Elsa, PLEASE I know you’re in there
☃️ When the Disney Channel Circle of Stars ask you to build a snowman, you must oblige.
The year is 2003 and you have just tried your first frozen Gogurt, life has never been so uncertain — life has never been so mysterious. Truths you have upheld for your whole life (six years) change in the blink of an eye. Yogurt can be solid. You flip through the channels on your comically deep television set, and land on the Disney Channel. After all, it is one of only three stations you know the number for, which in and of itself is like a secret code or a prayer that you mutter to yourself all hours of the day. During an ad-break, you recognize the song that is being sung and you recognize the glossy tween faces doing its exaggerated lip-syncing, but the two stimuli are incongruous.
This, of course, is the Disney Channel Circle of Stars — an Avengers Assemble cross-pollination of the channel’s biggest child stars for that year. You are, as the market research suggested, endlessly enthralled.
Over the years, the channel would continue to parade out its heavy hitters — Raven Symone, Hilary Duff, that one guy from Phil of the Future who you are a huge fan of for no particular reason. Together they record pop covers of Disney musical classics like “Circle of Life" and "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes." You can see more plainly now that this was a calculated marketing strategy, coinciding with DVD rereleases of the attached animated films. However, at a gummy six-years-old, all you know is that you like the songs, you like the child actors, and you like your life.
But things change, you grow up and grow away from the channel altogether. In 2008 the 11 rotating members of the group quietly made their last entries to the Radio Disney oeuvre featuring on Princess DisneyMania, and their impact fades to the annals of early aught obscurity only to be remembered on occasion by their singing toothbrushes and 240p YouTube re-uploads.
That is until 2014, when a little film known as Frozen began printing money out of its ass, and Monopoly Man turned Disney President, Bob Iger said, “I’m getting the band back together.”
(For legal purposes that’s not a direct quote, and since I truly cannot afford to get on the wrong side of this Cthulhuian monolith let’s just chalk that up to satire. And Iger, if you ever want me to be in Season 7 of She-Hulk just know that I am on board.)
When the latest Disney Channel Circle of Stars cover was released, I had been away from the channel for almost a decade. In that time shows on the channel had become increasingly obtuse and harder to differentiate from a 30-Rock joke. (Dog with a Blog was a very real show and it lasted for a very real 69 episodes.) The network lacked a Miley Cyrus or a Selena Gomez to hitch their success to, and as culture moved towards the veneration of online personas like the Paul Brothers, the Disney Channel became a parody of itself clinging to its last vestiges of relevancy. To account for this, or maybe very much despite this, was the bloated birth and retread of the Disney Channel Circle of Stars with their timely 2014 cover of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”
This cover was maximalism incarnate. Did you like it when we gave you 11 stars singing your favorite timeless classics? You’ll love it when we throw 26 at you. Did you like the movie Frozen? We’ll give you the most Frozen your body can legally handle. Did You Want to Build a Snowman? Please, build a snowman with our stars, we have Bradley Steven Perry from Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure, you love Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure!
What was created that day, to borrow a phrase from fellow Disney Channel alumnist Debby Ryan, was history.
The video starts with several of the stars stepping out of a seemingly endless parade of black vans. This, I think, is meant to impart a feeling of coolness on the viewer, but to me, it is altogether jarring and unsettling. Who drove these children to this compound, do they even know where they are? In a BTS featurette (gorgeous name for a daughter alert) Sabrina Carpenter said, “We don't get to spend a lot of time together since we're all working on different sets, so it's cool when we get to come together and bond,” Sabrina, is this the first time you’ve been allowed off the set of Girl Meets World? What warehouse are they keeping these Disney starlets in when they’re not in use? I’m starting to get scared when suddenly the instrumental for “Do You Want To Build a Snowman” begins to play.
Then I think of Olaf, and for a moment I am calmed. (God I love that goofy little guy!)
One of the Circle of Stars, Grace Phipps from Teen Beach Movie, says in the same BTS, "There's actually ping pong happening...people are hanging out. It seems stereotypically fun!” Why would she say that? I have replayed her quote dozens of times, trying to guess her intent, searching for something in her eyes to explain this mystifying turn of phrase. Because she’s right, it does seem stereotypically fun. It is almost as if someone in a boardroom had to focus group what the most inoffensive form of “fun” would be and landed on ping pong. Were these children instructed to perform “fun” at the cameras as part of their obligation to their big happy “Disney Fam.” The whole thing feels so dubiously calculated. I refuse to believe anyone enjoys ping pong that much.
Right as I am about to begin spiraling, something changes. Jordan Fisher begins to sing.
Jordan Fisher was at that time best known for his work as one of the supporting actors in Teen Beach Movie alongside mega-star Ross Lynch, who you may know as that one guy who was shirtless on stage a bunch this summer, or as that one guy who was shirtless in Troye Sivan’s music video a bunch this Fall — I hope he gets to get a shirt soon.
Maybe this was the drive that propelled Fisher to come on that mic mad as hell. Maybe he was the only person old enough (save the two baffling additions of full-blown adults Leigh-Allyn Baker and Kevin Chamberlin who looked like they were there maybe to chaperone or to drive the kids back home after wrap?) to remember the glory days of the Disney Channel Circle of Stars — and treat it with the respect it deserved. Maybe he was just bored. But whatever the reason, Fisher decided to turn what Steven Vincent (Vice President Music and Soundtracks, Disney Channel) called, “an ode to friendship,” into a vocal execution the likes of which has not been seen since Diva’s Live.
He ad-libbed over the youths like he was fighting for his life, and in the grand tradition of Disney belters like Christina Aguilera or Demi Lovato, he made sure you heard him. He made sure everyone heard him. You know what they say, when you come to the studio hungry, best believe you’re going to eat, and that’s exactly what Fisher did. It’s almost uncomfortable, watching as the rest of the stars cram into the small room where they originally filmed “We Are the World,” only for them to be entirely overpowered by Fisher’s vocal dexterity. Even with 25 of them, they are no match for Fisher.
In the years since its release, Fisher has explained some of the bewildering background to this musical moment in history. We may not ever fully know what happened there on that day, or the rationale behind some of its more perplexing choices, but his firsthand account has at least shed some light on the situation. In a video on TikTok Live, Fisher explained that he along with some of the other stars received an email explaining the shoot. He said it was “left vague who would be singing what,” and more importantly “who would actually be singing.” In fact, he said that there was even the option to not sing. Fisher must not have read that part of the email.
He goes on to discuss the camaraderie he felt during the shoot, a common sentiment from everyone there that day. He recounts enjoying getting to see other actors and friends he knew from previous work. He even brings up playing ping pong with everybody.
Because if I know one thing to be true, it’s that Disney kids just love ping pong.