It's interesting to look at frosty returns as a story that features a cat prominently —
Bones! Bones the cat, yep.
Yeah Bones! Constantly troublemaking, a part of Twitchell's whole scheme; going to be a prince when Twitchell's king. I wish there was someone who could deal with this nefarious wintertime cat.
When you say a like an enemy to a cat? I immediately think of a dog.
Yeah, but wouldn't the dog get chilly?
Hi, I'm Juliet.
And I'm Katherine. And this is I'll be Pod for Castmas, where we make bad jokes about chili dogs. And we also talk about other stuff, like: we do a close reading of lowbrow Christmas pop culture in conversation with a piece of classic literature.
On this episode, we're talking about the 1992 Christmas special "Frosty Returns" through the lens of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. If you haven't yet, we recommend you go back to listen to the previous episode. But why don't we start with a synopsis of each of these texts?
Brilliant idea? You want to start with Frankenstein?
Sure. The synopsis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: a man on a boat in the north sees one man on a sled, and then rescues another. The rescued man — Victor Frankenstein — relates that he created the first man and has rued it since the first man — the Being — lashes out out of isolation and desperation. The rescued man dies and the man on the boat, Walton confronts the Being.
The most Juliet synopsis, I don't know if it's the use of the word "rued", or the fact that like 50% percent of that is just about the man on the boat, but I loved it. It was accurate. I loved it.
Here's my synopsis for Frosty Returns. So the 1992 Made for TV special, Frosty Returns, like Frankenstein, is set in the cold northern climate, but more of an upper Midwestern suburb then the Arctic Circle. Holly is a kid magician. With only one friend Charles, who she plans to saw in half, until a gust of wind blows her magician's hat away and it lands on Frosty the Snowman who comes to life. Holly is very excited to have friend number two! But unfortunately, this Midwestern suburban town has become very anti-snow. So our villain is the power and money hungry Mr. Twitchell, who's aerosol invention Summer Wheeze immediately eliminate snow, thus making the need for shoveling obsolete. The parents of this town are obsessed with this product. And that trickles down to the kids who get excited about having a longer summer vacation because there's less snow. Charles gives a lecture in his class about the dangers of Summer Wheeze because without snow, there's less water, which means life is in danger. He gets ignored. The town just goes nuts over Summer Wheeze which puts Frosty's life in danger. Holly finds her voice at the annual Winter Carnival and presents Frosty to the community. Through the power of song the town comes together and realizes that snow is magical and they crowd frosty their King and therefore summer weeds is no longer financially viable. So Mr. Twitchell converts his business to making winter-weather gear and he rides off in a sleigh with Holly and they all live happily ever after except for frosty who disappears to go spread winter Joy elsewhere.
So what do these two have in common Juliet?
Let's talk themes.
Other than the cold, yeah.
I think one thing that these two have in common is a kind of focus or psychology or interiority, of loneliness.
Yes, definitely.
This idea of like what it means to have one friend versus no friends like that. It's not one versus many. Although like Mr. Twitchell wants everyone tp praise him, but that's not even to be his friend. He just wants to rule them like the idea of just having no friends versus like, Hey, can I have one friend, please? is a really big leap.
Yeah. I mean, when Holly first meets Frosty, I think she says something like, oh, I only have one friend and Frosty says one friend is plenty. Which is, I think a lovely sentiment. But then when we think about Frankenstein, do you think one friend is plenty in the context of that novel? Like would Frankenstein's being agree that one friend is plenty?
Here's a mild point of contention, maybe because Victor's major fear in some ways is that the answer to that is no. And so much of what Victor ends up doing in the kind of third act of the novel is say, Well, I don't want the being to go from one friend to many friends to replacing. And the human — homo sapien — species.
He'ss worried that if he gives the being one friend, they will reproduce, and take over the world,
Right? Whereas the being is like, I just need one friend, can I please just have one person who I can be with, as we mentioned last episode, because of thinking like, Well, five and Eve, therefore, etc. But also even just outside of that, it's like, one person to show me compassion would mean that I'm not alone. One friend, is plenty is, is the beings argument is the thing that the being is trying to say. And like, I think a big undercurrent is well Victor, you could have been that one friend and you weren't up with Victor though.
He kind of gets his one friend in the form of Walton. When the book begins, Victor has lost pretty much everybody so he's out seeking revenge on the Being because he blames the Being for all his unhappiness, and Walter just immediately has a man crush on him and is like, or like a friend crush or like, I don't know just immediately like obsessed with Frankenstein. This guy so cool. I want to be his friend. And that's not enough for Frankenstein. He tells Walton his whole life story and is still at the end like, ya know, like, I You're fine, dude, but like, I still gotta kill this guy.
I do think for Walton, that one friend does make the world of difference because he's surrounded by all of this crew, but he's like, again, in not a friendship relationship with them. So he's hashtag writing a letter to sister.
So I'm gonna I'm just gonna throw it out there. Victor is the only person — for who one friend is not plenty — does that make him the monster of Frankenstein the novel?
Yes, and kind of surprising how similar than Frankenstein and Twitchell who Twitchell has a friend which will has bones the cat!
But his friend or his bones, just his minion, bosses bones around and like tells him to go do stuff for him. There's not really
Yeah, but Victor seems to do that to basically everyone.
I straight up don't remember. Victor's friend's name. Oh, my God, the boyfriend. What was his name? The Henry Clerval. There we go. Oh, yeah. Clerval. Boyhood friend. So.
So the Being wants a friend who will be similar to him. Right? Yeah. The Being wants someone who can be a reflection of him in some ways, and fears that anyone who's too dissimilar from him will reject Him because that's his experience so far. Yeah.
Which Okay, so to tie this back into Frosty Returns, we have Holly, whose best friend is a kid named Charles. And she actually kind of belittles their friendship because they are very dissimilar. Polly is a magician and is obsessed with magic and performing and wearing her cool hat. And Charles is a scientist and he believes in things that are real and measurable. Charles is kind of a nerd. I love Charles.
I do too.
I think Charles is relatable for basically anybody. Holly has some relatable-ness. I think many of us dreamed of being magicians at some stage of childhood.
Was that ever you?
Yeah, absolutely.
I was a magician's assistant for a little bit in high school.
Ah, so cool.
That would make me more like Charles then like, then like Holly, in this case,
Charles is such a great friend, even though he doesn't believe in magic, he's still crawls into a box and is like, okay, saw me in half, go for it.
Okay, want to dig into that a little bit, this idea of like science and magic set up as this like, binary apart from each other. You know, how Charles defined science like, things that can be explained versus like things that can't be explained, he has an explanation for like, well, snow is necessary, because that's a big part of how freshwater gets around. And like the long term effects throughout the year are really important to this.
Whereas Frosty appears, and there's not an explanation other than you know, you put the hat on him, and now he's singing and dancing.
Oh, sure. There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found, right.
Yeah. So what is magic, though, if science is something that can be explained, but magic kind of has an explanation, it's the hat, right?
So I want to pull on a classic quotable phrase that really, for me is helpful in discussing magic, which is: "Magic's what magic does."
Magic is what magic does?
Yeah, basically. Part of this is, Because magic doesn't actually exist. So when we identify some guys, yeah. When we identify something as magic, it has to, like, do something for us to be able to be like, Oh, that's the magic thing. And I think there's a way you could break that down as magic is unknown thing happening by unexpected means, which is, you know, stage magic, you see a thing you're like, oh, wow, how was something like, you know, a rabbit was able to be pulled out of a hat. By some magic means this thing that I know, happen happened. But I feel like I'm missing some the causal point, a man walked in one door and walked out of another door on the other side of the stage, that's incredible, sort of reference to the prestige. That is a reference to the prestige. And you know, this known thing happening by unexpected means, oh, happened by magic. The other way of thinking about it, that I'd like to pull in our brief foray into studying Latin American magical realism, and talk about magic, not as a thing, not as a known thing happening by unexpected means, but rather an entirely unknown thing coming into reality, which we sometimes called the fantasia, which is often you know, when we think about is an intrusion into reality of something magical, which then, you know, has some effects on the world by magical we do mean, like, deeply unreal, in a way that I feel like frosty kind of is deeply unreal, you know?
