Fables and Folktales_ The Snow Queen

When we think of mythology, we usually think of ancient times. Old gods, long-dead heroes, half-buried statues, and crumbling freezes, etc, etc. But if you want to get technical, mythology is basically just a glorified subset of folklore, the space of stories, beliefs, and knowledge passed down through the generations in a specific culture. And folklore does not feel ancient. At its oldest, folklore is old-timey. But since the term folklore defines the entire space of cultural knowledge and oral tradition, folklore feels very much present and alive. And unlike myths, people write new folk and fairy tales all the time. Personally, I'd make the distinction that myths are stories that have almost fallen out of the folklore, no longer preserved as an active part of the culture they're in, but remembered as an important, formative part of an older social arrangement. You can't exactly write new myths, because myths are, by definition, in the past. But you can absolutely write new fairy tales. And that was the bread and butter of one Hans Christian Andersen, prolific 17th century Danish author, and the only reason Disney is the towering pillar of capitalist excess it is today. Hooray! Our buddy Hans is responsible for a ton of classic fairy tales, like The Emperor's New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, and The Snow Queen. And because I assume you clicked on this video on purpose because you saw the title and or thumbnail, you shouldn't be surprised by which one we're covering here today. So our story begins with... NOT THE SNOW QUEEN. What, you think we can just jump straight into this story without establishing some world-building first? We have to make sure the lore is consistent and makes internal sense. What do you think this is, every other fairy tale ever written? So our story actually begins with a magic mirror, and a uniquely unfriendly one. This one was created by a demon, and anything reflected in the magic mirror has all of its worst aspects exaggerated and the best bits minimized. Now here's where I'd tie this concept to something familiar and relatable by throwing in a joke about, like, toxic beauty standards or the bizarre economy of bad faith media criticism, but I don't need to because this concept is so startlingly topical that you've already made that connection, you clever viewer you. So anyway, the demon runs a school. I assume for other demons, but it's never made entirely clear. Where the whole concept is they look at stuff in the mirror, see that it sucks, and then pat themselves on the back for thinking that it sucks. Look at this visionary inventing Twitter a century and a half early. Eventually, they run out of stuff to point the mirror at except for the big man upstairs. So the demons fly up to heaven to see what the G-Man looks like with the everything sucks filter on, but they never get the chance to find out because heaven is a no paparazzi zone and the mirror slips and explodes into a million pieces. Well, that was fun. Story over, right? WRONG. This is one of those sneaky magic mirrors that doesn't stop working just because it's broken. Every shard has the same power as the original mirror, only now they're flying all over the place and betting themselves in puppies and hitting people in the eyeballs and stuff. And when they do, they stop people from being able to see the good in anything. But that's getting off lightly, since if the mirror shard hits them in the heart instead, that also stops them from feeling good ever again. Now our story actually begins when a precocious youngster named K is minding his own business hanging out with his best friend Gerda in their beautiful rose garden in their idyllic small town when he gets demon mirrored right in the face, taking one shard in the eye and another straight to the heart, transforming his precocious youngsterness into full-on smart-assery. The newly dickified K delights in flexing his smarts all over everyone and bullying his saintly BFF Gerda, and the only thing he unironically likes these days is the perfect mathematical beauty of snow. It's really niche, you probably wouldn't get it. But if I wanted to read about an insufferable small child mistaking math skills for having a personality, I'd just read the early life section of the Wikipedia page I don't have. Instead, we get our inciting incident when K decides it'd be very smart of him to tie his sled to a random big fancy sleigh in the town square, which promptly bolts out of town and into a raging blizzard. K freaks out till the sleigh driver sheds her luxurious fur coat and reveals herself to be the cold and deadly Snow Queen, ruler of winter, mistress of the snows, and also the most beautiful thing K has ever seen. K decides that being kidnapped is pretty cool, actually, and regales the Snow Queen with his multiplication skills all the way to the North Pole. It's like Santa, but backwards, and also a crime. But if you think this story is gonna be about the title character, think again! Instead, we pop back into town to find that since K went missing in the dead of winter, everyone thinks he's straight-up dead. Gerda mourns for months, but she's finding it a bit difficult to get closure and move on with her life, when every time she cries about how her best friend is dead, the birds and sunshine chime in to tell her that no way, girlfriend, he's totally still out there somewhere, let alone downside to Disney princess powers. But eventually, Gerda starts thinking maybe those birds might be on to something, and she heads down to the river to see if she can find some sign that K didn't fall in and drown. But when she climbs into a boat to get a closer look, she drifts out onto the open water and is carried away. Are there no parents in this town? So Gerda washes up near a very colorful house surrounded by a beautiful flower garden, and a friendly little old lady hobbles out to help her. But don't get too comfy, fairytale little old ladies are never what they seem to be, and this one is no exception. When Gerda fills her in on the whole missing bestie situation, the little old lady uses magic to make her forget all about K, so she'll stay with her instead. Hey, old ladies get lonely sometimes. Call your grandmas. Anyway, Gerda stays with the flower witch for a while until she spots a rose and suddenly remembers the whole plot thing. She bolts into the woods and is very disturbed to realize that it's already autumn. The roses helpfully reassure her that K is not dead, at least not yet, but that doesn't really get her any closer to finding him. While she's sitting around feeling sorry for herself, a crow lands nearby and asks if she's okay, officially