Thread by @Delafina777

Elsa's apotheosis scene/Show Yourself in Frozen 2 is SO GOOD, people. Like, Show Yourself is never going to be the smash hit Let It Go was, because it's a less conventionally structured song that is super contextual, but it's WAY more interesting. (Spoilers, obvi)

Okay, so you can't really talk about Show Yourself without talking about Into The Unknown, which Disney apparently thought was the hit song here. And it definitely works better as a stand-alone song. But the two songs play off one another.

Which is not unusual for Elsa's music. For example, Let It Go's pre-chorus...

...is a sped-up version of Elsa's segment from For The First Time In Forever.

So referencing stuff she's already sung is kind of an Elsa thing, in contrast to Anna, who's exuberant and forward-looking.

(Given that Anna's had her memory magically erased while Elsa's left to struggle with her secrets and her memories, it makes sense that she seems to do more musical quoting.)

So Let It Go, as @kirkhamilton points out in his excellent Strong Songs podcast episode about it, is kind of a standout because suddenly a Disney princess is essentially singing a Journey power ballad. (The episode is A+ and worth listening to.) strongsongspodcast.com/let-it-go-from…

@kirkhamilton So: Into The Unknown. Like "Let It Go," it starts out with tinkly piano, but it's cheerier. By the time it ends, it's going to have more in common, mood-wise, with Moana's How Far I'll Go.

@kirkhamilton So right away, we've got the mysterious voice that's been taunting/haunting Elsa. I've been seeing lyrics sites referring to it as the Siren, although the credits simply call it the Voice. Elsa herself dubs it a siren, though, and we'll come back to that.

@kirkhamilton What that voice is actually doing is called kulning. It's the hauntingly beautiful method Swedish women have traditionally used to...

...call cows.

@kirkhamilton Joking aside, fundamentally, it's a way to summon someone. And the way Elsa responds is... fascinating. Most of the reviews I've read describe the voice as representing Elsa's desire to understand herself and her powers, which is, yes, one obvious reading.

@kirkhamilton But let's not beat around the bush.

Disney princess movies have made their Scrooge-McDuck piles of gold for Disney by being VERY good at doing romance without overt sexuality, given that until Frozen/Moana, 100% of them were romances & their primary fans were very young girls.

@kirkhamilton And the way Elsa talks (well, sings, but) about the voice is an interesting blend of romance and irritation.

@kirkhamilton Practically the first thing she tells it is that she's "spoken for," and then proceeds to underline what that means by adding that "everyone [she's] ever loved is here within these walls."

Like, c'mon. This was the point I turned to my friend and gasped "canon gay Elsa!?"

@kirkhamilton And then, just to take it up a notch, she designates the voice a "secret siren":

@kirkhamilton A siren, of course, is a bird-woman with a hauntingly beautiful voice that leads (male) sailors to their deaths on the ocean.

Ahem.

Like, this is very much an implication of romantic temptation. And yes, you can read it metaphorically, of course.

@kirkhamilton Curiosity about things that aren't potential romantic partners can, obviously, be spoken about in terms of seduction.

But let's not kid ourselves. This is couched in the language of romance.

@kirkhamilton And again, just to underscore the *personhood* of the voice, Elsa eases back into a tone that's much more tender, and wonders whether it's someone out there like her.

@kirkhamilton So I want to note another thing that's interesting here. We can go back and forth about what the elemental spirits are, and what the Northuldra's relationship to them is, since that's a part of the worldbuilding that Disney left incredibly vague, but.

@kirkhamilton The details of Northuldra spirituality aside, it's pretty clear that the spirits are, if not gods exactly, at least divine/sacred beings to them. So to put this in very stark and possibly oversimplified terms, Show Yourself is the song for the sequence where Elsa becomes a god.

@kirkhamilton And the divine here is *wordless.* Whether it manifests as creatures (the water horse, the fire salamander, the earth giants) or simply as a force (the wind/air spirit), it doesn't speak. And neither does Elsa's siren.

@kirkhamilton Now what's interesting here is that Elsa's actually been a very word-oriented singer, at least in Frozen 1. She doesn't engage in a lot of melismatic vocalization in her songs. She doesn't even do much in the way of runs or other ornamentation.

@kirkhamilton Basically, when she belts out a note, it's got a word attached, and it usually stays on a single pitch. For example, listen to the big build in Let It Go.

@kirkhamilton There's an incredible book about the tension in the evolution of Western vocal music between the word and the cry--between whether the primary focus of music is to ornament words or to communicate wordless emotion. Here it is in English translation. amazon.com/Angels-Cry-Bey…

@kirkhamilton And Poizat's argument is that the Church (because you can't talk about the evolution of Western music--classical, and anything derived from the classical tradition--without talking about sacred music) basically drove the prima le parole, word-first, music.

@kirkhamilton They got nervous any time the emotion started to eclipse the word (or the Word), because it was too sensuous, too wild, too pagan, too feminine, too out-of-control. So they'd clamp down on it, especially coloratura displays, too much wordless vocalizing, etc.

