Research Project: Is Frozen and Inspiring Film?

Introduction

In a kingdom called Arendelle, there lived two princesses, named Elsa and Anna. Elsa is eldest sister and she has magical powers which are a kinetic energy that is able to control cold weather and produce ice through the palms of her hand. One night while Elsa is playing with her little sister Anna, Elsa accidentally hurt Anna with her ice powers. This incident had shocked the King and Queen because Elsa’s power is too strong for her to even control it so the King and Queen went out into the night in search for some help from the trolls to heal Anna. The leader of the trolls said that in order to heal her, they must make Anna forget about the whole incident. The King and Queen have decided to isolate Elsa from Anna until Elsa has learned to control her powers because they are afraid that Elsa might accidentally hurt Anna again. This isolation has caused the relationship between Anna and her sister Elsa to have a rift between them and more unfortunately their parents, the King and Queen have passed away in an incident at sea during a storm when the sisters were in their teenage years.

As the story progresses, Elsa has finally come of age to become the Queen of the kingdom of Arendelle. The kingdom prepared a coronation for Elsa as a Queen and one of the guess is Duke of Weselton who seek exploit Arendell for profit. This coronation is a golden chance for Anna to go out, meet new people and see her sister Elsa again since they have been isolated since childhood. Anna got excited so she went out of the castle to explore her surroundings but she accidently met a handsome young Prince named Han of the Southern Isles and they both developed a mutual attraction. The coronation for Queen Elsa goes smoothly until the reception time when Anna told Elsa that Prince Han had proposed to her and unbelievably Anna had accept the marriage but her sister Elsa refuses to grant her blessing and also had forbid their sudden marriage. The sister Elsa and Anna started to argue, culminating in the exposure of Elsa’s icy power because of Elsa’s emotion outburst. This has cause Elsa accidentally unleashing a winter in Arendelle kingdom and Elsa flees the castle. After that, Elsa went to the mountain to build a ice palace with the help of her icy power and unknowingly bring a snowman to life, name Olaf which is Anna and Elsa that have a snowman in childhood.

Anna is very determine to bring back her elder sister Elsa to end the winter in Arendelle and mend the sister relationship between them. So in order to bring back Elsa, Anna has to go up to the snowy mountain to search for Elsa. In the meantime of searching, Anna meets a selling ice man called Kristoff and his reindeer and successfully convinces him to guide her up to the top of the mountain where Elsa’s icy palace should be. This have them two developed their love relationship more deeply. On the way to Elsa’s palace, they both encounter the real life cute little snowman Olaf who leads them to where Elsa exactly stays at. After a journey of calming up the mountain, they finally find Elsa’s icy palace and the sister is very happy that they can reunite again. So Anna asking Elsa to return with her back in Arendelle but Elsa think that she might hurt Anna again so she rejected Anna but again Anna keep insist that Elsa return. This had make Elsa become anxious and accidentally lash out her ice power on Anna heart and this making Elsa more horrified then she created a giant snow creature to drive Anna away from her together with Kristoff and Olaf.

After that, Kristoff noticed that Anna’s hair is slowly turning white and he deduced that’s something bad is going on. So Kristoff decided to take Anna to his adoptive family which is trolls to seek for help. In the way of Kristoff”s family surprising Anna is very special through singing, dancing and warm welcoming because is the first girl Kristoff bring and those trolls though that Anna is Kristoff girlfriend. Trolls say that Anna’s heart is frozen by Elsa and the only cure is the kisses from her one true love if not Anna will be frozen forever. Anna though that her one true love is Han so Krisstoff bring Anna back to the Arendelle kingdom where Han is. Meanwhile Han was with Duke’s man in search for Anna but have meet Elsa icy palace and having a fight with Elsa. Unfortunately, Elsa got knocked unconsciously and imprisoned in Arendelle by Han and the Duke’s man. In the prison, Han asking Elsa to undo the winter in Arendelle but Elsa say that she doesn’t know how to undo the winter. When Anna reach the kingdom and reunited with Han back and Anna begged Han for him to kiss her so that she can live but cruelly Han rejected Anna and saying that he marry Anna is only for the purpose of getting control the Arendelle’s throne and leaving Anna alone in a room. After Han leave the room, Olaf come to save Anna telling her that Kristoff love her so much and bring her to Kristoff, now knowing that Anna one true love is not Han but is Kristoff.

