Shame in Movies

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Melting the Shame Freeze in Disney’s “Frozen”

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Melting the Shame Freeze in Disney’s “Frozen”

Recently, Walt Disney Productions has returned to its roots, making amazing movies for children that are powerful and profound enough to be essential viewing for adults as well. While “Inside Out” examined how emotions work in the brain in a truly brilliant way, it had one major flaw: It had no character to represent Shame, which many consider the master emotion—an emotion that affects all the others. There is no such problem with Disney’s “Frozen,” which deals with shame in such a full and precise way that the entire movie can be seen as a parable of healing shame. “Frozen” is a parable of creating and finally melting the shame freeze.

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Unmasking Shame – The Phantom of the Opera

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Unmasking Shame – The Phantom of the Opera

While on a walk, after watching the movie version of “Phantom of the Opera,” I was surprised to hear a friend comment that something in the drama was upsetting to him. The facial wounding of the phantom seemed too small to warrant the level of reaction of violence; even wounds from his childhood wouldn’t have had to have resulted in such an extreme reaction. He told me about someone he’d met who had wounds from a fire, much more distressing and dramatic—and more believable.