Lily and The Snowman has been making its way through Facebook. And everyone keeps raving about what a sweet, touching story it is.
Am I the only one who finds this story slightly fucked up?
It’s a 2 minute video if anyone cares to indulge me.
Nope, not just you! The Mr and I saw this last year at the movies (it was an ad for Cineplex I believe).
The poor snowman is a sentient creature fer cryin out loud! Look at how his smile droops when the door closes! It just leaves me sad for the poor thing, and annoyed at the dipshit girl who couldn’t be bothered to care for this magical creature who exists only to make her happy.
Never heard of this but I can spare 2 minutes.
Okay, that’s pretty fucked up.
Eh, I’ve seen worse. I was expecting the snowman to be gone, melted, and dead when the woman came back for him.
When I saw the OP it immediately made me think of Philip Evergood’s eerie painting LILY AND THE SPARROWS, which is in the Whitney Gallery here in New York. Now THAT’S some fucked up shit.
I see why they say that. The snowman is symbolic for the joys of childhood. She leaves them behind, only go tome back to them when she has a child.
The snowman isn’t alive and isn’t actually moving. It’s her imagination.
Of course, you can assume he’s real, but that does indeed make it cruel. And the short doesn’t present her as being cruel.
I don’t like doing that. The story presents itself as heartwarming, and I agree with the underlying message, so I choose the heartwarming interpretation. That sort of thing is always how I experience fiction.
The big problem is putting him in the fridge. In my day, kids died from doing that.
My father sold them. When he brought and old one back, he made sure to take the doors off the hinges.
When she opened the refrigerator as an adult, two gnarled claws made of twigs should have reached out and grabbed her and pulled her inside, as the door slams shut behind her.
Yeah, that’s mightily fucked up. The video, not so much. Ike, is it charming or sad that these young’uns are so easily creeped out?
Eta: And EVERYTHING Evergood did was creepy.
The snowman is Puff, but unlike that bastard Jackie, Lily came back to her childhood friend.
Poor snowman! When she brought out him that one last time, he should have made a run for it.
Take home message: Christmas magic for you is hell for someone else.
All I can say is, we better not invite any of 'um over for mulled cider and Christmas ghost stories. We could scar them for life.
At least she came back. “When She Loved Me”
StG
I’ll agree its sad and poignant little film, but I don’t think Lily is too unreasonable. This is exactly what happens to everything that’s not supposed to be sentient, that becomes sentient. Puff the Magic Dragon, Isle of Misfit toys, Toy Story Toys – heck, they even kill off Data before any other Next Gen main character.
This is the sappy stuff that plays at Christmastime. I suppose the message is, don’t do it to humans.
'Cause humans’ll go postal and stuff you into the fridge.
That was a sweet video, I can see how someone might think it was messed up, but I grew up with fairy tales and fantasy stories, and the idea of a snow golem waiting around for 20 years doesn’t bother me.
I am bothered that that fridge lasted and was plugged-in for all that time…
It’s the Toy Story trilogy condensed down to two minutes.
False dichotomy.
How did he get the doors off the kids?
Ah, the ambiguities of the English Language.
I, unromantically, had the same thought. “Wait, she keeps a freezer plugged in 24/7 for decades just to store a snowman?”
She should have opened it and had to dig through some frozen peas and old leftovers stacked on top of him.
I wasn’t bothered by the idea of him in there but then it was obvious where they were going with it so you knew there’d be a happy reunion.
I vote “sweet.” Wonders of childhood and all that crap, put aside for a time but brought out again to share with the next generation.