The Bechdel Cast - Encanto with Jessica Flores

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

On this enchanted episode, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Jessica Flores discuss Disney's Encanto. (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @jessicayflores on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante, and @jamieloftusHELP Show Notes: Check out Jessica's video "Encanto Explained: In-Depth Review with Historical, Literary & Cultural Context" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n5sGQEO3Ks....and subscribe to Jessica's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/Domesticatedme See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

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from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, They're just dreams. swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them,

are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. We don't talk about Bruno, because if we did, we wouldn't pass the Bechdel test. Wow. There it is.

Yeah. We just don't talk about Bruno because we're feminists. Not because our family has this whole thing going on. Right, right, right, right. That's actually kind of an incredible hack to dazzle and impress your friends when you don't want to talk about a male family member. You're like, oh, well, actually just it's kind of a thing I don't I don't really talk about uh men in my family meanwhile my brother is like at the bottom of a well I'm like well I can't I can't I

can't there's not really much I can do due to the political climate I cannot rescue my brother from this well. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. God, I kind of love how that song became the, was it, it was like almost a number one hit or something. It became just like a pop song. It was on the radio and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I heard, I heard that song before I saw the movie and I was like, putting that song in context when you've only heard it on the radio and around and at CVS. You're just like, oh, oh, I guess I didn't really listen to why they weren't talking about him. Well, okay. Okay. Now you know. Now you know. Now I know.

And now it's been on my mind. I'm so excited to talk about this movie because it makes me cry so much. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. We do talk about Encanto. We do talk about Encanto. Not as good a song, unfortunately. We can make we can make it a bop. We can make it a smash hit. Yeah, we're famous songwriters. So that will be easy for us. Yeah, yeah. Famously. This is the Bechel cast the podcast in which we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point which of course is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel sometimes called the Bechtel

Wallace test originally found in a comic by Alison Bechtdel called Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. The whole test was not really conceived as an actual test. It was just written as a joke. Just a gif. But it's now become a test that we did base an entire podcast around. Anyway, there are many versions of it. The one that we have crafted over the years requires that two characters of a marginalized gender have names. They have to speak to each other. And that conversation has to be about something other than a man. So, again, we don't talk about Bruno.

No, no, no. And ideally, the conversation is, you know, narratively significant, you know, two or more lines of dialogue, etc. So that is the Bechdel test. And today we have an incredible movie that has been requested since truly the second it came out, if not the second the trailer came out. It's Encanto, the movie that took over the world. I'm so excited to talk about it. And we have an incredible guest with us today. So let's get her in here. We certainly do.

She is a lifestyle content creator and YouTuber. It's Jessica Flores. Hey there. Welcome. Very excited to be on here today. Oh, my gosh. We're so excited to have you and to talk about Encanto with you. What is your relationship, connection, history,

et cetera, with Encanto? Sure. So as a lifestyle creator and as a mom, I cover a lot of Disney, both as for my business and in my home but on top of that I am a Colombian American and as someone growing up with not that much positive Colombian median media out there as soon as this film came out my family my friends my community was very excited about it and eager to see what Disney would come up with and so it's one of the reasons why I covered it from the moment the trailer came out until past that. And over the first few months of the film being out,

I created a bunch of videos over it. They've gotten over a million views where I discuss cultural reference, historical background, and all of that. So that's my connection. Yay. And that's how we originally learned of your work, was through one of the YouTube videos.

And we're going to link everything in the description. It's like your work is so fabulous. I'm glad that Encanto brought us to you. Thank you so much. Of course. Jamie, what about your relationship? I was I was holding out on watching this movie because my niece is two and she's just arriving slowly at a feature length attention. And so I had a pact with my cousin that I would I would wait to watch Encanto until I could watch it with her.

And then we decided we wanted to do this episode and I had to break the rules. I'm going to be publicly betraying my niece. But look, in my defense, future Carolina, it was for content and I would do it again. So the sacrifices we make for content. Yeah. But this is a movie that I truly,

as, as I was watching it, it's gorgeous. It's funny. It's great. I can't wait to talk about it. And I was really surprised for, for how short a time this movie has been out,

how much I had already like kind of picked up through cultural osmosis because it's just been like everywhere. And, um, I, yeah, yeah i i have so many questions so many things i want to talk about it made me cry so much and uh sorry chloe and carolina i will still watch it when i come and visit in november of course um caitlin what's your history with incanto? I saw it in theaters. And at the time, I liked it, but didn't love it. And I think it was just because I was in a bad mood or, and I only say this because when I watched it again to prep for this episode, I fell in love with it in a way that I didn't upon seeing it initially. I don't know, like whatever

happened that day when I first saw it initially I don't know like whatever happened that day when I first saw it I was like I was just like yeah that was beautiful and good but I didn't love it but now I'm just like what was I thinking like what was wrong with you Caitlin you were just in the trenches who knows 2021 it was a different world I mean tell me about it. So watching it again made me fall in love with it. I've seen it four times just to prep for this episode. I just kept rewatching it because I was like, it's so nice and good. And I can't wait to discuss it further. So with that, should I get into the recap?