Yeah, cuz I was gonna ask, like, Where does Frosty fall? Is he the known thing, a snowman. That through unexpected means become something else. But yeah, it sounds like a man who made out of snow that can move and dance and talk and saying, sort of fantastic element.
I think to me, that is, is the fantastic element that is that type of magic. In part because, like Charles goes up, he's like, Is this happening? My battery's? Like, I fundamentally don't understand how this could be a trick where it's like, sighing somebody in half. It's like, okay, well, yeah, you're, you're doing some illusion here. Right? You know? Yeah. Well, so,
to bring in Frankenstein, again, since that is very famously, a science fiction work and, like, body of Frankenstein is considered, you know, one of the first science fiction's because there's sort of a scientific explanation, even though we don't get it in the text, but because we've been talking about Frankenstein and frosty and in similar ways, because They are these creatures that come to life magically? Is it fair to think of Frankenstein as more of a fantasy than a science fiction? Or is that not even a useful, like categorization for that book?
I think we run out of useful categorization when we try to do that type of reading. But it's possible that somebody else who's versed in a different, you know, history of science fiction would be able to answer that much better than than I could. I think instead, you know, instead of trying to unpack Frankenstein, using Frankenstein as that lens to look at this, I'd like instead of looking at frosty to look at summer wheeze, this aerosol spray that, you know, just removes no period.
Okay? That's a better example. Because, well, that's an example of is it science? Or is it magic, because Charles doesn't seem to have a problem with summer wheeze? I mean, he does like morally and ethically, but in terms of it as an invention, he accepts that, like, there's an explanation for it, like, we never seem to doubt that. Some are ways it's just a creation that exists in this world, and like makes sense for this world. But it's also a creation, that's like doing incredible harm to the community that the person who created it was not really thinking about the big picture when he brought it into this world.
Right. And so I think this might be where we depart from Charles is binary of magic and science that which can be explained that which can't, I, you know, I'd like to suggest a different kind of literary one, perhaps, which is the idea of a binary between practice and hard work, versus shortcuts, that are things that you put in the effort to get a result. And you're kind of there every step of the way. And then there are things that take you from the beginning to the end, without crossing any of the path in between. Oh, I like that. And so we actually see Holly's magic act as being in the former category. I mean, she's literally she needs to practice it, that's something that she has to put in effort to be able to do to be able to do your public speaking to be able to pull off the trick, sawing Charles and half and everything. And also the hard work that goes into learning science and paying attention and using critical thinking, and especially the hard work that goes into shoveling all of the snow, and going out there and doing that work, but also being alongside other people doing that work, and siblings. Yeah, and see, like, that's a joke. But it's also totally true. Because doing labor together to make our environments a little bit more livable, and singing while we do it, are like super inherently human things, as are like, practicing to get better at something. And so I think tying in each of these things is incredibly human. The the practice and the hard work, whether it's, you know, mental practice, or social practice, or physical practice, that is very human. And these shortcuts, especially like summer weeds are super not.
Yeah, I like that. So instead of looking at magic and science, in terms of what has an explanation, what does not, I think both Frankenstein and frosty expect us to not really need an explanation. And like we talked about in our first episode, like instead of worrying about how did the monster come into being, we're just gonna look at, like, what happens now that we have it. And yeah, so like the danger of summer wheeze is the fact that it is a shortcut. It's something that somebody did not put in the hard work of understanding before bringing it into the world. And it's not something that requires that, like community labor or the hard work, and that's what makes it problematic. It's you just spray it, the snow is gone. You don't need to think about it, you just live your life. And it has all of these horrible consequences in the future that you don't see in the moment when you're using it. And that's the appeal and the horror of it is that it's so—
Exactly —
And like no matter how much of our habitats are cut, don't worry about the future. Even though —
Summer Wheeze is totally is a technology, right? Yes, it is. It is certainly a technology but it has the like, in the interaction that the user has with it? It has that shortcut it has that like magical nature to it. And that you taking those shortcuts actually come with consequences. Yeah. I kind of want to pull Frankenstein in here again,
which is last time, Ik now, we said we weren't particularly interested in unpacking Frankenstein as artificial intelligence, a topic that is dealt with a lot.
