Hell Frozen over

The wingnuts are throwing a fit about Queen Elsa again.  News of Kevin "Kill the Gays" Swanson's "Freedom 2015 conference" has rightly focused on his murderous ranting and on the attendance of three Republican Presidential candidates including Ted Cruz, a serious contender for the actual nomination.  But the fundies ventured back into film criticism as well, with featured speaker Geoff Botkin denouncing Frozen's iconic song "Let It Go" as "Satan's rebellion anthem" and adding it to the ever-growing list of things God is going to smite us for any minute now.

This isn't too surprising given that last year Swanson himself decried Frozen as a Satanic scheme to turn girls into lesbians, even seeming to speculate that Satan had bought a controlling interest in Disney in 1984 (a smart investment, if true).  While it's hard to deny that most girls would probably find Elsa and Anna a lot more appealing than Swanson and Botkin, if humans were so prone to homosexuality that watching a movie which never even mentions the subject was all it took to "convert" them, then surely between one thing and another the whole planet would have turned gay a long time ago.  If the fundies could just get it through their heads that sexual orientation isn't that mutable, maybe they'd be less prone to panic over every new pop-culture phenomenon that comes along.

It's not just Frozen, either.  The conference also denounced Harry Potter since author J.K. Rowling has mentioned that Dumbledore was gay, a point which is never referenced in the books but which does make one or two plot points easier to understand.  Harry Potter has long been on the fundies' hate list because of its emphasis on magic, which their Bible-addled brains take as promotion of diabolical witchcraft and sorcery, as if young people might be tempted to take up those practices as well.  (What a thing to worry about!  Homosexuality, at least, actually exists.  But maybe they think magic does too?)  Homosexuality, witchcraft, Satan -- it all blurs together in their minds into an all-encompassing fog of evil overwhelming the land.  It's truly a terrifying, "demon-haunted" world that these people inhabit.

Why their fixation on popular culture?  This point is important, because here, for once, the fundies are actually more perceptive than we liberals are.  Things like movies, novels, music, and TV that reach a mass audience can have a vast influence.  Politics is a blunt instrument and can be used to do considerable good or harm, but it's ultimately the direction of mass culture that determines how it's used -- shifts in popular views on issues like homosexuality, marijuana, guns, women's position in society, and so on are eventually reflected in election results, court rulings, and law.  And people are much more open to influences from popular art than to those from most other sources -- compare the general suspicion and hostility people feel toward most politicians with the near-cult-like adoration of Queen Elsa, Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, and the like.

Finally, popular art commands a level of mass interest, even fascination, that the political world cannot match.  As an example, during the year and a half I've been at my current job, I've overheard a lot of conversations among co-workers.  I have never heard any of them ever mention anything even remotely connected with politics -- not even once, not a single word.  The Republican and Democratic candidates for President, the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, the marijuana referendum in our state -- never mentioned by anyone, in any conversation I've overheard.  But Frozen references are everywhere, on tote bags, cubicle decorations, choice of costumes at the company Halloween party, and the like (there is nothing political in anyone's cubicle decorations either).  And I don't think this is unusual.  That's the electorate you're fighting with the Republicans to get the attention and support of.  The political blogosphere isn't the real world.

It is culture and its direction which are really the enemy's chief concern -- they want the taboo on homosexuality reinstated, women back in traditional limited roles, Christianity dominant in the public space, etc.  Politics is more a means to achieving those goals than an end in itself.  And they realize, as I think a lot of liberals don't, how much impact popular art has -- especially since its influence is largely against their aims, even if their paranoia about Satanic subliminal propaganda is absurd.  As I've discussed before, Frozen does convey progressive attitudes about individuality, freedom, acceptance of differences, and female empowerment and autonomy, even though I don't believe any direct reference to homosexuality was intended.  So does Harry Potter.  The enemy has tried to counter these influences with artistic efforts of its own, though the results are usually godawful and their appeal is mostly confined to the American fundamentalist subculture, while the reach of progressive mass-culture phenomena like Frozen, Harry Potter, and Star Trek is planet-wide.

They're losing the fight that ultimately matters -- the culture war -- and losing it badly, and they know it.  Is it any wonder they tell themselves Satan himself must be responsible?