Walt Disney Animation Studios delivered a hit musical adventure in November 2021 with a Columbian setting that packed diversity and disability under the guise of Disney’s oldest theme – the wonderment of magic. Released to the public in the heart of the pandemic, the flick produced meager and modest box office returns for its theatrical run, bringing home a mere $261 million worldwide at the box office.
Despite the shackles of Covid restricting the film's earnings during it's window on the big screen, the subsequent Disney+ release saw the Madrigal family find their place in countless hearts and homes as a cultural hit when people relegated to their houses were finally provided the accessibility to experience the heartwarming songs such as What Else Can I Do?, We Don’t Talk About Bruno, and Surface Pressure.
Understanding Disabilty Representation In Disney's Visual Media Offerings:
Disney has a controversial history when it comes to the portrayal of disability, though representation in media is crucial for fostering empathy, understanding, and acceptance of a stigmatized and marginalized people within society. Providing the disabled population with a heroic character to rally behind is a powerful opportunity that was often missed in the initial offerings from the House of Mouse – with the most popular disabled characters over many decades being villainized.
Prime examples are the treatments of Captain Hook (Peter Pan), Scar (Lion King), and Jafar (Aladdin), with the most noteworthy and recognizable disabled Disney characters having been placed as the antagonist in films while being the only lens given to audiences for acknowledging the existence of disability in any form, with controversially debated depictions to follow with Quasimodo (Hunchback of Notre Dame) and the titular dwarves from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
When films and television shows feature disabled characters or explore themes relevant to the disability community, they challenge stereotypes and provide audiences—especially children—with role models who reflect the diversity of real-life experiences. Historically, mainstream animation has often overlooked or misrepresented disability, but recent years have seen increased efforts to create more authentic and nuanced portrayals, such as instances we pointed out in our previous feature focusing on the overlooked themes in Wreck-It Ralph. Nearly a decade after the disability representation in the pixelated animated feature, we dive even deeper into a bevy of disability intersections with the 2021 flick, Encanto.
The Madrigal Family - Gifts and Perceived Differences:
On the surface, Encanto may not appear to be a film about disability. The Madrigal family’s magical gifts—super strength, weather manipulation, shape-shifting, and more—may seem as if it is a movie about anything but the struggles of the disabled population. However, diving deeper into the film’s central themes of feeling “different,” struggling with expectations, and questioning one’s worth resonate extremely with many viewers who have disabilities or struggle with neurodivergence. There is a resounding parallel to Wreck-It Ralph in the way that identity is challenged to be something more than what is dictated by the societal designation – in this case, the absence of a “gift” rather than a video game-driven “role”.
- Mirabel Madrigal: The primary protagonist, Mirabel, is perceived to be the only member of her family without a magical gift. She suffers under a sense of embellished exclusion and struggles with her own internal conflict due to her lack of power, which has led some viewers to see her as a metaphor for disability or difference.
- The character arc explored throughout Mirabel’s journey sees her struggling to find acceptance with a forced feeling of being “less than,” and the celebratory factor comes later in the story with Mirabel ultimately finding value in herself. This situation she faces mirrors experiences familiar to many disabled individuals and provides a semblance of hope for a similar success to be found in the future of the oppressed disabled population through the lens of relativity.
- Different disabled people deal with a number of varying struggles and due to this variable, there have been many different takes on what Mirabel’s “gift” actually is. Some theorists suggest that the gift Mirabel holds is the Casita, the magical house that appears to hold a unique relationship with Mirabel over all others, but its possible that we, the audience, are only exposed to the primary protagonist’s relationship with the house as she is our lens for seeing how the family works.
- Another takeaway sees fans believe that Mirabel’s absence of a gift makes her that of a martyr, and it is her lack of said gift that allows the perpetuation of the rest of the Madrigals to receive their own. This school of thought suggests that Mirabel's gift is a sacrifice which keeps the others in receipt of their own respective blessings. A gift that keeps on giving, if you will.
- A more common thought process that translates Mirabel’s place in the Madrigal bloodline sees her as a bit of a balancing act or a cure for the anxiety that the other Madrigals deal with. This is shown with Mirabel calming down Antonio and giving him courage to receive his own gift, it is portrayed through Mirabel’s communication with Luisa when she begins to falter under the weight of expectations during Surface Pressure, and it even displays in the encounter between the perceived perfection Isabella displays while suffering the debilitating denial of wanting to make something other than what people think of as picture perfect, as her communication with Mirabel in the tune What Else Can I Do?
