The Problem with "Encanto"

Chronic abuse cannot be undone with a song.

Source: Pixabay/Pexels

SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers about the movie Encanto.

There are many aspects of Disney’s new film Encanto that deserve to be praised. The richness of its diversity, its elevation of Latinx voices, and its record-breaking soundtrack rank among these virtues. However, the catchy music masks abusive dynamics in this particular family that might otherwise shock the conscience of the viewer.

The abuse is not deeply hidden. The breakout song, "We Don’t Talk About Bruno" (Miranda et al., 2021), is literally a celebration of shunning, demonizing, and scapegoating a sensitive member of the family. What was the sin that the Madrigals proffer as justifying their years of contempt? Bruno simply stated one day that weather looked like rain. Other lines in the song describe Bruno as a monster with a “seven-foot frame, rats along his back” and blame him for everything from the villagers’ own overeating to how his gifts “left Abuela and the family fumbling," as if the family’s inability to cope with reality was somehow Bruno’s responsibility. In the actual events of the story, Bruno selflessly accepts exile in order to protect Mirabel from the wrath of the family. At its core, "We Don’t Talk About Bruno" is a sad attempt to justify tormenting those who don’t fit the family’s agenda of remaining the most influential in their village.

Bruno is not alone in feeling the wrath of mistreatment. Deep seated insecurities plague the Madrigal family. The most obvious example is Mirabel, who has spent her life being devalued for her lack of a miraculous gift. When Mirabel says, “If you’re impressed imagine how I feel,” we can safety conclude she feels profound pain. Luisa admits in the song "Surface Pressure" that “I’m pretty sure I’m worthless if I can’t be of service." In "What Else Can I Do?" Isabela, who among other objectifications is being forced into a loveless marriage, wonders, “What could I do if I just knew it didn't need to be perfect?” The wounds caused by the Madrigals’ dysfunction go on and on.

Consistently, family members trace the cause of their emotional harm back to their Abuela, Alma. She has invariably placed her obsession with the social standing of the family above the basic needs of its members. In Alma’s view, the members exist first and foremost to satisfy her goal of retaining status and power, and they are only valuable insofar as they can act as means to that goal. Detailed explorations of some of Alma’s abuses can be found online (e.g. Moroca, 2022). Although Alma touts the virtues of community, her actions are in reality the epitome of selfishness. The disparity between action and words is in itself a form of gaslighting and a common tactic of narcissists.

Encanto’s plot development and even its resolution echo the cycle of abuse. Alma seemingly comes to a realization about Mirabel’s worth and her own shortcomings. However, such fleeting and superficial admissions are common with abusers as they love-bomb their way into a honeymoon phase. By the end, the family has ostensibly learned that that they are all valuable even without their gifts, but the movie undermines this message by then gratuitously restoring the members’ miracles. In the end, then, Alma got what she always wanted, and the unfortunate moral is that abuse pays off in the end.

The movie would have been much more powerful if the Madrigals embraced real change in rebuilding their identities and relationships without their powers and the social status they confer, and testing whether, in the long term, Alma could keep up her stated commitment to reform herself. A healthy ending would also see Bruno, Mirabel, Isabela, Louisa and the others grapple with years of healing from which they may never fully recover. (However this would not necessarily open wide the door to sequels.) Instead of a genuine recognition of Alma’s abuse, the supposedly happy ending is achieved only by yet again dismissing family members’ pain.

Like real-life families from the British royals to the everyday bourgeois materialists striving to keep up with the Joneses, the Madrigals present an image we celebrate but it is in fact built upon the fractured psyches of its members and those in their orbit. The casita is not a funhouse, but a golden prison. If we watched Encanto with empathy, we’d come away from the experience feeling sadness and feeling cautious of the stark warning it presents about the insidiousness of abuse.