There’s always a great amount of magic and fantastical mental jumps when it comes to books and movies, and most of the time people are pretty content with letting it carry them away. However, when it comes to personalities of characters, I see time and time again complaints and pent up anger from audiences. Frozen quickly comes to the front of my mind, as there was a huge internet controversy on the quality of the characters. Not if they were realistic or not, but if their reactions to their situations were “logical” or “reasonable”. Elsa was described as “selfish”, Anna was described as “naïve”, and Kristoff is usually prescribed with a mental disorder.

But honestly, how many of us would have done any different than those on the screen? Take a different, more general example: horror films. There’s always those few who do stupid things in the beginning to get themselves killed, but what does it usually consist of and why? Well, it’s usually panicked actions coming from a panicking individual. I’m sure anybody would, if suddenly confronted with some monster or mass murderer.

Back to Frozen, I’m unable to express my anger at all the complaints about “whitewashing” and the misrepresentation of feminism, for a movie which is trying to take steps forward on the issue of women feeling the need to have a husband to be happy in life, but when people complain about the selfishness of all of these characters, namely Elsa who is a representation of people with anxiety and depression disorders, I can’t help but want to ask, “Would you have done any better?” What makes you think that, in those circumstances, you wouldn’t have done the same or worse?

Besides that, try looking beyond specific actions and try seeing them in the grand scheme of things. Although movies and books are meant to bring the reader into a new world, they also have larger points to make. If a character is doing something stupid, it’s on the author’s purpose. And besides, it doesn’t differ so much from how reality would handle the situation.