Jordan Peterson and Frozen

Sometimes you get presented things on a platter.

I haven’t talked much about the Canadian psychology professor who has been recently embraced by alt-right as a champion against the forces of college liberalism. I ignored the initial fuss because it was mainly framed in terms of an academic being a bit of a dick around the same time he has a book being released. That story is essentially the scrappy-doo marketing technique writ large.

However, my interest was renewed when I learnt that Peterson’s book was a pop-psychology ‘ self-help’ book. Oh! There’s a thing there – a big thing, like a marker or a flag or a big sign with a hand on it saying ‘This way to pseudoscientific claptrap as a precursor to modern political pathology.”

Also, he doesn’t like Frozen. Now, I know, we pretty much established yesterday LOTS of people don’t like Frozen but have a look at this post at John C Wright’s blog:

Jordan Peterson on Art

The video is an interview with Peterson about stories, archetypes. Peterson claims to be influenced by Jung but basically, his arguments are almost classic John C Wright style ones that confuse tropes with archetypes and confuse archetypes with cast iron laws and judge art by the extent to which they do or don’t follow an ‘analysis’. I can see why Wright likes Peterson but Peterson’s analysis is no stronger than Wrights.

Peterson is discussing some Disney movies (don’t roll your eyes too much at the praise for Beauty and the Beast and what that means for relationships) and he gets to the Lion King:

“some of the archetypal themes in it were put in consciously and so they are not as…they’e not…they’re more propagandistic in some sense.”

He continues with this theme with the prompting of the interviewer. Essentially he is trying to cobble together the ‘message fiction’ argument of the Sad Puppies but less coherently. He wants stories to have arcs and internal logic but not want them to be contrived. The Sad Pups wouldn’t put their argument that badly as they genuinely are writers who know that they have to actually use some craft to get a story to function.

He goes on:

“Frozen was a good example. Propagandistic right from the beginning. It was the right propaganda for the time but, but [interviewer interrupts – I know my niece loves it] No one will watch it in twenty years time.Whereas they’ll be watching Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast forever.”

I don’t have a conclusion here, I’m just gathering stuff here Lemony Snicket like in a giant bundle of a shape of something and calling it evidence.