This past weekend I finally got a chance to see Frozen, the animated film that seems to be such a success that my local movie theater is still playing it right up to the release of the Blu-Ray/DVD on Tuesday. For perspective, just about every other movie playing looks to have released within the last thirty days, and even that is pushing it. I’m not even sure Robocop, which I actually enjoyed, managed an entire month in theaters. Meanwhile Frozen has been enjoying at least three time slots from November to present.

Insert not-so-clever joke insinuating winter won’t go away as long as Frozen is in theaters here.

A little while before I saw the film, however, I saw a tad of a commotion on Twitter. Lindsay Ellis, also known as the Nostalgia Chick, had found a curious blog suggesting that Frozen wasn’t so great a feminist piece of film as everyone made it out to be. “Huh,” I thought to myself. I knew a few folks that were championing the film as being quite excellent, and yes, many of them were also quite active in professing feminist philosophies and idealogies. So I decided that, after seeing the film, I’d read the original article followed by Lindsay’s rebuttal, which actually led me to reading the rebuttal of the rebuttal.

I feel myself torn, here. On the one hand, I actually agree with a lot of Lindsay’s counter-arguments, or at least with a lot of her ideas on feminism. On the other hand, even as I was reading it I felt it was too insulting and condescending, and found myself also agreeing with the rebuttal of Dani, author of the original article that kicked all of this off.

The end result is that, despite agreeing with Lindsay more than the original author, I’m still inclined to take the original author’s side in the debate. Why? Simple etiquette. Even if it did seem as if she were arguing against a strawman (links to others professing such arguments might have helped in this regard), she was at least trying to formulate an articulate argument. The problem with Lindsay’s rebuttal is that it is more of a tearing-down, with very little substance.

However, Lindsay’s article is “more entertaining”, which is what brings me to my point well after the introduction’s expiration date.

In the world of the Internet, it doesn’t matter who has the better formed argument. What matters is who already echoes opinions that resemble your own and who is the most entertaining. The actual quality of the argument, let alone its content, makes hardly any difference. To that end, yes, Linday’s is the “more entertaining” read because she tries to make it funnier. However, there are way too many points that she simply outright calls stupid or dismisses.

People often exalt our era of technology as one where worldwide knowledge is at the touch of your fingertips (as long as you’re able to afford an Internet connection (and don’t live in a country that is actively censoring the content you can access)), yet it instead seems to me that people merely use the Internet to find cheap amusements and thrills whilst latching onto whatever echo chamber fits their fancy. It’s why I see my Facebook littered with poorly photoshopped images declaring ‘dem liberals won’t pry our guns away and the incompetence of President Obama while my Twitter feed is overflowing with them bastard gay haters and ignorant gun-loving rednecks. Two completely separate groups of people that I find myself in the middle of and am constantly frustrated with, as they are always at odds with, not each other, but cardboard cut-outs.

“You are stupid for thinking Superman could beat Goku in a fight! I shall now tear your head off for this discretion!”

What disappoints me most is that Lindsay evidently had the opportunity to speak with Dani, yet chose not to and instead continued to write her post in such an insulting manner. While I do not know Lindsay’s reasons for making this choice, or what sort of message Dani had reached out to her with, this very knowledge still tarnishes the character of Lindsay in my mind.

To me, refusing further discourse and instead choosing to turn your counterpart into a cardboard cut-out to verbally attack and destroy is the embodiment of the modern Internet. It is no different than Fox news catering to an extremist perspective in order to garner as many views in a given demographic as possible. It’s no longer about intellectual stimulation or furthering one’s knowledge or worldview. It is instead about being entertaining to a certain audience.

That is, assuming that was part of Lindsay’s motivation. She is, after all, an entertainer, and while I imagine her response was partially done out of a need for catharsis, I cannot help but believe it was also done for more negative self-indulgent purposes.

Which brings me to another tangential point: projection.

