Letting It Go

So last week at the Oscars, Disney’s Frozen took home two rather predictable awards (though my hopes had been that Miyazaki would sneak away with it, the way many have hoped Leo DiCaprio might finally get his first).

While I haven’t seen the film, I’ve heard the song and probably ever conceivable cover by this point–one even involving a traffic reporter:

What is the fascination with this song? Is it that it’s sung by Idina Menzel, the Tony Award winning vocalist who starred as the original Wicked Witch of the West in the musical Wicked (whose name was pretty horrendously marred by John Travolta at the Oscars when he called her “Adele Dazeem”)? Sure she can hit really hit those notes with soul, try listening to her incredibly similar in both theme and structure “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, but does that really justify the attention of the whole internet?

To be fair, the song is pretty catchy and the message is certainly relatable. The overarching theme is made pretty apparent in the title, “Let It Go” is all about releasing yourself from the past. Additionally, and here the similarities to “Defying Gravity” are really obvious, a secondary theme is included revolving around discovering and releasing your true self/power. However, as I look at the lyrics more intently, I notice what seems like a contradiction. When the song starts, the lyrics state that there is “not a footprint to be seen” in the snow. But that’s not really true, all of the footprints leading forward are still apparent in the snow behind you when you walk. This implies that the singer is just not looking back, not that those footprints don’t exist. This is what creates the contradiction to the latter part of the song, when the speaker claims that “the past is in the past…that perfect girl is gone,” because that previous iteration of the singer’s self isn’t gone, her past has followed her footstep by footstep even if she wants to just look to the as yet untrod future. Further supporting this is the line “my soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around,” which has intriguing implications surrounding their mathematical definitions. I’m not a math person, but according to Wikipedia definitions: “a spiral is a curve which emanates from a central point, getting progressively farther away as it revolves around the point” and “a fractal is a mathematical set that typically displays self-similar patterns, which means it is “the same from near as from far.” Putting that together as best as an English major can it seems to imply that the singer’s soul is moving farther away from a central point (her past) and yet is doing so in such a fashion as for her end point to be paradoxically as close to where she began as when she started.

Which might seem to defeat the point of the song, but honestly it’s what I think makes it so cool. I mean, the whole song builds up to that last line “the cold never bothered me anyway,” which I feel is such an awesome twist. Basically, she’s saying that despite the whole song being about how she’s moved away from the past, she hasn’t really changed at all! The cold has never bothered her, the power that she’s gained, is all power that she’s already had, she’s not letting go of the past as much as she’s letting herself accepting who she is for the first time. I think what this song shows, when you really think about it, is that letting go doesn’t mean ignoring the past but recognizing that you can only overcome the things that you first embrace.

Sources: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/idinamenzel/letitgo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal