Anna Gets It Right: Disney's Frozen, C.S. Lewis, and the Primacy of Caritas

            Unless you have been living in a wilderness cave, by now you likely have seen Frozen, Disney's most recent animated movie; if somehow you missed the movie, you have at least seen the numerous videos circulating around the world of parents lipsynching songs or weathermen parodies. Frozen quickly became the highest grossing animated film of all time, grossing nearly $400 million in North America alone.

           

            On the surface, Frozen is about two sisters: Elsa, the elder of the two who has unwanted magical powers which she cannot hide; and Anna, the younger, more carefree and innocent of the two. Elsa, after years of hiding her powers and being what she calls "the good girl I have to be", finally gives in and embraces her magical powers: what humanists might call realizing "who she truly is" or the embracing the "real" her. Elsa, in a selfish emotional breakdown, forsakes the kingdom she is supposed to be leading and retreats to the mountains to live alone, leaving in her wake a land covered in an eternal and deadly winter. When Anna bravely treks up the mountain to bring her back, Elsa's self-indulgence takes a fatal turn and her magic freezes Anna's heart. In a race to save their friend, Kristoff and Olaf whisk Anna away to a troll shaman, who tells them only an "act of true love" can save Anna.

                                       

            This is the point in the movie where things get wonderfully relevant for Christians. Kristoff and Olaf immediately assume the shaman means "an act of amor" - that is, an act of romance - and as such they rush to Hans, Prince of the Southern Isles, the antagonist of the story, whom they mistakenly assume to be Anna's "true love". They deliver Anna to Hans, who reveals himself as a villain, confesses he never actually "loved" Anna, but feigned love to get to the throne of Arendelle. Hans leaves Anna to die of a frozen heart, and the situation for Anna looks bleak. Hoping to survive, Anna and Olaf the Snowman go out into the storm to search for Kristoff, hoping a kiss from him can thaw Anna's frozen heart.

            The climax of the movie occurs as Anna, near death, stumbles across the frozen fjord and spies Kristoff racing towards her in the distance. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna sees Hans about to murder an unsuspecting Elsa. In a moment of indecision, Anna is torn between hurrying to Kristoff and kissing him, securing for herself the "act of true love" that will save her, or rushing to save Elsa from Hans' deadly blow. Anna chooses to forsake her "true love" and any chance of saving her own life, and instead rushes to Elsa's aid. She throws herself in front of Hans' sword, freezing to the core at the last second, deflecting the blow and saving Elsa. When Anna's heart begins to thaw, everyone realizes the self-sacrificing act of Anna casting aside any chance to save her own life in order to save Elsa, the very person responsible for Anna's own death, is in fact "the act of true love" that Anna needed to save her. The movie closes as Elsa realizes that it is this higher, self-sacrificing form of love that can free the kingdom from the eternal winter. Elsa gets her kingdom, Anna gets the boy, and Olaf gets his summer.

            While Frozen is wonderfully animated, humorous, and full of songs endearing to young people, I think it resonates with viewers for reasons that transcend any of these: there is a deeper story in the movie that needs to be told. What is more, in this era of polarizing worldviews, the deeper moral of Frozen is one that can not only be embraced by Christians, but it is central to Christianity. The movie provides unbelievable context for presenting people - young and old alike - with the gospel and discussing another core tenent of the Christian faith: the primacy of caritas, or "divine love", over amor, or "romantic love".

            The plot twist of the movie works wonderfully because it exploits a mistaken idea that is at the core of the human condition: the tragically misplaced idea that what the Romans and Medievalists called amor, or romantic love, is the highest form of love in the universe. The examples and evidence of this idea in popular culture span centuries and are everywhere: from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Othello, to Jack and Rose from Titanic, to the sexual liberation movements of the last 50 years, to the current astronomical divorce rates worldwide. All point to humanity's willingness to sacrifice anything and everything on the altar of amor. When Anna and Kristoff are told that they need "an act of true love" to save Anna, and they immediately assume that means a kiss from Hans, no one in the audience thinks twice about it. I mean, why would they? What else is there?