Yeah, let's get into the recap. We have a lot of characters to meet, so we can't be wasting any time. I guess to interrupt immediately, it's so hard for any writer to write in this many characters and have you have a strong feel for who they are and every time i have i watched it three times to prepare two times for scholarly reasons once because i wasn't i was a little sad and i wanted to feel better so i watched it um but just like how difficult that must have been and it works so well oh yeah i can't wait absolutely And just a little fun fact, the family madrigal, Emmanuel Miranda's introduction to the family is the Disney song with the most words ever.

Really? I guess I, but it's, but it's not long. It's just, is it just fast? It's really fast. And he puts a lot in there because he's rapping through it. He's introducing you to the whole family. There's relationships who are the dads, how they met, the gifts, all of that is explained in that one song.

A lot of exposition. I love a good exposition song. I hate a bad exposition song with like a special hate. Because it's, I'm like, first of all, what do you think I can't read? And this song sucks. This is the opposite of that. it's an amazing exposition song yeah um okay so here's the recap we open on abuela alma voiced by maria cecilia botero with her little granddaughter mirabel abuela is telling her about their family history and showing mirabel the candle that holds their miracle. It's also the source of the Madrigal family magic, which came to be when Alma was a young woman.

She and her husband Pedro had to flee with their three babies from intruders, some violent force. If I'm not mistaken, it's a reference to the Thousand Days War. Pedro is killed. Alma is about to be killed, but the candle she's holding creates a miracle, a secret place to seek refuge from which a magical house, Casita, rises

up. And the house, well, Casita's kind of a character in the story. Much like New York in every boring movie I've ever seen. In every rom-com. Yes, Casita is definitely one of the characters. It seems to be kind of like alive and anthropomorphic. The candle also blesses Alma's three children with a magical power.

So when they reach a certain age, the children open a door in Casita, and it gives them their special gift. And the door also leads them to their new bedroom. And then when those three children grow up and have kids of their own, those kids are also blessed with a magical gift. So it gets passed down throughout the generations. And now it's Mirabel's time to receive her gift. But we flash forward to Mirabel as a teenager, voiced by Stephanie Beatrice. And we meet the entire Madrigal family and learn about all of their magical gifts in this exposition song that we were just talking about. Where Mirabel's Tia Peppa, her affects the weather Tio Bruno we don't talk about Bruno I was like sing it sing it sing it I cannot sing um uh Bruno though he left and kind of

estranged himself from the family but before he did that he seemed to be able to see into the future but he was seeing some weird stuff. And also he's voiced by John Leguizamo. Yeah. That's right. Mirabel's mother, Julieta, cures people with her food. Mirabel's cousin, Dolores, can hear the quietest sounds. Cousin Camilo can shapeshift.

Mirabel's sister, Isabella, is beautiful and perfect and creates beautiful flowers. Her sister, Luisa, is very physically strong. And then the kids in the village keep asking Mirabel what her special gift is. And it's revealed that she was not given a gift. Which she's like, I'm okay with this. But no one really takes her seriously, especially her abuela. So today is the day that Mirabel's cousin Antonio is to receive his special gift. It's time for the ceremony. The family and community gather around. Little Antonio opens his door.

We also see a flashback of mirabel as a child trying to open her door but it disappears back to antonio his door works and his gift is being able to communicate with animals i love antonio so much he's like so cute. He's so stinking cute. He's really cute. It knocks me out. And I love that he's kind of, I'm probably to date myself, but he's kind of the second coming of Eliza Thornberry. Kind of the, did anyone watch the Wild Thornberries? I know you didn't, Caitlin. It was a cartoon on nickelodeon about a little girl who could talk to animals and was constantly saving the entire world by like having a quick chat with a with a snake or something fun so antonio has uh talking to animal vibes

which is the superpower i would want my cultural reference for this power is Eddie Murphy Dr. Doolittle okay look so everyone has their version of and they're all very high brow yeah yeah yeah of course Antonio is the best of them all though because he's that truly the cutest character I've ever seen in my entire life wow Wow. It's sickening. Okay, so he gets his gift and everyone celebrates. But Mirabel is feeling especially inadequate. She sings a song about how she's waiting on a miracle. And just then the house Casita starts to crack and break and the candlelight flickers. Something's very wrong. But Mirabel is the only one who sees this and then everything returns to normal. And Abuela Alma doesn't believe

