(1/3/10)
Deep Freeze has always been a befuddling experience for me. I would wonder why on earth the intimate, human, and tragic character of Victor Freis would be placed in a plot revolving around cartooned satire and run-of-the-mill apocalyptic vision with banal allusions to Orwell and Genesis conceived by a full-fledged parody of Walt Disney. But now I understand clearly the intention, and while it is a chore to sit through in some regard—the visuals are lifeless, the futuristic cityscape devoid of scope or novelty, and the action jerky—its story appeals directly to the viewer’s perception of tragedy.
From the instant the passive, immobile, ever realistic Freeze is beckoned by the mustached, self-important amusement park proprietor, the character contrast is stark and eye-catching. Grant Walker is a cartoon villain; Freeze is the embodiment of sympathy. Walker wants to preside over a domed utopia and doom the rest of the corrupt world. Freeze wants nothing. When Walker reveals Nora in her frozen stasis, the stakes become higher. Freeze can either assist Walker, make him immortal and help him establish a new world order, or he will lose Nora forever.
And such is Dini’s genius. The smallest tragedy, the lost of a loved one, lies at the heart of the largest tragedy, the cataclysmic murder of billions. Freeze’s individual tragedy is so rich in imagery, feeling, and expression; Nora has a glistening ethereal beauty within her frozen limbo and Heart of Ice has already communicated the extent to which Freeze’s heart aches for her. And because Freeze was not granted a happy ending in that episode, we are implicitly aware that there is no guarantee here, either. But the death of the world doesn’t matter for several reasons. We know Freeze and we are constantly privy to dramatic representations of his wife. The billions that are to be killed are merely numbers, and a single identifiable character matters more than every one of them. The satiric manner in which Walker’s scheme is presented provides further incentive not to care, and the final stroke is the viewer’s knowledge of conventions—the death of so many people cannot happen in a cartoon.
When the dilemma is framed this way, the viewer cannot help but stand behind Freeze’s choice, however obviously selfish and immoral it is. We know that no matter what he does to help Walker, Batman and Robin will save the day. Why should he not choose Nora to an impassive world to which he is indifferent? But Batman, firmly grounded in the world of the story, does not know that he can do anything and everything the writers will him to do, so he convinces Freeze to reverse his actions and dismantle Walker’s Oceana.
The bloated cartoon tragedy, that of a doomsday meltdown, is successfully, predictably avoided. But Freeze’s tragedy remains. I can’t be sure whether Dini intends for us to muse on the curious manipulations of diegesis, but the bitter denouement leaves me thinking about how Batman and Robin cannot be aware of anything that transcends the immediacy of their story. Walker is not a Disney crackpot; he’s a serious threat. The two sit snugly in their Bat Cave coffee lounge, wondering about Freeze but clearly happy about their day-saving heroism. Rarely is the disconnect between hero and spectator more pronounced than when we are offered an exclusive glimpse at Freeze in silhouette against a cavernous blue background, on bended knee before his floating Sleeping Beauty. We are reminded through the power of the iconic image that this has been a tragedy of epic proportions. Doomsday matters little when a man cannot be reunited with his loving wife.
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