Today is the summer solstice – the day when day is longest and night is shortest in the year. Having been a traveller in Europe for a while, I admit that I like the long days, even if it messes with me and my sleeping schedule a lot – this is because it means I can wander around outside much longer than I should and still feel secure. However, from this day onwards, the days in the northern hemisphere will get shorter and shorter.
This day is also (apparently) canonically Anna’s birthday! Which is a bit weird, since the solstice can occur over a few days in the calendar – but never mind that. As a commemoration, I’ve featured a special Anna moon at the top of this post!
As of today also, our logo has changed – more on that later!
You might not recognise Anna’s look in the moon. That’s fair, since she only wears that for around 8 minutes ever. Besides, Anna’s look now is more adventurous or queenly since Frozen II was released. But it’s those 8 minutes that I want to talk about – the 8 minutes of Frozen Fever (2015).
Feverish for Frozen
I went to the cinema twice to watch Disney’s live-action Cinderella movie. Not because I cared anything for Cinderella – but because Frozen Fever was the short playing before the actual movie. Yes – I was really quite crazy about Frozen back then.
I remember my eyes flying across the whole screen from foreground to background and left to right, trying to recall every detail of the short; and I even went onto the Disney Fandom to write down every single point of trivia I could think of. My edits were swiftly reversed for bad formatting, but I’m sure my edits are still there as a deeply-buried previous version. I’ve left the trivia at the end of the entire post, and you can have a look at it all and laugh.
Forgotten Flower
Nevertheless, for all my fanboying, I eventually forgot this movie. By the time the idea to start this blog came to me, Frozen Fever was a distant memory. The Saga draws on Frozen (2013), Frozen: the Musical (2019 Broadway version), Frozen II, and even Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (a longer short). But there’s really nothing in Frozen Fever that I think can go into the epic poem.
Except for one thing. I have a post discussing the plant motifs in Frozen (2013) and Frozen II, and when I remembered this short during a hunt for Frozen photos on the internet, I decided to wait for the solstice to make this post. Introducing the sunflower!
Anna’s Sunflower
The sunflower is certainly a well-known flower the world over. Its giant flower turns to face the sun as it moves across the sky. It is often seen as one of THE symbols of summer. In Frozen Fever, Anna’s dress is given a makeover by Elsa, and the hem fills up with sunflowers. On the whole, Anna’s look is young, lively, exuberant – exactly as we would have remembered her from Frozen (2013). In fact, I don’t even think she looks particularly regal in this outfit, instead just looking like a very dainty civilian out about the town. I like this outfit very much – reading overly deep into it, it could be a sign of how she is connected to the people of her realm (and therefore truly fit to be queen!)
Unfortunately, the sunflower motif never makes it back into Frozen media. Most likely, Anna’s Frozen Fever dress was designed just to express that it was summer in the movie – much as the wheat she is identified with in Frozen II can also be thought of as a seasonal motif. In fact, without me to overthink everything, it is possible that the wheat has no special meaning for Anna. The flags in Arnadalr might simply have different motifs at different times – Elsa’s face in profile during her coronation, and wheat during autumn (when wheat is normally harvested).
Of course, we can continue to overthink it, and consider the sunflower as a symbol of a stage in Anna’s growth. At the time of the events in Frozen Fever, things are looking up for Anna – she has a new devoted boyfriend, her sister is back and talking to her again, her home is no longer under ice, and it’s her birthday! She is free to be happy and just enjoy life. But three years on, as events overshadow her family and life again, she loses the exuberance and brightness and warmth of summer. In its place is the coldness of her grandfather’s treachery, the coldness of her parents’ death, the coldness of Elsa’s sacrifice, and the weight of a crown she never particularly wanted.
It is, in retrospect, perhaps a slight pity that the sunflower never came back again. Anna could certainly have chosen it as a symbol after Frozen II came to a pleasant ending – it literally ends with the Northern Forest being returned into the sun. Furthermore, the People of the Sun could certainly have had this as their identity flower, and perhaps even Iðunn could have been retconned with a sunflower in Olaf’s Frozen Adventure or Frozen II, rather than just her old outfit. Maybe then I would have had a post about the echoes of Frozen Fever in Frozen II???
But since this isn’t the case, I commemorate the sunflower here, today. Fylgi!
Elsa also gets a new dress in Frozen Fever. However, the flower is not clearly identifiable (by the internet no less – lemme know what you think it is). In commemoration of the short, I’ve also made her a moon, adapting the flowers on her dress into a red crocus:
This moon is relevant because…
NEW LOGO!!!
I have merged the two moons to create the extremely messy new logo! The old Crocus and Wheat in Sunlight now looks a bit too amateurish. Now it is the Sunflower and Crocus (and a bajillion things besides)!
Thank you for all your support! Next post coming soon!
Anna and Elsa drawings taken from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/df/08/cfdf08ad2759758a8f53c0a1f9631427.jpg
Trivia notes for Frozen Fever (15 Mar 2015)
- This is the second short sequel to a Walt Disney Animation Studios movie. The first was Tangled Ever After.
- Unlike the original Frozen film, which was rated PG by the MPAA, this short film has received a G rating from the MPAA, as most Disney animated short films have that rating in the United States.