Yeah, or a topic that is discussed a lot. But! I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
While many people view the Modern Prometheus as an analog for artificial intelligence, I think the real thing we're seeing, quote, ai do and be right now in the real world, like, not in fiction, in our real world, the AI stuff all around us, is much more similar to summer weeds. It's this inhuman shortcut with no care or even curiosity towards long term consequences. And with no care for what is actually pausing this with no care for what is actually shortcutting you from this point A to whatever point E you end up with,
and what the implications are in the long run and what happens with point F and point D and all the like the inevitable repercussions. That's ominous? Well, because the people,
the people have Beanborugh want, clear sidewalks, right? That's what they want, right? They assume that's the destination. And we typically arrive at destination by shoveling snow. And this product allows us to arrive at the destination of clear sidewalks without needing to do the shoveling snow, but we forget that, like, clear sidewalks is not the end of the story.
It's it's the beginning of the walk to school?
It's part of a broader picture.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sympathetic towards the wanting the shortcut, because as Miss Carbuncle, says, Isn't there a line about how you can like slip and fall on the ice? And then that means substitute teachers come in. She's the teacher who everybody hates. She's complaining about the snow, because there's a danger to the shoveling, for sure.
And I do think that that kind of comes down to well, the suburbs are also not good for this. The suburbs are not good for, you know, environmental setups of a variety of different you're responding to different routine climate or climate emergencies. The suburbs are not good for, oh, I got injured trying to deal with this hostile environment around me. Is there anyone who can actually help me? You know, that's not — these aren't good?
Yes. Your lab trying to solve the problems of the suburbs, with something that's going to cause even bigger problems? Is Charles is the one who points out. If there's no snow, then it doesn't melt. And then there's not enough water on Earth, and then there's not enough water to support life. So he's making that big, passionate plea about how if you use summer weeds, eventually all of life on this planet will be doomed. Which Yeah, super depressing. Thankfully, I just sort of laugh at him in that scene and like boo him but —
But thankfully,
...Yeah?
Well, yes, because it's not Charles who has to deal with everything. Frosty the Snowman shows up.
Frosty the Snowman, right and Frosty is able to rally the community behind a common cause in a way that Charles with all of his you know, facts and and very well researched report is unable to.
And Frosty has this line that, you know, all of these things, summer weeds and everything that Twitchell has to bear are no match for mother nature. And I think that's an interesting thing to think about when we think about. So frosty shows up in is magic, right like that overthrows everyone's belief. You don't need that scientific explanation like hypothetically these people will then eventually hear Charles's explanation. For now they're just like, actually, I do like snow because I like the sensory experience of being around it. Not the like long term stuff. But perhaps that's what people need. And perhaps that's what Mother Nature provides to like, defend herself. And so frosty is sent as like an avatar to like, forestall or prevent or push back on this intrusion of this inhuman technology with no insight to the longer term.
So when you said avatar, I just had this flashback to you're telling me about this play? Like an old play? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Do you mean, it's finally time to talk about the Cherry Orchard?
Yes, go for it, hit me with it.
Listeners may not know because I think it gets cut out of every recording. I am trying to get Katherine to talk about the cherry orchard, which is a play by —
Chekhov (Anton).
Yeah, yes.
It's a good play. I'm just personally neutral on it. And Juliet is personally not neutral on it.
Sure. I think it's an okay comedy. But I think one of the really important lessons of the cherry orchard is nature will not actually send us an avatar, like, like Frosty the Snowman, which might sound like simple, you're like, Yeah, of course, Frosty the Snowman isn't going to show up. But if you talk to people about, for instance, climate emergencies, there's a general sort of like, oh, well, we'll figure some technology out that will save us right? Or, nah, I don't know, maybe it's just the the spheres that I find myself struggling in all the time. But it really does feel like many people have an underlying unspoken belief that like, King Richard, the Lionhearted is going to show up and fix a problem. If it gets bad enough.
You know what I mean? Or, yeah,
— and be this like Deus Ex, but there won't actually be one, like, not sending an avatar to us in the chair. Yeah, so.
So we're gonna say, if not nature, then like, capitalism is going to stop it in the right innovation will, you know, just kind of erase and solve all of the problems.