Finally, Elsa successfully escaped from the prison with the help of her own ice power. On the way Elsa runs out, she meets Han that saying Anna die because of her. This had make Elsa’s in despair as a result the storm suddenly ceases because of Elsa mood that she can control the weather. Anna and Olaf were having a hard time to find Kristoff in a blizzard and because of Elsa making the storm suddenly ceases had make Anna meets Elsa and Han in the blizzard near the kingdom and seeing that Hans was going to kill Elsa and Anna throws herself between the two just as she freezes solid, blocking Hans’ attack. As Elsa grieved for her sister, Anna begins to melt from the freeze, because of Anna make sacrifice herself to save her sister, this have shown the true love.

Lastly, Elsa realize love is the only key to control her powers, so she undo back the winter in the Arendelle kingdom and helps Olaf survive in summer using her powers. Hans is send back to Southern Isles to face punishment for his crimes against the royal family of Adrenlle, while Elsa cuts off trade with Weselton. Anna and Kristoff share a kiss, and the two sisters reconcile.

Frozen is a global drama who suitable for all ages. Successfully scored millions of dollars in an opening which make a highest thanksgiving debut of all time. The target audiences of Frozen are mostly college students. Frozen is a popular movie film around the world that makes the tickets sales goes up until 18 millions of US dollars. Not only the Frozen story is popular, the themes song of Frozen ‘let it go’ is also popular, for an example the viewer in YouTube reaches millions of views. The themes song and the unique story by Disney attracted many people because this is the first time Disney shows a story of true love between sister instead of the true love between princes and charming prince.

Literature review

In this research, selective perception has been used as our supportive theory to our topic: Do college student find the movie Frozen as inspiring. Inspiration is a sense which full of infectious and heuristic.

According to Media/Impact, an introduction to mass media by Shirley Biagi, mass media not only reflect and affect politics, society and culture but also provides the audiences information and entertainment to fulfill their needs. Selective perception can be define as a concept that every people will processes informations and messages individually. When an information or messages was sent through media, different person will base on their background, own interest and the level of education to receive and react to the information and messages. For example, a college student like to watch comedy, animation and adventure this three genres of movie like Frozen, their family member most probably also will like to watch because they are influence by each other. One person will choose what to do what to read wand what to watch base on their own interest. Then, when a high educational audience watching movie Frozen, they will have much more inspiration toward the moral value of the movie as compare to low educational audiences. The high educational audiences will pay deep attention to what they have watched and will think that if the message they received can influence their minds and they will apply it in their daily life. For low educational audiences, they will think that watch movie just part of recreation.

According to Mass Communication Theory by Baran SJ and Davis, selective perception is the psychological recasting which means people will change the meaning of an information and message so that it is same with the person’s belief and attitudes.

Research

Our title for the research about Frozen is “Do college students find the Frozen movie as inspiring?”,we had do several interview about the movie Frozen. We had list out 7 questions to interview the audience of the movie Frozen. Here are the questions inside the interview form:

• Have you watched the movie Frozen?
• Where did you watch the movie Frozen at?
• Do you think the movie Frozen is inspiring? Why?
• Did the movie Frozen inspire you to do anything?
• Which scene in the movie Frozen is the most inspiring for you? Why?
• Which character inspired you in the movie Frozen? Why?
• Is the “Let it go” song inspiring? Why?

Since we had chose college students as our target audience, we had took 15 interviews from the students of TARUC Penang branch. We interview them inside the college and also outside the college. Inside the college means we interview the students at the canteen or in the library, some of them were at foyer. For the outside of the college, we went to the hostels of students or interview them at the restaurants near the hostel.

We took interview when we had no class which means the time that we were free when we waited for the next class. The interview was also been taking when we finish all our class if we had nothing to do next. When taking the interview, we will interview the students one by one. We record their student’s ID, faculty and all the answers in the paper. After we finish all the interviews, we made conclude about the survey.

Findings

For question 1, we asked our interviewees “Have you watched the movie Frozen?” and all the 15 college students that we have interviewed answered “Yes” without any hesitation because Frozen is a very popular movie and it is impossible if no one has ever watched it before.

For question 2, we asked where exactly did they watch the movie Frozen and 60% which means 9 out of 15 of them said that they have watched it at home on the Internet and on television whereas 40% which are 6 out of 15 of them said that they have watched it on the cinema. Watching Frozen at home is easier as they can easily download it from the Internet and watch it on their laptop or on their television.