- Mirabel even helps Bruno escape his own troubles by assisting him in diverting rom his place in hiding and addressing the stigmas about why We Don’t Talk About Bruno, and we will dive deeper into that shortly. A less common school of thought suggests that Mirabel echoes the prophetic visions of Bruno and as such explains why he had a vision of her to begin with. Examples of supporting evidence to back this claim are the stuffed animal Mirabel gifts to Antonio before he learns to speak to creatures, her unique relationship with La Casita and seeing it fall apart before others know it is in danger, and even smaller bits of proof such as when she suggests that she would "show this family something new" while gesturing toward Isabella long before her duet with her sister when Isabella indeed does learn to create new plant life in the form of jacaranda and abebuia in What Else Can I Do?
- Bruno Madrigal: Bruno, who is ostracized and misunderstood due to his gift of prophecy, also stands as a figure who embodies the outsider status many disabled or neurodivergent people face. His isolation and the family’s unwillingness to talk about him in We Don't Talk About Bruno can be read as a metaphor for the stigma and silence often surrounding disability within families and communities and treating neurodivergent children as a blemish by keeping their disabilities hidden or silenced as the "family secret."
- Bruno's experience mirrors that of many autistic or AU-DHD diagnosed youths that are kept in their room or locked away as if they were swept under a metaphorical rug. See Harry Potter in his own titular adventure series for another shining example of a child deemed embarrassing sentenced beneath the stairs in a hidden closet.
- In addition, Bruno’s reclusiveness, rituals, and sensory sensitivities have also been interpreted as reflecting certain neurodivergent traits. Many can compare these exemplary character behaviors as symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder or other common symbols that present in otherwise autistic youths.
- A parallel can be drawn between Bruno and those neurodivergent people who endure the term "savant" as if their different way of thinking is something to fetishize or talk about as if they are doing anything else than othering their own peers.
- Tia Pepa: Pepa's difficulty with keeping her weather manipulative abilities under control during times of distress reflects the emotional dysregulation of disabled people who suffer from bipolar, anxiety, and other mood disorders.
- A common relatability to this character is in those who suffer panic attacks when overwhelmed with their anxiety issues during extreme social situations, and seeing a visual representation of a storm on a wedding day is likely an understood metaphor amongst many a wailing wife-to-be.
- Bruno's prophecies are utilised to represent triggers for the emotional turmoil that follows in the head of Pepa, embodied in the verse which states "Bruno says it looks like rain, why did he tell us? In doing so he floods my brain, Abuela get the umbrellas! Married in a hurricane." The symbolism appears as a physical storm that is endured by the suffering bride and her inner rainstorm ultimately overflows to affect all of those who attended her dreadful wedding day.
There are numerous other examples throughout the Madrigal family of disability representation such as Camilo's shapeshifting abilities being a lens for those who suffer the debilitation of Dissociative Identity Disorder, Abuela's PTSD being shown in flashbacks and exemplified via her constant battle to take control over all things, Antonio's silent suffering of his anxiety disorder seen before his overwhelming ceremony, and even the perceivedly perfect Isabella is a lens for neurodivergence by keeping her true abilities hidden under a pretty smile and unleashing her unique way of thinking by ultimately creating unheard of greenery in the form of jacaranda and abebuia in her song, What Else Can I Do?
In conlcusion, it is of pantamount importance to consider that deeming neurodivergence and disability in day-to-day life can be a cruel form of fetishizing or othering that many disabled people are uncomfortable with, because in the "real world" these disorders are often anything but "super." It's a battle of its own just to obtain simple accessibility when faced with the plight of mood disorders, neurodivergence, and physical disability, but through the lens of Disney magic, movies like this offer an important opportunity to provide an uncommon thought process to provide the lesser educated on what positive aspects there could be for people who they see similar to Bruno, Mirabel, and the rest of the family.
Moreso, it's monumental that the population that struggles with autism, mood dysregulation, ADHD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the like are provided with a relatable on-screen counterpart that gives them a lens through which to not only find relatability in someone other than a villain, but to explain their experiences to their own family under the spell of Disney magic in the safety of their own homes.