Joan vs. Elsa: a Comparison with Disney's Frozen

In keeping with a theme from the last several days, I'll go ahead and make a post about Joan in popular culture, specifically Disney's Frozen. There's one small moment in the movie that I did not catch until very recently (despite the embarrassing number of times I've watched it). It's during the "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" song, and Anna is lamenting that she has become so lonely that she has started talking to the pictures on the wall. She points up at a painting of a woman with a sword on a horse and remarks, "Hang in there, Joan!"



As small as this moment is, it's one of the few examples when Disney references real historical figures when the movie is based in a fictional universe (this isn't counting when the entire movie is based on historical events, such as Pocahontas). It got me wondering why Disney would make that kind of reference when it could have been easily omitted and very few of their target audience would even understand the reference. I started seeing several parallels between Joan and the character of Elsa. Both women possess supernatural abilities and are sentenced to die because of them, but end up using those abilities to save their country. Disney could have easily been trying to create a comparison between Joan and Elsa, and having Anna cheer on Joan symbolized her support for Elsa as well.

This may be reaching, and it is true that the comparisons stop at the very basics. There are no religious motivations behind Elsa's actions which is a huge contrast with Joan. Even the picture of Joan in the movie secularizes her. While the horse and armor are probably both accurate, Joan's sword was supposed to have 5 crosses on it (Pernoud 61). She also carried a standard with her that depicted angels and the names of Jesus and Mary. It is unlikely that Joan would not have had that standard because she remarked at the Rouen trial that she "liked better, even forty times, my standard than my sword" and that "I bore this standard when we went forward against the enemy to avoid killing anyone" (Pernoud 62). Of course, the reason for the lack of religious undertones in Frozen is obviously because of Disney's need to remain politically correct, rather than a deliberate misinterpretation of Joan's story. However, secularizing Joan takes away so much of what she stood for and tried to accomplish. In Frozen, Joan is seen as a hero and a warrior, which is all true. Unfortunately it only scratches the surface of what her mission actually was.

Sources:
Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her WItnesses. Lanham, MD: Scarborough House, 1982.
Images: Google Images