And I don't know, like, you know, maybe we will figure out a bunch of stuff. I really do feel like there's this undercurrent of belief that will, if things do get worse, there will be a thing that makes them better. Again, there'll be a natural resetting force, because that's so intrinsic to so many of the stories that we like to tell that we'd like to hear that we'd like to engage with. And one of the reasons I really choose the cherry orchard as an important text when teaching economics and all sorts of fields, is there is no avatar. Okay, we need to be the avatar, we need to think long term to actually take things seriously beyond our literally immediate circumstances. Like, oh, I'm literally just cold right now. And the thing is, because if we don't, we will lose absolutely everything. And like everything, everything.
Your surroundings sounding a lot like Charles from Frosty Returns.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is why I love to teach the cherry orchard. And this might sound a little doomer-y. But this is why I think Charles is important, because he really does make the point which is accurate, that we could do this thing. We could just decide as a society to use Summer Wheeze. And then it could just be the end. Like the end the end, like no more humanity, though. No snow could genuinely I mean, if you follow this through to its natural conclusion. And again, it feels like very like why are you being so apocalyptic? Because it's like, we could make the hard swerve wrong turn at any time in end life and human life on this planet.
Right like, like not in a fun way but you only live once. Sure. Society is over I was that a natural? Because
you only live once is literally a quote from frost. Oh, I
was trying to bring that up. I think it's so funny when frosty Towards the end says you only live once and then wait. Because back again some day Don't worry viewers,
Frosty returns, but actually you — you at home? I hate to say this but I'll be pod for Castmas is like every other piece of art. It's about confronting the fact that you too will die one day.
Yeah. That's one of my favorite Julietisms — all Art's about making peace with the fact that you and your loved ones will die eventually—
including our podcasts.
Katherine sounds like she's joking here but that is a thing I say slightly too often. I don't I don't see it in casual conversation. But like it is a useful lens for for discussing most pieces of art. I think.
I know what I genuinely believe it has changed the way I think about media because you can always trace it back to temporality and grief and coping with limited time.
This came out in 1992, right? Yeah. Did frosty returns invent YOLO?
100%? Yes. It's the first time I remember hearing that breeze.
Yeah, like wild to think about
specifically with the wink. Mm hmm. Hey, so okay, we're all gonna die. However, frosty comes back one day. Oh, okay. So the same way you always talk about how all art is about death. One of my favorite pet theories about the world is that frosty returns, and frosty in general is kind of a priceless figure. And I think this conversation is justification for that because frosty returns is all about frosty coming back to tell us how to live.
Oh, so
he's sacrificed himself. Right?
Yeah. I mean, he's a martyr in case the Christmas Christ vibe was not showing enough. He gets crowned king at the end.
Ah, oh yeah. Because Twitchell wanted to be king and everything and frosty is literally crowned king at the end of this story.
So he's crowned king at the end, Christmas is all about the Christ is king, while frosty is also King, which is kind of a poetic justice because as you mentioned earlier, I think Twitchell is like really money and power hungry, like he wants to be the king.
He not only has this like net like, this ambition, and this desire for money and everything. He also has this like really specific desire to be king. And I want to use Frankenstein actually as our lens rather than the Christ child for a moment.
That is the premise of this podcast, so I approve.
Which is to look at Twitchell as the victor. And not the winner. Because of course, frosty is the winner, Victor Madison's and Victor Frankenstein. And I think perhaps what makes twichell even more ominous than Victor Frankenstein is that he's a plutocrat with aspirations of Regency and wealth accumulation, of course, rather than this son of a bear.
Oh, so Victor Frankenstein is just like born rich. In mobile, and born noble Twitchell is very much like, also trying to play God, like like both Twitchell and Frankenstein are trying to override mother nature and not really thinking long term about the moral implications of doing so. What do you mean by him being a plutocrat? Like, I guess Frankenstein would be more diverse Democrat. Why do you think that's more ominous? So
there's a thing to talk about here, which I sometimes call the Scaramouche conundrum, because it's a particular idea, which is not a flawless and unimpeachable idea, but it's one that I first encountered in Rafael Sabatini's "Scaramouche" which is it's an okay book, the the first light is quite famous. "He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense of the world was mad."
Oh, I don't know it, but I liked it.
So is it possible for there to be a good king?
No. Sorry?
