One of the series I took while on quarantine, where I started to model alone as I took self-portraits, creating new ideas and concepts for photos keeping social distance. As I wrote on my "About" page, I explored different artistic expressions throughout the last couple of years. For nine months I had a YouTube channel in which I uploaded covers from female songs, transforming them into male versions. The whole video was intended to be in one shot with live singing over a backing track that I was listening to with my headphones and later on added on edition (that set the name of the channel "One Shot Songs").
Some of those covers were from film songs, so I decided to take four films I had done one and analyze them trying to find a new meaning to an element of the film. Beneath each picture, you will find my reinterpretation of the element and a link to the cover that started the whole idea of that film. Since I also like to write, the reinterpretations will be long.
There is a theory online that says that Elsa, the princess from Frozen, is the first homosexual character in a Disney Film. And when you get to see the context of the film, you realize it's not something completely impossible. It is the first film to introduce a same-sex parent household, the man who sells supplies for the snow calls his family and it portrays another man with two children, giving the impression that they were both the fathers of the children.
Having that in mind, I thought about the development of the plot, beginning with Elsa freezing Anna's brain and an elderly magical creature tells their parents that a freeze of the mind was easily fixed, by just erasing the memories that lead to that moment, but a freeze of the heart was something much more complicated.
And it made me wonder. What if the whole film was about Arendelle (the town they both live in) as a reproduction of homophobic people, forcing Elsa to hide her freezing powers (which could be analog to her homosexuality)?
Most homophobic people (a word that I personally dislike, because we are never talking about a real phobia and it's a way of disguising discrimination as something socially acceptable) claim they are "ok" with homosexuality as long as they are discreet and do it privately. Not only because they don't want to see it (have a visual image that sticks in their minds), but also because they claim it is "contagious" (meaning that someone else's homosexuality could affect people's way of feeling, therefore, their hearts).
Elsa, who was only able to "let her powers go" when she was alone (privately), was feared for being able to freeze people's minds or hearts, very similar to what happens with "homophobia". It was only the "act of love" from Anna (who is depicted as a comprehensive character throughout the entire film) that was able to heal the freeze of the heart. Almost as if the solution to Arendelle's problems was someone who was just accepting different ways of love.
You can see my cover from "Let it go" at https://youtu.be/jp171q7rX74
In The Little Mermaid, Ariel finds a fork in the bottom of the ocean and, since she had no clue what it was, she met with Scuttle, a seagull who knew everything about humans. After a close inspection of the element, he claims that it is a "Dinglehopper" and humans used it to comb their hair. Ariel, later on, while having lunch with prince Eric, sees the fork and starts combing her hair with it, leaving everyone at the table confused about what was happening.
From someone who knows what forks are meant for, the whole scene is just comedy. But what if Disney was trying to teach us not to trust someone's word completely, just because they claim to be experts on the matter? What if Disney wanted us to do our own research from different sources?
The seagull is represented as an eccentric and somewhat crazy character, making what he says unreliable, but his words led Ariel to believe that a fork was intended to comb her hair.
Nowadays, thanks to the internet, people believe in different theories from self-proclaimed experts without doing a lot of research, especially during pandemic times. This leads to a lot of conspiracy theories on everything that happens around us in our daily lives. Some of these theories can even be dangerous, as the "aids denialism" one, which ended on having an entire country claiming officially through their health regulation that AIDS was not real, or not a product from HIV, so they didn't have to offer treatment nor encourage its medication.
Maybe Disney was asking us to be more curious and do a lot of research before taking a stand.
You can see my cover from "Part of your World" at https://youtu.be/Frxsfwq5wQE
Irene Cara sings the song "What a Feeling" from Flashdance and she also performs a leading role in Fame. One day I realized there were some similarities between the two melodies and I decided to create a mashup to upload to my YouTube Channel.
Nowadays I realize both films were somewhat "revolutionary", considering some of their scenes or part of their plot back in the decade of the 80s.
In Fame, Irene Cara´s character goes to a casting with a "director" who manipulates her until she gets completely naked against her will in front of the camera, generating a huge discomfort in the audience. That scene represented what happened regularly in show business, but it wasn't until a few years ago that abuse reports and movements like "Me Too" were heard as they should have had before. The movie, premiered in 1980, shows the scene in a possible attempt to install the topic as something to be addressed. A topic that I think took too long to be discussed, but at least, it's starting to be noticeable.
Flashdance by itself it's completely revolutionary. It represents, in 1983, a woman working in the steel industry, mostly male work (not to say exclusively), and by night working at a cabaret. The movie "glorifies" in some ways the idea of a cabaret, with the music and the dancing, it also gives the character a sexually free identity, as in the famous restaurant scene in which she is practically naked, playing sensually with the man having dinner with her. On the other hand, Flashdance represents a man using his contacts to let her go to the conservatory, which gives a bittersweet feeling claiming that it is the man who holds Alex's (the leading character) fate in his hands and power.
You can see my cover from "Flashdance/Fame Mashup" at https://youtu.be/kOM03bkHcQ0
In Beauty and the Beast, the curse that turned the prince into a beast could only be broken if he got someone to fall in love with him before the last petal of the enchanted rose fell. In order to protect it, the prince covered it with glass, to prevent any harm from something or someone.
Nowadays, as a grown-up, I wonder, what if the rose was a metaphor for the character's virginity and the story doesn't talk precisely about love? When the theme song of the movie ends, Mrs. Potts tells her son that she would tell him what was happening when was an adult, and if they were just talking about love, there would be nothing wrong to tell a kid about it. Also, in many stories, like "Memoirs of a Geisha", virginity is depicted as a flower. And there is also a social pressure to preserve that virginity, especially in women. In men, society pushes them to lose virginity at an early age, to prove their "masculinity". What if the glass covering the flower was intended to preserve male virginity the same way as female virginity is pretended to be preserved?
Which makes me wonder, is that pressure, either to lose it or to keep it, necessary? That pressure ends up making that initiation a much more uncomfortable situation than it should. Maybe it's time to learn that virginity is a stage in everyone's lives, and it's meant to explore sexuality from a different perspective.
You can see my cover from "Beauty and the Beast" at https://youtu.be/-CSMoIo0P5U