Before I even read Lindsay’s rebuttal a thought had occurred to me about Dani’s piece. Perhaps what some of these Disney films do poorly or well has less to do with the creation or creator and more to do with our own personal perspective.

Take my hatred of the Disney animated Peter Pan film. In it, Wendy is taken to Neverland by Peter and is shown the most horrifying time. She is frequently neglected, every other woman in the setting instantly gets jealous and attempts some form of harm on Wendy, and she is captured by pirates. Yet when all is said and done, she does nothing but sing about how wonderful Neverland and the neglectful, narcissistic Peter Pan were.

So why do I feel so strongly about this film? Because I first watched it when I was an adult with my niece, expecting it to perhaps be better role model material than other Disney films. Instead, it became one of the worst offenders.

Was there a time when the film was more innocent? Of course. My grandmother was the one who introduced the movie, after all, and to her there is nothing wrong with the content shown. Boys will be boys, and all good girls aspire to be gentle, motherly women. That was how she grew up, and to her that is normal. Each of us has a different background, different experiences, and a different culture that gave us such contrasting values.

So let’s take The Little Mermaid, another film I’ve been known to hate. I never really liked it as a child, either, but that’s because I didn’t like any Disney movie. It all seemed so silly and condescending after spending time watching Rankin & Bass’ rendition of The Hobbit, or Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. So even though I enjoyed films like Aladdin or The Lion King when they released, they never held a candle to the epic tales of Tolkien.

Yet as an adult, I saw Ariel as nothing more than a spoiled little teenager rebelling against her father. Her overprotective father, sure, but nonetheless it frustrated me to no end that this teenaged girl insisted that she “loved” a man she hardly even met, and despite all her foolish choices throughout the movie everything turns up aces. I imagined my niece growing up to behave like Ariel, only with the cruel, grimey filter of reality. By which I mean Frank Miller’s reality, where my niece would later become a cocaine addicted street walker desperate for her next fix, all because “daddy, I love him”.

Let’s look at things from another perspective, however. Let us examine what else there is to Ariel’s character. Before she falls in love with Eric, what is she doing? Well, she’s still getting into trouble, but she’s doing so by exploring an old ship, seeking out hidden items and artifacts wrenched from the surface by the cruel clutches of the deep blue sea. While she doesn’t have the most reliable source of information, she manages to organize and catalogue all of it, studying its purpose to try and create a clear picture of human culture.

Ariel is the Indiana Jones of the ocean.

Truly consider for a moment that before Belle, who is often praised for being a bookworm, Ariel was an historian or anthropologist, studying an ancient/foreign culture to try and understand it better. Yes, she almost got eaten by a shark, but we cheered when Indiana succeeded in dodging a giant crushing boulder or doom.

With that perspective in mind, Ariel suddenly becomes a much more interesting character than a flighty, lovestruck teenager that spends too much time following “her heart” as opposed to taking a time to stop and think. By shifting perspective, she’s actually a rather admirable character and could provide a more positive role-model. Instead, because my perspective was that of an over-protective uncle way too worried about the potential doomed future of my niece, I was afraid of her seeing the mistakes of a teenaged character and referencing that as the takeaway of the movie.

I’d still rather my niece watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but if I can sit down and discuss the more academic aspect of Ariel’s character, well, wouldn’t that make me a much better role model? And isn’t a real person always going to be more impactful than a fake one?

This is why I find value in both Lindsay and Dani’s perspectives on Frozen, but am also quite disappointed to what could have been an interesting exchange of ideas. If both sides were willing to agree to disagree, yet still have an open, perhaps recorded and widely published, discussion, it could have done some good. It could have shown how two people can speak amicably with each other and still enjoy each other’s company despite having such different opinions.

Instead, hardly any dialogue as occurred at all, and all we do know is that they disagree with each other. Instead of valuing both opinions and the perspectives that brought each of them to those conclusions, everyone instead sides with one or the other.

Such is the tragedy, and travesty, of the Internet.