@kirkhamilton So back to Elsa in Let It Go: here's a young woman who's spent most of her life confined in the palace, trying to control her power, living a life that's all about rules and restrictions.

So even in her big song about letting go, she's still kind of word-first in her singing.

@kirkhamilton This might seem like an irrelevant detail, but it's not--even in her climactic runway strut, she doesn't actually loose her hair (a long-time symbol of female sexuality, hence obsession with covering/constricting it in so many cultures). She lets down... her braid.

@kirkhamilton Like, this poor fucking kid. She thinks letting her braid out of a bun is freeing her hair. That's her rebellion.

@kirkhamilton And similarly, this is her big defiant song about freedom, but all those big notes are still sticking REALLY close to their words.

Even more interesting since you've got a Broadway belter playing this part, who can DEFINITELY do runs/ornamentation.

@kirkhamilton Fascinatingly, one of the few times we get ANY ornamentation is on the line "I'm one with the wind and sky." Now, I don't think when they were writing this song, they had any idea where Frozen 2 was going to go with Elsa.

@kirkhamilton But it's a neat coincidence that a future nature divinity does a rare bit of musical elaboration on the line saying she's one with the wind and sky. As if that bit has introduced the idea to her, she does little bits of ornamentation for the rest of that chorus.

@kirkhamilton Back to Frozen 2, where wordlessness is divinity (these are nature spirits, of course, not divinity as in Church). A wordless voice calls to her, and she can't even make it to the end of the first verse before she starts echoing it.

@kirkhamilton At first, I think, mockingly. But this is the girl that in the last movie pretty much just held EVERY NOTE straight. She's already starting to blur between mortal and divine.

@kirkhamilton By the end of the song, she's speaking it's language almost to the exclusion of words.

@kirkhamilton So then we've got "Show Yourself."

@kirkhamilton It starts out with just piano, which always feels very intimate and... real, I guess? Without pretense? to me.

That's probably because I'm an instrumentalist and piano (as opposed to full orchestra) is what you *practice* with. So it's very exposed, vulnerable, bare bones to me

@kirkhamilton That might be just me, but it's definitely at least *stripped down* here. None of the chime-y effects of the lead-in to Let It Go, for example. This is Elsa done with waiting, done with performing, done with pretense.

@kirkhamilton She's going to go meet that siren face-to-face. And it's a bit gender-bendy here. In the traditional Disney/fairy-tale vernacular the person riding to meet their love on a white horse is a man.

@kirkhamilton The princess stays in the castle, the prince rides to her. Also, the people sirens call to them across the sea are usually men.

This is both, of course. Elsa's going to consummate her relationship.

She's also being lured to her death.

Very Wagnerian.

@kirkhamilton "Every inch of me is trembling, but not from the cold..."

Like this whole thing is pretty classically someone on their way to a romantic encounter.

And again, compare how much she moves around on each sustained word here, as opposed to Let It Go.

@kirkhamilton That was very innocent, very *young.*

This is much more melodically sinuous, more mature, more complex.

@kirkhamilton And then we get to what might be my favorite musical moment in the entire movie. It's right at 1:00, but listen to the lead-up.

@kirkhamilton This is a build, a rising melodic figure, and my ear was expecting it to arrive on an even higher note, more like what we get here:

@kirkhamilton But that's not what we get. It stays on the same note, and it's *breathtakingly* gentle. Restrained. Tender.

We've gone from a woman riding, full of almost breathless excitement, to meet a familiar but unknown lover to--not a peak of excitement, but *care.*

@kirkhamilton It's so *adult,* and so powerful. It's almost like she's cognizant that she's asking for vulnerability from this unknown but desired Other, so she's showing this gentleness, like she doesn't want to scare them.

y'know, the maybe-deity she's come to encounter

@kirkhamilton And man, that "I'm dying to meet you," is so careful too--my ear was expecting a bigger jump (and that's what the melody's going to do for the rest of the song, after this first statement), but here, again, it's so, so, so gentle.

@kirkhamilton The really incredible thing here, is this figure, this sort of isolated appoggiatura, this descending half-step figure, is the same (different key, different range, obviously, but) as the final, loudest, highest reiteration of the "Let It Go" theme.

@kirkhamilton That was a teenager yelling. This is an adult.

@kirkhamilton So then we've got what I feel like is a callback to a sort of musical gaining confidence/excitement trope. It's not exact, but feels similar to this section of Let It Go.

@kirkhamilton It's got that same sort of percussive string build.

@kirkhamilton And then we've got a triumphant restatement of the chorus, with the more dramatic, rangy melodic contours my ear was expecting the first time. It's probably just Menzel being Menzel, but I love the relish with which she bites into "no longer trembling"

@kirkhamilton And then we've got this sort of weirdly emphasized "Here I am" in which the rest of the music almost stops to set it apart. It called me back to "Here I stand" in Let It Go, but if we want to get mythical...

