeshuffles]

so yesterday i saw what i believe is a huge misinterpretation of ‘monster’ and specifically the reason elsa surrenders at the end, and i’m still annoyed about it, so to be 100% clear about my take on this: ‘monster’ is not about elsa surrendering because she thinks she’s a monster or because she’s intimidated by hans. ‘monster’ is not about elsa being a passive observer of her own story. ‘monster’ is not about an angry mob storming in to burn the helpless, frightened witch. 

‘monster’ is about elsa grappling with the very real consequences of her decision to run away from her coronation and turn her back on arendelle when it needed her most, which has resulted in a situation where lives are in danger and foreign usurpers have taken command over the crisis.

‘monster’ is about elsa coming to terms with the damage her father’s instructions and her rigid adherence to them has done. 

‘monster’ is about elsa weighing her desire to disappear into the wilderness where she feels safe against her sense of duty to her country, her people, & her sister, and deciding to walk the difficult, uncertain path of a queen instead of hiding herself away again or giving up and killing herself. 

‘monster’ is about elsa triumphing over her worst inclinations. 

from the moment she hurts anna as a child until the moment hans shows up at her ice palace with the mob, all of elsa’s actions are guided by anxiety, depression, and guilt. ‘monster’ is the turning point, the moment when elsa finally takes a clear look at herself & her past and consciously chooses to break free of those psychological chains and live.

and in order to do that, elsa has to surrender.

see, in the show, the way ‘monster’ is staged, elsa is alone on stage for the first half of the song. she can hear the mob approaching outside, and they are important only insofar as their arrival will force her to make a choice: she can’t continue to pace and fret and do nothing as she has since sending anna and kristoff away from the ice palace.

beyond that, elsa is not scared of or even particularly interested in the mob. her focus, instead, is on herself, her magic, and what she can do to put an end to the crisis she created when she lost control: 

It’s finally come, come to knock down my door. I can’t hide this time like I hid before. The storm is awake. The danger is real. My time’s running out, don’t feel, don’t feel. 

the method she has always used for controlling her magic no longer works, but that doesn’t stop her from instinctively falling into it even though she knows it’s not going to work.  (& one thing the musical does, which i like very much, is directly echo pieces of ‘monster’ during ‘colder by the minute’ to emphasize that these harmful thought patterns are still very much there in elsa’s mind even after she chooses to reject them, eg. “conceal, don’t feel, don’t feel, get back into the cage!” while also using the word monster in a different way so that it is less self-referential and more like elsa is treating her magic like an adversary she now needs to beat.)

Fear will be your enemy, and death its consequence. That’s what they once said to me, and it’s starting to make sense. All this pain, all this fear,  began because of me.

the assumption of both elsa and her parents throughout her life was that the prophecy pabbi delivered to her after saving anna’s life meant that other people’s fear of elsa and her magic would be the cause of elsa’s death. however, elsa is now beginning to interpret the warning differently: it is her own fear that is putting other people’s lives in danger, because she suppressed her magic out of fear, and then after losing control ran away out of fear, and that directly resulted in the devastating summer blizzard they’re trapped in now.

Is the thing they see the thing I have to be? A monster, were they right? Has the dark in me finally come to light? Am I a monster, full of rage? Nowhere to go but on a rampage? Or am I just a monster in a cage?

now... in the interpretation that i disagree with, the one that prompted this post, the writer of that took issue with the line “am i a monster, full of rage?” on the grounds that elsa is not an angry character and — yes. to an extent that’s true. but i think it’s very important to remember that the feeling that actually causes the blizzard, the actual trigger that makes elsa lose control over her powers at the coronation, isn’t fear. it’s anger. she loses her temper with anna and yells at her and it is that burst of, yes, rage that shatters her grip on her magic.

the whole storm is borne out of anger and only exacerbated by fear. elsa recognizes this. and this verse is her — somewhat poetic — way of interrogating those feelings. the blizzard began because she lost her temper for just one second; what if the reason she can’t get it back under control is it’s being fueled by all the pent-up frustration and anger she feels about her situation (forced into isolation and loneliness by dangerous magic she can’t control, with no end in sight)?   and what if the reason she can’t stop the blizzard is simply because she’s just too weak & ruled by her emotions? 

( i also think it’s an intentional parallel to ‘dangerous to dream’, in which elsa laments “i can’t be what you expect of me/and i’m not what i seem” and “i can’t show you i’m not as cold as i seem” — she longs to open up and be herself with both her subjects and especially her sister, whereas in ‘monster’ she confronts her fear that she is exactly who she now appears to be.)

at this point in the song, the mob interjects again, and elsa is visibly startled by their cries. which, if you ask me, is a very strong point of evidence in favor of ‘monster’ really not being about the mob; elsa is so deeply absorbed in her introspection that she loses track of the people storming into her home to kill her. anyway — the reminder of their imminent arrival pushes elsa out of this mournful speculation and into urgently evaluating her options. 