Is it possible for there to be the good son of a baron?
Probably not.
Probably not. Right? Probably not. But it is conceivably possible. Because when you're born to a particular power, yes, it is quite difficult. But let's say, you know, a wild sequence of events, leads you who would not normally be in the seat of power to inherit that seat of power, you might have other connections and preconceived ideals and ideologies that carry you forward, that have not been crushed by the system around you. This is very rare, and I don't think it's good to pin our hopes upon it, I don't think we should assume that we only have good aristocrats or the good aristocrats we do have will be enough. But this is part of the conundrum. Because the hard working business owner, right is the person who is slowly amassing wealth. Scaramouche is set in the French Revolution. It's a it's a romance of the French Revolution is the subtitle of the book. And one of the questions of the French Revolution, as most of the revolutions of the last several 100 years, unfortunately, is, you have people who have power because of their title, because of a name because of the aristocracy. And you have people who have money, because of business interests, specifically business interests, where they're able to extract wealth, from the labor of others, extract wealth from others, I extract wealth through, you know, a variety of different different means, and they want power commensurate to their wealth, whereas the aristocrats want wealth commensurate to their power. Eventually, they get it if they can pull off the revolution during the right social circumstances for better progress. But however, and it does, sorry, is it possible for someone who derives their power from extracting wealth from others exclusively? And recently, like personally, you know, is it possible to have a, you know, morally praiseworthy, or even well intentioned plutocrat?
Unlikely.
Deeply unlikely to the point of impossible, literally counterfactual like, like, it's not, it's not a plausible thing. Because the act of doing the one, the act of gaining the wealth itself, which then leads to the power entails a great deal of evil, or it's the aristocratic the evil could have been done generations ago, which is not to say that they won't continue to do evil, but they haven't necessarily already done it in order to get to where they are. It's deeply unlikely, but it isn't definitionally impossible, the way it is for the plutocrats. And this is that Scaramouche conundrum, which is to say that like, well, certainly an aristocracy is not a particularly good, but we shouldn't necessarily be deluded into thinking that a plutocracy is significantly all that better. I ended up I think, looking at Twitchell where Victor could have been like, an All right ish, dude, you know, like, it's a shame that he isn't and he wasn't, but TwitchelI was like, I am so rich, but I want to be king. You know, he's, is it possible for him to be good? I mean, he literally murdered someone in the story for even questioning him in in his company, you know,
obviously a dead body she just disappears through a trapdoor. Ah, yes. I'm assuming that to referring to also —
We can think of that as a fantasia, perhaps.
I cannot believe I'm defending Twitchell, but he does come around in the end, and when Frosty is crowned king, he's kind of like, okay, I gotcha. And stops this evil Summer Wheeze stuff and decides to sell like winter gear instead,
I guess, but I think chasing like his business empire, right.
Oh, absolutely. But I think the show wants us to see him as redeemed,
I guess. And I guess hypothetically, being redeemed by frosty would To me, like Christ, frosty more of a Christ figure,
thank you, thank you.
But I want to wrap it back even further, and kind of point to frosty being crowned king in the end, as both trying to address the idea of like, can there be a good king, and that our desire for a good king is part of the same flaw as expecting or hoping that somehow Mother Nature will save us like the cherry orchard?
I feel like you're trying to turn the end of frosty returns which the feel good happy and it's a kind of a an ominous, you know, quandary there.
So if we like, zoom back out a little bit, thinking about frosty as similar to the being,
the being is not a Christ figure. Oh, or is he? Oh, hold on. Julie. Yeah.
Is the being perhaps a Christ Child figure rather than a Christ Savior figure, you know, coming into this world without the the normal means and the normal sin? Yeah,
I mean, immaculate conception, see what frosty only if you consider mother nature of virgin which I did.
Also!
so given that the being was also not born, could you say that the being is also like uniquely born without Original Sin in that way, like this? Fantastic possibility, this opportunity for something good to potentially happen.
I say the book is implying that the beings creation is the original sin,
or An Original Sin for the new line, yeah,
yeah, I don't think we're supposed to think the beings existence as a as a net positive,
unlike Frosty the snow, man.
Yeah, yeah.