- One of the children in the choir resembles Anna when she was a little girl.
- Kristoff and Elsa speak to each other for the first time.
- The map that appears when the giant snowball Elsa created was launched through the horn shows the Southern Isles is located south-east of Arendelle.
- Elsa and Anna have new dresses/outfits in the short.
- Anna’s new outfit covers her shoulders and goes up her neck, while Elsa’s new dress has the shoulder straps hanging loosely around the upper arm. Comparing this to their outfits on Coronation Day, where Elsa’s dress covers her neck and Anna’s dress has the loose straps, it would appear to show that Elsa is now the one slightly more actively engaged in things than Anna.
- Olaf’s line “I can fix it!” said after Snowgies destroyed Kristoff’s suspended lettering spelling “Happy Birthday Anna” may be a reference to Fix-It Felix, Jr.
- He then humorously respells “Dry Banana Hippy Hat”.
- There are numerous references to the original movie Frozen in the short:
- Elsa tops Anna‘s birthday cake with ice figurines showing the two of them skating with arms outstretched, a reference to the ice rink Elsa created in the castle grounds at the end of Frozen. This was the fourth design she produced. Among other designs created were:-
- 1st: A figurine of just Anna, standing as she appears in certain movie promotional posters.
- 2nd: The coronation pose, in which Anna and Elsa are standing some distance apart, regal and poised, as they were during Elsa’s coronation ball. According to Elsa, the design was “stiff”.
- 3rd: “Anna’s Frozen Death” pose, the pose in which Anna was frozen in when she tried to block Hans’ slash, with Elsa weeping over her. According to Elsa, the “Anna’s Frozen Death” topping was awful, and she “couldn’t put that” on the cake.
- Elsa freezes the two fountains which are close to the castle gates in roughly the same design as at the end of Frozen.
- Olaf’s line “I can’t read. Or spell.” is probably a reference to his line in Frozen: “I don’t have a skull. Or bones.”
- This is the second time Anna is seen waking up with messy hair, as she was in the morning of Elsa’s Coronation Day. She is also in the same pose and is salivating again.
- While Anna is sleeping, Elsa’s head pops up behind her with a “Psst! Anna!” This is reminiscent of Anna’s line “Psst! Elsa!”, the third spoken line in the original Frozen, said when they were children and Anna was trying to get Elsa to wake up so they could go and play.
- Anna still appears to be bad at waking up early.
- In “Making Today a Perfect Day“, Elsa sings “You’ve never had a real birthday before/Except, of course, the ones just spent outside my locked door”, a throwback to the years when Elsa was isolated and cut off from her sister, as seen in the song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?“.
- In “Making Today a Perfect Day“, Elsa also sings “…a cold never bothered me anyway…”, a reference to her solo song “Let It Go“.
- Elsa’s second gift to Anna is a model of the castle of Arendelle, with a figurine of Olaf that can spring out from a window and shout “Summer!”, a reference to Olaf’s fascination with summer, and (more obscurely) a reference to the time Olaf smashed a castle window to help a dying Anna get out of the castle and reunite with Kristoff.
- Elsa and Anna bounce on a couch to view a portrait in the hall seen in the song “For the First Time in Forever“. Bouncing on the couches was what Anna had been doing in above song.
- The part where Elsa and Anna are riding a bike through the hall is taken from the line “…or ride our bike around the halls…” in “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?“
- Elsa brings Anna down from a higher level of the castle via the swing hanging outside the castle as seen in “For the First Time in Forever“. Along the way, Anna also grabs a sandwich hanging beside the swing, a reference to Anna’s (apparently) favourite food.
- Elsa’s line in “Making Today a Perfect Day” “I even got Kristoff and Sven to take a shower” is a reference to Kristoff’s solo “Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People“, in which he says “People smell better than reindeers” and replies to himself (as Sven) “That’s once again true, for all except you”, which implies that Kristoff and Sven stink.
- The clock tower which Elsa and Anna climb near the end of the short is the clock tower which appeared in “Love is an Open Door“.
- There are two figurines on the clock tower, which resemble Elsa and Anna. In above song, one was male and one was female, representing Hans and Anna.
- Oaken returns in the short, having a sauna bath.
- The sign proclaiming “And Sauna” is hanging on his stall.
- In “Making Today a Perfect Day” he sings “How ’bout a cold remedy of my own invention?” The words in bold are reminiscent of this line spoken to Anna in Frozen: “Big Summer Blowout! Half off swimming suits, clocks, and a sun balm of my own invention. Ja?”
- It would also seems that not trusting Oaken’s inventions would be a good thing: there is some speculation that Oaken’s medicine actually worsened Elsa’s condition, making her appear drunk.
- Hans returns in the short and is seen shoveling horse manure in the stables before getting hit by a giant snowball that Elsa accidentally created.
- Marshmallow returns in the short, still living in the Ice Palace made by Elsa as seen in the original Frozen.
- Elsa tops Anna‘s birthday cake with ice figurines showing the two of them skating with arms outstretched, a reference to the ice rink Elsa created in the castle grounds at the end of Frozen. This was the fourth design she produced. Among other designs created were:-
Queendom of the Crocus 