her or seems not to. But then Mirabel overhears Abuela sort of like praying. She's worried about the miracle and the magic and that it is dying so mirabelle resolves to save the miracle she starts by trying to figure out what is happening to the magic so she goes to cousin dolores who again can hear very well uh to see if dolores has overheard anything did you guys see that uh dolores might get some sort of like spin-off series no i heard i did nothing confirmed but i would watch the hell out of that there are definitely a lot of people who would love a disney plus series to continue the story of the family members yeah do do a series for every character right like i i'll sign on for the next 10 years of watching shit. Sure.

Every MCU character is having their own spinoff. There we go. Why not Encanto? And they're mostly boring. Yeah. Okay. So Dolores directs her to Mirabel's sister Luisa, voiced by Jessica Darrow, who seems to know something but pretends like she

doesn't. But then she sings a song about how much pressure she's under to be strong and to carry so many burdens, how she attaches all of her self-worth to whether or not she can stay strong. And then Luisa reveals that while Mirabel was seeing the the cracks on the house Luisa felt weak as if the magic was deteriorating and also one time she overheard the parents talking about how Tio Bruno had a vision about this but no one really knows what the vision was and then he left so if mirabelle is looking for answers she should go to bruno's tower and try to find the vision so she does she sneaks into bruno's room and eventually finds the vision which kind of like physically manifested on a piece of green glass it's broken into a bunch of shards so she pieces a few of the shards together and the image she sees is of

herself so she grabs the pieces she goes like back to her room where she crosses paths with her tia peppa and tio felix and tries to ask them about bruno and then we get the we don't talk about Bruno song yeah the bop of the century takes off another exposition song yes yeah but again another exposition bop Ludwig and Wilmeranda you know people have their opinions but the man knows what he's doing I think uh they all made the billboard top 100 and I think Bruno did get to number one oh my god I'm not surprised that's the best um I know that is very popular song and I really like it but my favorite song of the movie is surface pressure Luisa song that's a really good 100% that is the bop of the movie I think I was the only person in

the theater probably not but I wept when I heard that song because I could relate to that character so much as a first generation American I definitely saw it around TikTok a lot of people resonated with her character and that song yeah I'm so excited to talk about it more yeah that felt like uh that should have been the bop if there was justice in the world that would have been the number one I agree 100% yeah um so this is when we get the we don't talk about bruno's song where we learn that bruno had all these visions of the future a lot of them were like ominous and kind of negative so people thought that he made bad things happen so he

left uh then mirabelle puts all the rest of the shards of the vision together and the images of her standing in front of the broken house, which she interprets as she is the reason Casita is cracking and the magic is fading, which Dolores discovers because she can hear everything. And she's also a big gossip. So word spreads. That shot of her is so funny where it like it's like i know i'm gonna disagree with that oh yeah i i disagree that she's a gossip see it hadn't been established if she'd heard all these things she could have used it to her advantage

as a gossip to like expose other things and and help herself in a situation i think that what drove her to actually say something was the danger that it was bringing to the family and it has been instilled in every single member of this family that their powers their family are the most important thing the most precious thing above everything else and i think that's what drove her to share that as opposed to sharing other things that she may have overheard. That makes sense because she hadn't been established as a gossip prior to that. And so I wasn't totally clear why they were certain she would tell everyone this. But that explanation makes a lot of sense.

That does make more sense, yeah. Just my opinion. I'm sure a lot of people would disagree. No. But that was my take. I like it. But you're right. She doesn't sure a lot of people would disagree. No. But that was my take. I like it. But you're right. She doesn't have a history of that.

And then this would have been, so much of this could have been information she had long before any of this. Right. True. Yeah. So Dolores discovers this. So she tells Camilo, who tells his dad, who tells Tia Peppa. This is all happening at Isabella's engagement party because this guy, Mariano Guzman,

is about to propose to Isabella, but everything falls apart during this dinner. People are freaking out, and everyone blames it on Mirabel. But then Mirabel discovers a secret passage in the house, and she finds Tio Bruno, who has been living in a secret room in the house. And she finds Tio Bruno, who has been living in a secret room in like the walls of the house this whole time.

Phantom of the Opera style. Except without the scary stuff. Like if the Phantom of the Opera was really chill and funny. And just had a bunch of rat friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he felt like his gift was hurting the family, but he loves his family, so he didn't want to actually leave.

