Disney and Messages of Faith
On January 26th,
2014 an interview with Houston Baptist University, Assistant Prof. Collin
Garbarino aired on FoxNews. In this interview Prof. Garbarino stated that
Disney’s Frozen may be the most Christian movie of 2013. I could not agree
more!
Prof Garbarino
stated that the message of Frozen was redemption and that Anna was a
personification of Christ as she gave her life to save her sister. Elsa ran
from Anna just as we fearful humans run from God. All of that is well and good.
He has a very good point.
Prof. Garbarino
seemed surprised that Disney’s adaption of Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen
would have any spiritual overtones. He must not have read any of Anderson’s
work. Anderson’s tales were mostly faith based so any good adaption would have
some message of faith in them.
Click here to see
the FoxNews story:
As with any Bible
verse or secular story you can come up with different ‘messages’ and things to
take away. Instead of a story of redemption and Anna being an example of Christ
I see Frozen as a call to stop living in fear. Both are valid lessons to come
away with. So many of us are like Elsa and frozen by fear. That fear can lead
to inaction, broken relationships and in the long run it can lead to us
responding in ways we should not.
Click here for my
full post about Frozen:
What I really took
offense too was Prof. Garbarino stating that Disney did not have any religious
or faith based messages in their movies. If you are reading this blog you can
see I have a totally different opinion! If your mind and heart are open God can
use any tool to reach you with a message! Jesus was a consummate story teller!
Think of all the parables the told by Him when teaching. His parables
were culturally relevant, secular subject matter that communicated the point He
wished to make to those He was speaking to.
I challenge Prof.
Garbarino to open his mind and take another look at Disney movies. Pick almost
any one and there is a message of faith, hope and redemption for us. Let me
share some of what I’ve found.
Meet the Robinsons
with its story of being adopted when there is no hope. Is that not an allegory
for how God adopts us? Sleeping Beauty is no challenge to find a message of
faith in! Stand up to the devil and he will flee! Truth and virtue are the
weapons that the 3 good fairies give Prince Phillip. That sounds like putting
on the armor of God to me! Ok that covers a “Classic Disney Princess” movie and
a 7 year old movie.
How about a newer
Pixar movie? Brave can be related to Ephesians 6:1-4. Every Christian parent I
know hammers their children with Ephesians 6:1-3 (Kids obey and honor mom and
dad or God is going to SMITE ya!) but they ignore verse 4. Most pastors don’t
teach on verse 4 but I think it is key to showing our children that they need
to obey and respect their elders so they can be blessed by God. Parents also
have a responsibility to not do things just to anger or frustrate their child.
Merida is a good girl that wants to be herself! She wants to be accepted for
who she is with the interests she has. Eleanor wants her daughter to grow up to
be queen, regal and proper. She does not understand how important freedom is to
her daughter. Eleanor frustrates Merida with her rules until she rebels. Merida
needed to follow rules but Eleanor needed to learn to look at if those rules
really were necessary or right for her daughter.
In short I think
the problem with “educators” and “church leadership” is they often refuse to
see the lessons that are there in the secular world and relate it to God’s
truth. I believe EVERY story has a lesson to take away. Some you just need to look
a little harder to find. Hidden jewels are often the best and most valued.
Do I believe that
Disney purposely puts Faith Based messages in their movies? NO!! I just believe
God is great enough to speak to us through any medium that will get through our
thick skulls!
Links to posts
mentioned in this blog:
Meet the
Robinsons:
Sleeping Beauty:
Brave:
Pixie’s Faith is
NOT associated with the Disney Company, Disney Studio or Disney Family in any
way. This is my views of Disney movies and the lessons I have taken away from
them. This is a fairly new blog and does not have many posts as of yet but is growing quickly.
This is Collin Garbarino from the interview.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of what you say. I was caught off guard by that question and didn't answer it as accurately as I would have liked. At that moment, I was thinking of a certain subset of Disney movies and not Disney's entire corpus.
I definitely agree that Brave contains Christian themes.
Thank you very much for responding directly.
ReplyDeleteI thought what you said about the message of Frozen was well though out and said a lot of positive things. it is a story of redemption but it is also a lesson to not allow fear to control you and stop you from using the gifts God has given you. I feel that many Christians refuse to see the messages that are out there and many Christian educators and pastors are closed to the cultural tools that are there to reach people. I hope my comments encourage you to expand and explore not only Disney but other movies for messages of faith.