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Author
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Comment
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(12/5/05 11:44 am)
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Jack Frost
The ABC Family Channel ran a marathon of Rankin Bass holiday movies this past Saturday - of course I had to watch them all! One that particularly grabbed me this time around (though it's not the first time I've seen it) was the Jack Frost movie. The way he's portrayed in this movie makes him seem a lot like the Little Mermaid. There's a human girl who's in love with him. There are no other sprites like Jack Frost and he's lonely. He asks Father Winter to let him become human. Father Winter grants his wish for a season but tells him that by spring, he must obtain a horse, a house, a bag of gold and a wife, or forfeit his humanity forever. Naturally the first person he meets as a human is the girl who loves him - but of course she doesn't recognize him as Jack Frost. In the end, Jack gives up his humanity to save the girl's life and she ends up meeting a "knight in golden armor" and marrying him. (In a nice twist, Father Winter gives Jack one last opportunity to become human and ask the girl - I think her name is Elisa - to marry him, but it's too late. He arrives at her home in time to be invited to the wedding taking place that day.)
I don't know why the comparison to the Little Mermaid never struck me before - perhaps it did this time because there's been recent discussion about her here.
Does anyone here know where the idea/legend of Jack Frost originates? I learned about him - not the Rankin Bass version, but the sprite who ices our windows in winter - in elementary school. I just did a quick and dirty Google and, unfortunately, nothing about the legend came up. It was mostly about the recent feature film and, I think, some singer.
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(12/6/05 9:50 pm)
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Jack Frost
Pantheon.org says he might be of Norse origin, citing the etymology "Jokul" (icicle) and "Frosti" (frost). I'm inclined to be suspicious of that, since finding a word that sounds like Jack and also has to do with winter is tempting but not really necessary. There's a long tradition of personifying the weather, and the English seem to like tagging "Jack" on things to make it more personal.
www.sonofthesouth.net/Cen...Winter.htm
But as far as contemporary representations go, this site shows an 1864 Harper's Weekly illustration which depicts Jack Frost. It credits the artist Thomas Nast with the popularizing the modern image of Jack Frost, of which this 1864 sketch is one of the earliest.
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(12/7/05 10:46 am)
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Thanks
I wouldn't have thought of looking at Pantheon.org. (Yes, I think you're right about "Jack" and the English. Also, the English "Jack" characters often strike me as having some trickster characteristics - that even carried over to Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, I think.)
The Thomas Nast information is also interesting and I've bookmarked the page. Thanks!
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Richard Parks
Registered
User
(12/7/05 11:06 am)
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Re: Thanks
If I'm remembering correctly, Nast also gave us our current image of Santa Claus as a jolly fat man in a red suit. Nast was a busy guy. :)
http://dm.net/~richard-parks |
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