I love when musical people talk about what pieces of the music are doing, like how some of the patterns in Surface Pressure break off and make the melody feel unsupported.
Falling asleep but I'm just gonna, like first of all, Abuela seeing Mirabel as a combination of her own powerless self and one of the descendants whose management is the only way she's able to contribute to the community,,,,,,
(and also that while Abuelo Pedro is the only one we see fall to the violence, everyone in the community lost their homes and lives and every third-generation child in the encanto has grandparents and maybe even parents who experienced that trauma firsthand)
(and this might be the first generation where working hard all the time might not be a community-wide necessity just to keep things running, and that doesn't go away easily)
it's said somewhere or other that the individual is a microcosm of their family, which is a microcosm of their community, which is a microcosm of their polity, which is a microcosm of the world
this tiny, isolated community was able to maintain and celebrate their culture over all those decades of rebuilding, and that? is something that doesn't happen by itself.
It takes the whole web of memories, contexts, concepts, and agreements that xyz is something they want and are willing to actively maintain. If there are imbalances, the water sloshes around until it equilibriates, but unlike water molecules, humans can manage equilibriation in ways that are caring and compassionate and meet one anothers' needs.
Point is, the encanto as seen in the movie has begun to grow from survival mode into a state of flourishing abundance because (there must be sociology terms for this, but I don't know 'em) it started with at least the lowest number of people necessary to outcompete survival mode and push it this far.
Culturally, there are things communities do to maximize survival and things they do to strengthen communal bonding (and again, probably more, but idk): to create a shared identity which is, itself, a crafted thing of great utility to those who share it.
The trouble arises when the community's goal changes from incorporating and benefiting its individuals to maintaining itself as an unchanging concept. Once resistance to adaption sets in, it ceases to be participatory and supportive, and is instead restrictive and punitive.
Abuela Alma can't admit there's a problem because there's no backup plan for the "miracle" identity. It's a survival adaptation in the process of becoming maladaptive because it can't be adjusted to include anomalies.
She thought she'd have a different life. When it was destroyed, she built a new one -- but she built it for survival with no consciousness that survival would one day have to adapt into abundance. The miraculous Madrigals are the ones who maintain survival. No one can rest.
Each family member wants to share beneficial connections with each other, but if the family identity is relentless self-sacrifice and outwardly-directed service, then its inverse
It feels significant that in Alma's life leading up to the displacement, we only see her as a member of her community and as a member of a two-person family. Nothing from outside the encanto survived for her; no one from inside became family to her until her daughters married.
With the refugees' communal values, she wouldn't have been sitting on the floor alone with her triplets all the time, but the lesson she learned at the river was that family = sacrifice.
But when they all received their gifts, they could (tHEY WERE FIVE YEARS OLD but when someone's locked in their trauma, time becomes weird and life stages lose meaning), so they had to be directed outward because she couldn't bear being sacrificed for again.
The image of the miraculous Madrigals became her image of family; her role in the family was to wield it for the benefit of others and not lose it again. But to her children, she was the miracle.
It's frightening when you're small and dependent and the one you depend on isn't okay. Kids are learning that they can affect their environment but aren't ready to not have someone safe to turn to, so they think they're not helping enough when the adult in the room isn't okay.
And as kids will, they took up roles corresponding to parts of their miracle: Julieta the Encouraging Caretaker, Bruno the Anxiety Comedian, and Pepa the Strong Emotions We Need To Wrangle For The Good Of The Family.
There's a lot more to say about the Alma-to-triplets part of the family culture, but there's already a huge amount of analysis on the interwebs and I want to get to the grandkids someday.
so, I probably would not have used it as my Luisa username even if I'd seen it before making a journal, but I want someone to have a Luisa journal with the username swolemate
She's aware, and is constantly reminded, that her mood is literally always physically affecting everyone else and also herself. Felix must have been such a breath of fresh air because he isn't afraid of her and doesn't care how she affects the family image; he just wants her to be happy because she deserves it.
I love SO MUCH that she gets to dance in hail at the end. She's finally allowed to feel complex things without sliding into a doomspiral about what her feelings will do to others.
And she sets boundaries when he gets too hype about reframing everything the happy way, and he adjusts ("why did he tell us?") so he affirms what she was feeling while still having his own joy about what the day meant to him.
And I'm pretty sure they're why Dolores manages her own gift so well. She grew up with a really good model of people having different feelings and needs but communicating and adjusting with one another.
Tanks4theMemory
I hadn't caught it, but it fits perfectly. It was Abuela's survival mechanism when she had no one to turn to, and it morphed into everyone having to always be okay or no one would be okay.
The cracks first appeared when Mirabel admitted that she wasn't fine and was wishing so hard that her family could accept the truth of both her strengths and vulnerabilities. (Actually, they probably first appeared when Bruno left his tower, but didn't get as far as they would later because he was still trying to be fine with living in the walls.)
I have MANY EMOTIONS about how most of the time she was carrying it all, it was the structures around her, the things she should have been able to depend on, that were falling apart!
And Abuela's striding through it all going THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE and poor Pepa is stuck being the publicly visible poster child for "stop being not fine or it affects us all!"
Btw I'm gonna need you all to contemplate the mental image of Isabela one day before her gift ceremony, upside down in a tree with a missing tooth and covered in dirt because she'd been digging up the garden. c:
I kind of went down an Encanto song reactions wormhole the other day just because peoples' experiences of them are so much funsomeone watching the songs with no other context was wondering if the house is magic or if it's haunted by "The Bruno"
the metacontext is the powerhouse of the soul?in the nurserywhere they don't mar the family's image of itself.identidon't?it was Hernando
because he is afraid of NOTHIIING!!Also, things I've learned from way too many Encanto reaction videos: the umbrellas are the Colombian flag. ^^
why yes I am freezeframing the songs just to chinhands at details
clearly someone stole them from Hamilton's prop room)this unimpressed face
the delightful physics of the glasses pausing at the top of their arc
look at these nerds. it's about time Bruno took his rightful place in this mess instead of probably watching from behind the wall RIGHT NOW ;a; )
/WAILS