winning him the coveted gold medal for most responsible adult in this story. She fills him in, and the crow says he might have seen K during a recent competition for the local princess's hand in marriage. The princess is a bit of an intellectual, see, but she's also really bored, and she wants to make sure she gets herself a husband who's actually interesting. So she summoned all the handsome eligible dudes in the land for a little tea and conversation, but all of them ended up disappointingly flustered except for one spunky, ragged youngster who strolled into the palace totally unfazed and is genuinely more interested in intellectual conversation than he is in marrying the princess. Gerda thinks that does sound like a K thing to do, so the crow sneaks her into the castle with the help of his crow girlfriend who lives in the palace. Gerda finds the princess and her new prince, but, surprise, it's not K. Very distraught, she explains the mishap to the prince and princess, who handle the whole breaking and entering thing very graciously, all things considered. They get Gerda a good night's sleep and reward the crows for their kindness by giving them official court positions, which is hilarious. When Gerda wakes up, they give her warm winter clothes, lots of food, a solid gold carriage, and a crew to drive her around in it. Very nice. But if you think a solid gold carriage sounds like it might be a bit dangerously ostentatious, congrats, you've put that together faster than either of these very intellectual royals. The minute Gerda reaches the woods, she's immediately jumped by a gang of bandits who kill all the attendants, steal the carriage, and are about 15 seconds away from killing her, too, when the young daughter of the bandit leader jumps in and says she'll take Gerda as her playmate instead. The robber girl takes Gerda's fancy winter clothes and says she'll keep her safe as long as she doesn't make her mad, and with the situation officially in the uh-oh zone, the crew head to the bandit's castle, which is apparently a thing bandits can have now. While the rest of the gang is celebrating the haul, the robber girl shows Gerda around her place, which is mostly full of captive animals the robber girl has taken as pets. Red flag! The girls' sleep cuddle up together, which would be kinda cute if the robber girl wasn't holding a knife the whole time. But when everything quiets down, the animals sneakily fill Gerda in on what they know. One of the birds says she saw Kay riding in the carriage of the snow queen, and a reindeer tells her the snow queen probably took him to her castle on the arctic island of Spitsbergen. The next morning, Gerda tells the robber girl what's up, and she decides to help her out, because she actually really doesn't like seeing her sad. In fact, she's realized she doesn't like anyone being sad. When the rest of the bandits head off to rob more people, the robber girl steals her mother's gloves and a bunch of food, bundles Gerda onto the reindeer, and sends them on their way. Well, that could have certainly gone worse. Gerda and the reindeer traipse northward through the cold and snow, until they eventually run across a hut and find a helpful old lady inside After a little more scenic reindeer riding, they find the second old lady's hut, which is almost entirely underground, and while Gerda warms up by the fire, the old lady privately tells the reindeer about Kay's whole thing with the mirror shards. The reindeer asks if there's some way to give Gerda enough power to beat the snow queen, and the little old lady says there's no power she could give her that's more impressive than the one she already has. AKA her Disney princess powers, where she is so gosh-darn pure and innocent that literally everyone loves her and wants to help her out. Oh, so we're diegetically acknowledging that's unusual? Neat. So the little old lady tells the reindeer that Gerda might be able to save Kay from the mirror shards, but if she can't, he'll never come home. She hurries them out the door so fast they forget Gerda's boots and gloves, and the reindeer carries Gerda north to the edge of the snow queen's garden, before bolting back to the old lady for further instructions. Gerda heads towards the snow queen's palace, but is stopped by an army of huge animated snow creatures. With no other options, Gerda prays for help, and the steam from her breath transforms into a legion of armored, spear-wielding angels that beat up the snow monsters for her. Holy hell, that old lady wasn't kidding. So Gerda makes her way into the palace and finally finds Kay, sitting in the middle of a frozen lake and trying to arrange fractal chunks of ice to spell the word eternity, because the snow queen told him if he managed to do that, she'd make him king of the world and also give him a new pair of ice skates. Child priorities. And then she left to go snow on some mountains or something, leaving Kay alone with his puzzle. And he's so caught up in the task, he doesn't even notice how he's freezing to death, or Gerda tackle-hugging him. Gerda cries a bunch about this, and her tears actually leech into Kay's frozen heart and dislodge one of the mirror shards, and he finally notices she's, you know, there. Gerda sings a song from their childhood, and Kay starts crying, dislodging the other mirror shard from his eye, and he finally notices that this place straight-up blows. Gerda kisses away his frostbite. Just... just go with it. And as the puzzle solves itself behind them, they head out of the palace together, finding the reindeer has returned with another reindeer in tow so they can both get a ride out of there. As they backtrack and check in on all the people who helped Gerda along her journey, she fills Kay in on how much of a process it was. And in fact, it seems to have been even more of a process than we thought, because once they finally reach their hometown again, they realize they apparently went through puberty and are now grown-ass adults. Seems like that'd be kinda hard to miss, but I guess they were very busy. And with that beautiful tale of childlike innocence concluded, we are left with zero loose ends or dangling plot threads, except for the part where they never actually dealt with the main antagonist's title character and she just kinda wandered off. What, was she played by Dwayne the Rock Johnson or something? Could they not afford to have her on screen for more than a minute? So, the moral of this story is, don't follow beautiful women into blizzards, and if you're having problems, try crying. I'll never let you see The way my broken heart is hurting me I've got my pride and I know how to hide All my sorrow and pain I'll do my crying in the rain