For question 3, we asked them whether the movie Frozen was inspiring and 66.66% which are 10 out of 15 gave positive answers while 33.33% which are 5 out of 15 gave negative answers. The movie itself has a lot of moral values to learn from which is why the majority did find the movie to be inspiring.

For question 4, we asked them whether the movie Frozen had inspired them to do anything and 40% which are 6 out of 15 of them said “Yes” while 60% which are 9 out of 15 said “No”. The majority agreed that Frozen has inspired them to do something with themselves or within their lives as the movie focus a lot on relationships, friendships, trust and never giving up on something you believe in.

For question 5, we asked them which scene in the movie Frozen had inspired them the most and 93.33% which are 14 out of 15 gave positive answers while 6.66% which are 1 out of 15 gave negative answers. The majority loved that Elsa had run away from the kingdom of Arendelle as it had taught them about freedom. They also loved how Anna had worked really hard to try and find her sister Elsa in the winter all by herself.

For question 6, we asked them which character had inspired them the most and 40% which are 6 out of 15 said Elsa, 40% which are 6 out of 15 said Anna, 6.66% which are 1 out of 15 said Olaf, 6.66% which are 1 out of 15 said Kristoff and 6.66% which are 1 out of 15 said that no character had inspired them at all. The main characters are Elsa and Anna therefore the movie’s main focus is on them which is why the majority look up on these two characters as these characters had taught them the meaning of freedom and to never give up even when it seems like it is impossible.

For the last question which is question 7, we asked them whether the “Let It Go” song was inspiring and asked them to give a reason why, 93.33% which are 14 out of 15 gave positive answers while 6.66% which are 1 out of 15 gave negative answers. The majority said that the song had taught them the meaning of freedom and it also helped them to release their stress.

Conclusion

In short, we found out that the majority of the students we have interviewed do find the movie Frozen as inspiring. We used selective perception as our theory to do our research and to find out if college students find Frozen as inspiring. Selective perception is where you read the same thing but understand it differently based on your background, interests and level of education. This theory and our research have proved to be true as different people do understand the same thing differently. All the students we interviewed have different perspectives on Frozen. Some of them watched it on the cinema while others watched it at home on their television and on the Internet. All of the students loved Elsa and Anna because of their sister relationship. Their favorite part was when Elsa caused it to winter in Arendelle. Everyone thought that it was the best scene because here in Malaysia it has never snowed before and we do not have winter therefore watching it snow in Arendelle gave them an experience of how it feels like. Frozen had managed to inspire some of the students that we have interviewed even though it is just a cartoon. They said that Frozen has a lot of moral values and meanings. Other than that, they also said that Frozen had given them different emotions. Some said that the movie was sad and some said that it actually made them happy. When asked which scene was the most inspiring, some of them said that the scene where Elsa ran away because it showed them that Elsa wanted her freedom and she got it while the minority thought that that scene meant that we cannot run away from our problems even if we tried to as it has consequences. Elsa and Anna were the most inspiring characters to our interviewees as these characters have taught them to never give up even when it seemed like it was impossible. Our group has learned that Frozen has different meaning to different kinds of people. When asked whether the theme song “Let It Go” was inspiring, the majority gave positive answers and tells us their reason of why they think so. They said that the song lets them feel freedom and that the song is meaningful, nice and lovely. The song also helped some of them to release their stress as the song itself focuses on letting go of your problems. This research has taught us more than enough about Frozen and the selective perception theory.

Working in a group was not an easy thing to go through if group member do not give full corporation to each other. Luckily, our group member tend to work together and complete the assignment on time. Through this assignment, we know that media play an important role in our daily life as it affect what we going to think about. Not to forget our tutor Ms. Louise who always guide us not only to complete the assignment but also increase our knowledge in media field which will help us in the future as a Public Relation students.

References

1. Shirley Biagi. (2005). Understanding Mass Media Today. In Media/Impact (7thed., p.25). Belmont,CA:Holly J.Allen.

2. Stanley J.Baran,Ph.D., & Dennis K.Davis,Ph.D. (2009). The Rise Of Limited-Effects Theory. In Mass Communication Theory (5thed., p.145). Boston, MA: Lyn Uhl

3. IMDb. Frozen plot summary. (2013). Retrieved November 21, 2014, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294629/plotsummary

4. Hugel,M. (2013) Why children’s movie audiences are filled with 24-years-old . Retrieved November 22.2014, from http://mic.com/articles/76207/why-children-s-movie-audiences-are-filled-with-24-year-olds