What do I do? No time for crying now. I started a storm, gotta stop it somehow. Do I keep on running? How far do I have to go? And would that take the storm away or only make it grow? I’m making my world colder— how long can it survive? Is everyone in danger as long as I’m alive?

knowing that the “conceal, don’t feel” method has been unsuccessful so far, she considers running even further away and hoping that the storm will follow her away from arendelle. but since that didn’t work last time, she also begins to consider that perhaps only her death will guarantee the safety of her people.

( i have seen a surprising amount of backlash against the suicide ideation threaded throughout ‘monster’ and i really do not understand where it comes from. no one argues that elsa isn’t depressed — because she is, and it’s perhaps even more overt in the musical than in the film. she never worked through the trauma of nearly killing her little sister when she was ten, she’s spent the last eleven years living in near-total isolation and silence, her country is locked in the grip of a magical winter she caused and has no clue how to stop, and just hours ago she nearly killed her sister again. in purely emotional terms, it would be a miracle if the thought of suicide didn’t cross her mind in this dark moment — and on top of that, she has an actual genuine reason to believe the world would be a better place without her in it, because her death might end the blizzard, & that kind of logic has incredible power on a mind that is already entrenched in habits of guilt and self-sacrifice. )

( i think it’s also worth noting that this is the second time in the show elsa asks herself “what do i do?” — the first is in ‘dangerous to dream,’ after she manages to get herself coronated without freezing her scepter: 

Father, I did it! Now what do I do? I can’t stop smiling, how strange— does this mean that things are different? Could they really change? And could I open up that door, and finally see you face to face? ...I guess a queen can change the rules, but not the reason they’re in place.

and once again, its use here feels like an intentional inverse of its use in ‘dangerous to dream,’ where instead of being so giddy with success and optimism that for a second she considers relaxing the strict rules she holds herself, now elsa is in a situation where the rules are crumbling all around her, she’s beginning to see that they never protected anyone in the first place, and she has no fucking clue what to do without them. )

anyway, this part of the song is when the mob breaks into her ice palace and finally enters the scene proper. and the physical staging of this moment is really important, because it’s what really drives home the balance of power here and what elsa is doing in this scene. because what’s the first thing does elsa when a mob of scared, angry, armed men break into her sanctuary? 

she turns her back on them.

like — they don’t even get to ENTER properly because she controls the space, and elsa barely even spares them a glance. and just as elsa denies them entry into her palace, she refuses to be distracted from her internal quandary.

Was I a monster from the start? How did I end up with this frozen heart? Bringing destruction to the stage, caught in a war that I never meant to wage. 

if anything, the arrival of the mob becomes, to her, a kind of symbol of how badly she has failed them. like — just imagine how desperate you’d have to be to storm the castle of somebody with powers like elsa’s in the middle of a blizzard so deadly cold that you know you will die if you stay in it. 

this verse is, i think, really elsa empathizing deeply with the mob and recognizing herself through their eyes — she waged war on her own people. it was an accident, yes, but that doesn’t end the devastation nor undo the destruction she has already caused. she’s not afraid of them, because they are completely at her mercy. and she’s not angry at them, because she understands the fear and pain fueling their anger. 

& most importantly, she still sees these people as her subjects, and that makes their safety her responsibility in her mind. which is what brings her to: 

Do I kill the monster?

ultimately it is the sight of the ordinary people she has failed — not anna, who has a personal history with her and thus trusts and loves her in a way no one else can, but regular subjects who are scared and hurting and confused and are literally just innocent bystanders in a disaster that grew out of a simple spat with her sister — that pushes elsa into actively contemplating suicide.

Father, you know what’s best for me. If I die, will they be free? Mother, what if after I’m gone the cold gets colder, and the storm rages on? ...No! I have to stay alive to fix what I’ve done, save the world from myself and bring back the sun.

this is the most important verse all of ‘monster’ and, i would argue, the entire show in terms of elsa’s character development. why? because it is a direct echo of the conversation young elsa has with her parents after almost she almost kills anna — even the melody is the same: 

AGNARR: We must keep her powers hidden from everyone, including Anna. 

IÐUNN: What?! No, they’re sisters, we can’t ask expect them to stay away from each other—

ELSA: Mother, it’s how it has to be. What’s best for her is best for me. Father, I’ll do what you say—

AGNARR: We’ll help you to control it. I know we’ll find a way.

IÐUNN: Only until we get more answers, and then

ALL: We’ll find our way back to be a family again...

as a child, elsa took her father’s advice and hid herself away, shut down all her emotions and metaphorically ends her life in order to keep her powers hidden (“i can’t laugh, i can’t cry, i can’t dream, i can’t live without it bursting out!”). in contrast, her mother rejects the idea that she must live in fear, objecting to keeping her isolated from anna and later trying to comfort her when she’s upset instead of scolding her to keep it hidden.