          The failure of Hans to save Anna works splendidly to show the fragile nature of amor. It is inadequate to sustain or save Anna, even though all the characters, including Anna herself, assume it to be the most powerful force in the world. Amor is not the panacea, the end-all, cure-all that our culture holds it up to be. When people believe it to be, they are all too frequently dashed on the rocks of broken relationships, marriages, and families. Amor was never meant to endure forever; as Lewis points out, would we even want it to? Would not an eternal "newly-wed" stage only succeed in making us insane? How could anyone hope to sustain that level of emotion for years on end?  No, again looking to Lewis, amor is only the spark that is meant to get the engine of a marriage running; it must be sustained by something more.

          But unbeknownst to many Americans, thankfully there is something beyond amor. Amor is merely one of a small handful of what Lewis calls "natural loves", but something greater remains. For Christians, this reality is readily apparent: the higher form of love, far superior by far than even the most pure example of amor, is what St. Jerome called caritas. It is the divine love of God for us, a love unmerited and yet eternal. First shown by God towards us so that we might show it to others. Caritas is the love spoken of in Paul's famous treatise on love found in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails."

            For audiences, the moment Anna chose to forsake amor and her love of her own self should be a moment of incredible clarity. The primacy of caritas is brought into sharp relief when we realize that "an act of true love" is not a self-indulgent pursuit of amor, but a self-sacrificing love, independent of all emotion, unfailing and eternal. As Paul wrote, it is the love found in Christ's death on the Cross while we were yet sinners. This is "true love". The writers of Frozen either knew this fully or stumbled into it. Either way the result is the same: Frozen is a movie that we as Christians can embrace and use as a context to talk to our children and others about caritas, the love that never fails.

Love's Lost Meaning

 It was a Saturday morning and I had just grabbed my morning cup of coffee. I sat down at the computer to browse through new Facebook posts and I came across one from a high school friend that caught my eye. She apparently was the victim of a bad romance, and in her sorrow she quoted Paul’s famous treatise on love found in his first letter to the church at Corinth, part of which reads: “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Paul’s description of love appears clear enough prima facie: when you love someone, you will be kind to them, practice long-suffering towards them, don’t be proud or envious or selfish, etc. But things become much less clear in practice: as my Facebook friend can attest, most people’s experiences with love do not look anything like Paul’s description. Why? Because a complex problem exists in understanding Paul’s description of love that the modern world has left us unprepared to solve. The fact of the matter is the English language is woefully inadequate to describe the full range of human emotions as it pertains to love. Think about all the different ways we use the word “love”: I love my wife, I love my daughters, I love my friends, I love my car, I love my favorite football team. But clearly I love my wife differently than I love my daughters, and my car differently than either, and my friends in yet another different way. All this equivocating between the different forms of love often leaves us horribly confused, and - like my Facebook friend – hurt and frustrated.

Greek and Latin are both much better at differentiating between the different expressions of love. Both classical languages had several different words that can be translated as “love” in English. For example, the Greek word ερος (eros) and the Latin word amor both mean love in a sexual connotation; this is largely the emotion that causes men and women to get married and promise life-long fidelity to one another. Φιλια (philia) and affectus both mean love in a friendly sense; this is the pleasant feeling experienced between friends meeting over coffee after a long time apart or between men watching football together in their man cave. And finally, αγαπη (agapé) and its Latin equivalent caritas both characterize something totally lost on many Americans today: a charitable love born out of selflessness and respect for other people.

At this point I am sure you have figured out that Paul did not use ερος or φιλια in that famous excerpt from his first letter to the church at Corinth. He used αγαπη. And when St. Jerome translated the text into Latin late in the fourth century, he used caritas, the Latin word from which we derive our English word "charity." As such, when translators in the seventeenth century translated the Bible into English and produced the King James Version, they used the word “charity.” As you can imagine, the passage loses all relevance for my love-sick Facebook friend when you substitute “charity” for “love.” Similarly, most other words in the New Testament translated into English as “love” are also αγαπη (or a form of it); for example, in Colossians 3 when Paul exhorts men to “love [their] wives”, he uses the verbal form of αγαπη. Imagine for a minute the translation of that verse reading, “Husbands, be charitable to your wives…,” and the passage bears a new significance.

In our selfish, hyper-sexed, divorce-on-demand society, we are in danger of forgetting about αγαπη. People are unequipped to build healthy relationships and understand the nuances of "love"; as a result, they are hurt and confused, and relationships fail and families are destroyed. This problem serves as a microcosm for many more like it. Without a quick about-face with regards to our educational approach to classical languages and the humanities in general, the pain and confusion will only increase.