A Happy Snowman?

When Frozen: The Musical announced it was rehearsing and opening its Broadway touring ensemble in Buffalo, my sister was at the front of the line to buy tickets. Unfortunately for her, the long-awaited performance ended up conflicting with a commitment to her son, so the text came: would you and Madelyn like to come and use my tickets? Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear . . . You get my drift.

 

What an amazing night. Shea’s Buffalo is a majestic setting. Filled with masked attendees in the 2021 pandemic version of a costume ball, the theater was abuzz with anticipation. The show is coming to Cleveland in August 2022, and it’s worth every cent of the price of admission. Save the date, Madelyn, Lizzie and Emma – we’re going (sorry, Henry, but I’m afraid my favorite Energizer Bunny couldn’t sit still – your time will come).

 

My favorite part of the night was when Olaf sang “In Summer,” the clever composition by Kristen Anderson Lopez and Robert Lopez. There is something about the little snowman’s character that is enchanting. Created of snow, he has only known the cold of winter, but as he sings, he considers the perks of being warm. “But  sometimes I like to close my eyes and imagine what I’d be like when summer does come.” As the song nears its conclusion, Olaf dreams out loud: “Winter’s a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put me in summer and I’ll be a . . .” Into the song’s pregnant pause, the adults in the audience held their collective breath, knowing that the next word, rhyming with cuddle, will be puddle. If Olaf only knew . . . But into the silence of the theater came a tiny voice from the audience, beating Olaf to his punchline: “a happy snowman.”

 

Of course every child in that theater knew those words. So did the grandparents. We’ve head the song a zillion times as the little ones have watched the movie and listened to the song over and over, and we believe with Olaf. Sadly, this precious understanding of a shared meaning won’t last past the Disney experience. 

 

I first heard the phrase ‘post-modern’ about twenty-five years ago. We were moving from modernity, with its emphasis on realism, to post-modernity, a cultural construct that rests on the idea that there’s no such thing as absolute truth. Your truth is your truth and my truth is mine, and we’re both right. In post-modernism, we no longer have a “happy snowman” common experience. Remember when Hulu was a dance, an apple was a fruit, and a fox was a sneaky animal trying to get into the henhouse?  Not anymore. With the internet, podcasts, blogs, and hundreds of cable channels bombarding us daily, our input is so varied that our output is bound to be as well. No wonder we have such varied opinions about what is right and what is true.

 

I sense a meandering in my thinking and writing about my little snowman friend. By the end of Olaf’s song, even his innocent dreaming is faced with a threat, as Kristof says, “I’m going to tell him.” What Kristof knows is that snow melts under the summer sun, and without some kind of miraculous intervention (see Frozen II), Olaf will become a puddle rather than a happy snowman. Olaf has one reality, and Kristof another, but in the real world, there is absolute truth. Snow melts as temperatures rise. 

 

No tidy little package this morning, I’m afraid. Speaking in the courtroom of “A Few Good Men,” Jack Nicholson indicts us all: “You can’t handle the truth!” If he’s right, then at what cost? That’s what I’m wondering this morning.