@kirkhamilton "Here I am" is the response of a lot of biblical characters to a divine call.

@kirkhamilton It's followed immediately by this little vocal jump which feels like the singing equivalent of flexing your bicep. She's peacocking a bit for her siren.

@kirkhamilton The "Let me see who you are" bit is a sort of double irony, because we're going to find out who ELSA is.

We're also going to have her grandfather show his true colors. We're going to see who he is. That's the dark side of the mirror here.

@kirkhamilton And then.
AND THEN.

@kirkhamilton Elsa starts singing, so gorgeously, so seductively, "Come to me now."

She just swapped places. This is a siren call, come to me. She's gone from being the sailor to being the siren herself.

@kirkhamilton And this is the moment the song's kind of suggesting we're going to get The Encounter. We're going to get a response.

But we don't meet the siren. Instead we get a full-chorus rendition of Elsa's mother's lullaby.

@kirkhamilton But okay, that might be a set-up, these might be the heralds ushering in the siren. Wouldn't be unheard of.

And then we get the siren call, but it's not that reverb-y, otherworldly voice. It's Elsa's mom.

@kirkhamilton And IIRC, this is paired with a shot of her in the back of a wagon with Elsa's wounded dad, like she's calling for help from the fifth spirit for him.

@kirkhamilton We get what sounds like the original voice responding. And then we get Mom in full voice, singing "Come my darling, homeward bound."

@kirkhamilton And what I think is the actual moment of Elsa's apotheosis, her subsequent death and resurrection notwithstanding:

I am found.

She responds to her own "show yourself."

@kirkhamilton There's also, if you want to read into it, a bit, a nice triple-goddess thing going on, with Elsa, her mom, and the Voice. Or, if you want to get Christian about it, a feminine trinity of parent, child, spirit.

@kirkhamilton So, the mystical part of me likes how fuzzy the mechanics are here, although the world-building part of me is tearing her hair out. Is Elsa the *incarnation* of the fifth spirit? Because everyone seems to acknowledge it's already a thing before she becomes it.

@kirkhamilton Is she a replacement?

ooooor

like, space and time probably get collapsed when you get transfigured.

@kirkhamilton The way the song works, it really seems like Elsa's mom calls her into being, and that call (from the wagon with the wounded Agelmar) is only now being heard and answered, almost like the light from a star only now arriving at earth.

@kirkhamilton I tend to, mystically, favor the idea of this moment actually changing everything both backwards and forwards, future and past.

@kirkhamilton It's also telling that Frozen will always, ALWAYS choose family over romance (no offense to Kristof, who's probably ruined an entire generation of girls for less-enlightened actual men--guys, there is no greater hero moment than Showing Up and asking "what do you need?").

@kirkhamilton But in any case, this IP LOVES setting us up to expect romance--true love's kiss, the first glimpse of the siren's face--and then actually giving us the love of family.

And no, I don't mean this in an oedipal way.

@kirkhamilton It's playing on our expectations for what sort of love MATTERS in these stories. And it can do it so effectively because generations of princess movies perfected a language of romance that didn't involve actual sexuality.

@kirkhamilton So we've gone from the siren calling Elsa to Elsa calling the siren to Mom calling the siren to Mom calling Elsa. (We'd only need to add Elsa calling Mom and the siren calling Mom to have every possible permutation.)

@kirkhamilton It doesn't really matter, though, because all of those identities are basically collapsed into one as Mom's voice doubles Elsa's.

And to make it explicit:

"YOU are the one you've been waiting for--"
"--all of my life."

Even the pronouns are blurring.

@kirkhamilton We get a last, triumphant iteration of the siren's call, and it's sung and produced in a way that it almost sounds like it could be any of the three voices that have sung it.

@kirkhamilton Elsa's still gotta die to complete the transfiguration, of course, because in genre fiction you almost always have to die to become a god. I assume because Christianity but that's not a criticism. (Hell, I stated it as a given for Aurene on GW2 and nobody so much as twitched.)

@kirkhamilton But musically, we're already there.

Oh, and as far as this being a seduction, note that the first thing she does before going through the ice doorway when she lands on the beach is...

...let her hair free.

@kirkhamilton Anyway, this song and visual sequence do an INCREDIBLE amount of heavy lifting as far as character development, plot advancement, exposition, etc.

The details are fuzzy, and I think the song actually makes it possible for them to get away with it.

@kirkhamilton It's also a really nice moment for Elsa, a character who's spent at least one movie feeling like a monster since she was a kid, and still worries she's dangerous, to finally be able to say "this is what I was born for."

@kirkhamilton Anyway, this has been this week's edition of Obsessing Over Details.

@kirkhamilton And my apologies to @kirkhamilton -- didn't mean to tag you into the entire thread, but Twitter seems to have removed the ability to remove someone you tag if it's not a conversation.