So what's one thing, having looked at Frosty the Snowman as a song Frankenstein as a story in frosty returns as a special? What's one takeaway that you'd want to come away from this series of episodes with?
We talked about empathy in our first episode, and we've been talking a lot about climate change in this episode. Um, I think if we're, if we go back to that practice, and hard work, versus the easy shortcuts, binary that you set up earlier. I don't know. It makes me think about how empathy itself is something that requires the hard work and the practice, there's not necessarily a shortcut to feeling empathy for other people. It's kind of something that given our society you have to work at and make sure you go out of your way to do it's also, I think, inherently human. But living in a society that wants you to take all these shortcuts and live in the moment and not consider the long term implications is very much at odds with having empathy for the world as a whole and trying to learn and reduce harm where you can with the people you don't see that are harmed either now or in the future by some of the shortcuts we take.
I think that's a great way of thinking about it. And I think, you know, one of the overwhelming feelings that we felt reading Frankenstein was, as you said, of empathy, of this kind of seeing Frankenstein, and seeing the being, and how much he's trying to know and get to know and understand and connect with others. And seeing Holly and her desire to connect with others and seeing Frankenstein in his ability to help people connect — sorry, and seeing *Frosty the Snowman* and his ability to help people connect. What a slip of the tongue there.
Imagine if Frosty the Snowman could have appeared and Frankenstein. I mean, in frosty returns, he manages to bring Holly into a wholesome, happy Sleigh Ride with Mr. Twitchell of all people like Mister Twitchell, the villain, the monster of frosty returns. Holly finds empathy and invites him to join her her like royal sleigh ride after Rasta gets crowned ki imagine a Frankenstein had had that what a different ending that could have fed.
Which I wonder then,
if Victor Frankenstein had anything wrong in his life
at all? Uh huh.
If the Bing could have been like an intercessor to help, but instead Victor has no problem going on and therefore must kind of create a problem for himself.
His problem is that his internalized homophobia Well, with that,
I'm going to play the outro music
Well, unfortunately, the Cop of time is Hollering Stop on this episode.
No notes. That was perfect.
Thank you for listening to I'll be Pod for Castmas. I'm Juliet, you can find me on the internet at @folly on co host and @follypersist on Tumblr.
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You can find the show at @Christmas on cohost and wherever podcasts are found. At the end of the year here, I'd like to shout out a few other podcasts that really inspired the work that we do here, including Ranged Touch shows like Game Studies Study Buddies, and Homestuck Made this World and other shows on the Moonshot Network like the Podcast Mines and the Maniculum.
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Christmas in July looking forward to it. But until next time, you haven't cast mist
And to all a pod night.
Hi, there, my name is Max Newland, my friends and I love anime, but you don't have to take my word for it.
Hello, my name is Max Kostrach and I have a confession today. I do love anime.
Hey there. My name is Stevie Mattos. And I love anime. Like I love yogurt parfait is I watch it. I engage with it. And I think about it a lot. Give me a good bet of Mechs, sprinkled with some a harem anime, a slice of life and some little dabs of sports anime? Let's go.
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So what do you think is the main difference between Frosty the Snowman the original special and 1992's Frosty Returns?
That's a great question. So the original was set in 1969. And that one's really located in a city whereas the 92 one is very much in the suburbs. I mean, in the opening song, there's a reference to how this town is perfect because there's a lot of places to park your car. Right?
Everyone has their own little like so low house that you have to shovel by yourself. Everyone's like piling up the snow. It's got this like upper midwest sort of feeling. But which is also not just like a transmission, transposition of place but also a transposition of time of this, like suburban suffocation of, you know, the United States and how that affects how we interact with our geography and our climate.
Yeah, well, it's a little strange because trustee returns has this sort of sci fi element of the spray can I can make, you know, like magically disappear, which gives it this almost futuristic five, which like, almost implies that the suburbs are just like, the sort of normal backdrop is inevitable. Like this is the status quo, then we're going to add this metal layer into it to make it interesting, but like the suburb as a default, kind of weirded me out.
That's a great answer, but it wasn't the one I'm looking for.
Ah, do I get a did I fail?
The right answer. Yes. Is that frosty returns has chili dogs?
What was the question?
What's the difference between Frosty the Snowman and the original?