& here, as a woman facing down all the myriad ways that her father’s teachings have failed her and her country, elsa consciously chooses to follow her mother’s advice instead—embracing life, and trying to control her magic without sacrificing her life in both the literal and figurative sense. she chooses to seek out the answers her mother wanted, the better alternative that her parents went in search of when they left arendelle on the voyage that killed them. 

If I’m a monster, then it’s true there’s only one thing left for me to do, but before I fade to white, I’ll do all that I can to make things right. 

so this is her conclusion: if it’s true that she really cannot end the storm any other way — if she really can’t bring herself into balance, if she really can’t find a way to rule her emotions instead of being ruled by them — then, yes, she will kill herself as last-ditch effort to save her people. ultimately, she values their wellbeing above her own life. 

but.  she is not there yet. it’s kind of funny because, despite the fact that elsa is literally planning to kill herself if she can’t stop the storm any other way, this verse is, in contrast to the despairing tone of everything leading up to this verse, actually filled with hope and determination. this is elsa rejecting the idea that she’s a monster, rejecting the idea that the only way to keep people safe from her is to lock herself away and suppress all her feelings, rejecting the fear her father’s ideas represent. this is elsa saying “if my father was right about me, then i’ll die, but i don’t think he was right anymore.”

& having articulated this conclusion to herself, she finishes up the song by taking the first step in acting upon it. how?

by taking control of her magic and setting her people free. 

I cannot be a monster. I will not be a monster— not tonight!

the other big point of contention in posts i read yesterday that prompted this post is the idea that elsa surrendering to hans at this point makes her — weak? passive? a helpless object in her own story? but the thing is —

elsa still holds all the power here. after she lowers the ice, the mob readies their weapons and advances on her...

...but all she has to do to make them back off is tilt her hands at them.

a mere glance over her shoulder and they recoil. they don’t dare actually attack, and elsa holds them back like this for several seconds with nothing but the power of their own fear — and then she surrenders by saying, “I surrender, take me to Princess Anna.”

because the thing is. she doesn’t surrender because she thinks she deserves it. she doesn’t surrender out of guilt or because she believes she’s a monster. she surrenders, i think, for two reasons: 

first, these are her people and it is currently so cold that they will freeze to death if they stay in the mountains. she needs to get them to safety. surrendering and allowing them to escort her down the mountain, back to the comparative safety of arendelle (where there’s fire, food, blankets, and plenty of shelter), is the best way to accomplish that. 

and second, anna came after her with nothing but trust and love and unshakable belief that elsa could get the storm back under control. elsa drove her away out of fear, but now that she has consciously chosen to fight against her fears and try her best to end the storm, she wants to accept the help anna offered her — and given that catalyst for all of this was, as i said, elsa losing her temper with anna during an argument, it’s also not unreasonable for her to think that maybe resolving that argument with anna will help end the blizzard too. 

in any case, she now has a pressing need to get to anna as soon as possible, and every reason to think anna is already back in arendelle, and surrendering is, again, the best way she can think of to accomplish this. 

& also, i’ve pointed this out before, but elsa is still positioned as the one in charge after she surrenders. we see hans gesture for two guards to go up and put elsa in shackles, but when they actually go to do so, they wait for her consent before even attempting to actually put them on her. 

they don’t try to force the shackles onto her hands — they don’t even touch her. while hans and the duke of weselton (both foreigners with no legitimate authority in arendelle!) posture and bicker with each other about who is in charge, these guards—actual citizens of arendelle—WAIT for elsa to to grant them permission to put her in chains. she slowly holds up her hands, then nods, and only then do they actually move to restrain her. 

she is in charge. she is the one holding the cards throughout this scene. 

& throughout the rest of the act?   elsa is willing to play along with hans’s authority only for as long as his decisions do not interfere with hers. she wants to see anna, he wants to bring her to arendelle — that works for her. he says anna isn’t back yet and she’s to be imprisoned until anna returns — that’s fine, she’d be waiting in arendelle for anna anyway. but the second he gives an order that doesn’t align with her own goals, she breaks the shackles and leaves. 

( caissie also rolled her eyes at him after “i charge queen elsa with treason” when i saw the show again in july. it was delightful. )

ANYWAY. this got a hell of a lot longer than i intended because i have so many goddamn feelings about how important ‘monster’ is and how necessary it is for the development of elsa’s character to have her fight this vicious internal battle between her greatest strength (compassion) and her greatest weakness (“conceal don’t feel” & the ethos of self-sacrifice) and emerge triumphant after a lifetime of clinging to her father’s misguided lessons but — 

TL;DR ‘monster’ is elsa battling depression, anxiety, guilt, and self-loathing so she can whole-heartedly accept the responsibilities of rule, choose life, and finally turn away from “conceal, don’t feel;” her subsequent surrender is equal parts deep compassion for the mob and a calculated decision that allows her to accomplish all her goals in the safest and most efficient way possible based upon what she currently knows of the situation. also pacifism does not make a character helpless or weak and at no point does elsa lose or relinquish control over the mob situation thank you for coming to my TED talk.