Letting Go, Coming Out, and Working Through: Queer Frozen

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article provides an exciting and vastly innovative look at the famous song from Disney's "Frozen." Although this film has been discussed many times from the perspective of queer studies, the article's author explores the lyrics of 'Let it go' from an intriguing narrative perspective. Nevertheless, I would expect references - or even a short mention - to other studies from recent years, the authors of which analyzed the queer dimension of "Frozen." The author refers to 'Single, White, Female: Feminist Trauma and Queer Melancholy in the New Disney' by Moon Charania and Cory Albertson, but this is not the only noteworthy text devoted to the queer reading of "Frozen." I suggest (critical?) referring, for example, to the following studies and the theoretical theses together with interpretative concepts presented in them:

Brown, A. (2021). Hook, Ursula, and Elsa: Disney and Queer-coding from the 1950s to the 2010s. The Macksey Journal, 2

Fan, J.  (2019). Queering Disney animated films using a critical literacy lens. Journal of LGBT Youth, 16, 2

Llompart, A., Brugue, L. (2020). The Snow Queer? Female Characterization in Walt Disney’s Frozen. Adaptation, 13, 1

Author Response

Thank you for such an encouraging and positive review, and also for the recommendations for articles to include in the final submitted piece.

I will be including all four.

I had read Brown and Fan prior to my initial submission, but now regret not referencing them as it is important to give a clear indication of the critical scene. Although they do have interesting things to say, I find both to be quite straightforward, and, crucially, neither engages with Frozen in detail/as a film. I have included reference to these two authors in my conclusion, but only as texts that join Charania and Albertson in offering a political reading, but one that does not engage the politics of the text.

I had not read Auba Llompart and Lydia Brugue, thank you for this recommendation. This seemed to me more far reaching and questioning than the texts by Fan and Brown, and as such, it has even more in common with Charania and Albertson (whose work strikes me as complex and thoughtful). As they don’t address the filmic/textual aspect of Frozen at all, however, I have also included them in my conclusion only as texts that join Charania and Alberston, Brown, and Fan in offering an approach that has little in common with my own.

The real surprise was Per Esben Myren-Svelstad, whose article I also had not read. Thank you so much for drawing my attention to this work. I really do think that if my article had been published without a discussion of Myren-Svelstad’s work on Frozen, it would have been genuinely flawed.

Despite modestly claiming that his article ‘The Witch in the Closet’ ‘will only to a limited extent present close readings’, Myren-Svelstad really does properly engage the text through his analysis. This is a brilliant, detailed essay, I thought. It is also radically different to my own. Although Myren-Svelstad is an attentive reader, he is a very different reader from me: he is not interested in questions of narration/perspective, and certainly doesn’t engage the way in which (as I claim) perspective problematises narratives of self. The central focus of my article is outside the bounds of his, in other words.  He also (for example) reads the ice crystals as ‘psychological metaphor’, precisely the reading that I counter. There are many other differences. Equally, he does so much that I don’t do: his response is concerned with the complexities of adaptation; he has, I think, a more nuanced sense of the song ‘Let it Go’ in the context of the wider narrative of Frozen than I.

I have included a 500 word discussion of Myren-Svelstad’s reading in my conclusion. The conclusion now looks at both Charania and Alberston (as powerful politic thinkers, limited, in my view, by their lack of engagement with textual specifics) and Myren-Svelstad (as offering a very different approach to me, with a very different understanding of close reading, and drawing very different conclusions, but, because of his commitment to the text, and interest in engaging ideological antagonisms, the one reader other than me who notices and addresses the ‘inness’ necessary to Elsa’s ‘outness’, that is, the liberation that seemingly comes with the closing of the door). The conclusion now ends by praising Myren-Svelstad – yes, we write  very different things, and have wholly different understandings of close reading, but that is all to the good. Instead of criticising, I draw attention to what happens when – despite our differences – Myren-Svelstad looks in detail at the text: the result is a reading of the antagonisms of ‘coming out’ , leading to what, in my opinion, is a particularly nuanced reading of queer politics. This drives home to me the importance for textual engagement for all in the field of political children’s literature criticism.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read this paper for review. The argument provided within is provocative and engaging, challenging the ways that the Disney film, Frozen, has previously been read through a queer lens that focuses on surface representations and, as the author notes, re-presentations of the film as text. The close reading of the film's iconic song 'Let it go', paying careful attention to language, person, and the relationships between the viewer, character, filmscape, and audience is fluid, rigorous, and persuasive. In particular, the paper is admirable for its determination to read the film via a more radical and questioning lens, interrogating notions of identity, in-ness and out-ness through a flexible and nuanced understanding of Butler's early interrogations of the fixedness or immutability of identities. A thrilling paper in its careful attention to the song, the filmic context in which it is presented, and the curious ways in which it might be read as either queer and/or a coming out anthem.

Author Response

Thank you for such a clear and encouraging response, one that, for me, exactly communicates what I was hoping to achieve in this article.  

Just to note: I have made some very minor revisions (one typo, one slight reformulation, and the inclusion of 4 additional references).

One of the texts I reference was published as I was originally submitting, and it seems to me particularly interesting. I have included a brief discussion of it in a slightly rewritten conclusion. It is the only account of Frozen that I have read that echoes my reading of the necessary ‘inness’ or elsa’s ‘outness’. Our approaches are, however, very different. Significantly, the article is not interested in reading perspective, nor in how such a reading might problematsie narratives of the self:  the central focus of my article is outside the bounds of his. I now conclude, however, by briefly discussing the article alongside Charania and Albertson. Essentially, I praise it:  the article is entirely different from my own in approach, and reaches entirely different conclusions, but these conclusions are nuanced, as its understanding of queer politics. This is because, I argue, his reading is willing to do what so many readers of Frozen are not, and respond to the specifics of the text.