Mirabel tries to get clarity on the vision, and Bruno tells her that he saw the magic fading, the house breaking, and he saw Mirabel, but the vision was different. Depending on how you looked at it, sometimes the house looks broken sometimes not either way Bruno knew that his family would assume the worst if they saw it so he destroyed the vision and went into hiding to protect Mirabel so she's like well Bruno since

this vision is so unclear have another vision and so he does his ritual has another vision at first it seems like it's the same one as before but then they notice something different a butterfly and then they see the candle burning brighter and it's because mirabel embraces hugs her sister isabella so now mirabel has to go to isabella to try to make amends with her to like save the magic. So Mirabelle goes to Isabella, tries to embrace her. Isabella's like, I hate you. But then instead of like making one of her like perfect flowers that she always creates, she makes a cactus. And she loves this she's like I made something new and different and it's not perfect and she sings a song about how she's also been under so much pressure to be

perfect and she just wants to be able to express herself the way that she wants to which we'll get back to because it is yes the song of the summer winter autumn and spring i feel maybe every song is the best song ever made but yes so and because mirabelle kind of helped her with this like discovery of her expression she is really grateful to mirabelle so they hug and even though it's clear that mirabelle is in the vision because she's the one who is going to save the miracle. That has become clear. Abuela still thinks Mirabelle is ruining everything and hurting the family. And Mirabelle is like, no, Abuela, you're the one who's hurting the family. And then the house fully breaks and crumbles to the ground.

The Encanto is broken. Everyone's powers are gone. And their house is in ruins looking like we're at the end of the second act it's almost like it's the second act low point things can't get much worse can they and then and then so in all the confusion mirabel sneaks off and abuela alma finds her at the river where Alma was first given the miracle all those years ago. We flash back to Alma and Pedro meeting, falling in love, starting their family, fleeing to find safety. And again, we who the miracle was for it's for

her family and she realizes that the miracle isn't the magic it's her family her family is the miracle so she apologizes to Mirabelle and realizes that the magic was broken because of her. And Mirabelle was like, yeah, but we only have a family in the first place because of you, abuela. And so they have this tender reconciliation. And then Bruno shows up and Alma also apologizes to him. It's so beautiful, the scene between Mirabelle. The whole third act is just like cry, cry, cry.

The nuance. By the way, that's the biggest miracle, to have a Colombian mother apologize to her kids. That's the biggest miracle in the film. The true encounter. Yes. Then they all return to the rubble of their house, and with the help of the community they rebuild casita the

family gives mirabel a doorknob we are all cry cry crying and when mirabel puts the doorknob into place casita comes back to life everyone gets their gift back and the whole family and community rejoices. And that's the end of the movie. Let's take a quick break and we will come back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into

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as a part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes. Most of the time. And we're back. Can I i wish okay this is i'll start with just an off-the-cuff little observation i really loved how this movie took care for characters to apologize to each other who were owed apologies and not to stand up for a male character right away i feel like bruno was owed a bit harder of an apology he was gone for a long time and like his mother did

apologize to him and his sisters were thrilled to see him but i was like guys he's been gone for what 15 years and everyone's like sorry yeah that was probably whoops and i was like oh like i mentioned that was a lot that was that apology that was a lot a lot of colombian children around the world were like oh i wish you know i'll take that i would have taken a you're good i'm good like yeah yeah lived in the walls for 10 years, but got the apology. All good. Okay, where do we want to start? Yeah, Jessica, is there anywhere you'd like to start? We've got so much to discuss. the biggest conversation that I think that I, I got a lot of comments about the film. And a lot of the things that were brought up is the trauma that our families, Colombian families

specifically, but so many families around the world, the trauma that's passed down because of displacement and because of violence. I think it was, it was so unexpected for me to see this. I knew this film would be about Colombia, and they would put Colombian cultural, and maybe a little historical, but the fact that we cover the Hundred Days War, that's basically what started this whole thing. To talk about that, but then the trauma that you see

passed down through generations, I think it's such an important thing to discuss to look at and to talk through i certainly saw it in my family i mentioned that in one of my youtube videos that although you know that happened in the late 1800s early 1900s we still talk about it in my family because it moved our families around. So I have where we all grew up in one village, one town. Now we have family in this part of the country and we have family in that part of the country. And I think it's certainly relevant to a lot of what's happening today because there's a lot of displacement due to violence and due to many other things.

So I thought it was ingenious really to have that be the kickoff of this story. Yeah, I was not expecting that because so many Disney movies are just they're rooted in fairy tales, which like might have some like vague historical references or context, but it's based on mostly fiction. Whereas this movie is like, yeah, pulling from, you know, historical events and really specific context that informs so much of the movie, so much of the family dynamics and generational trauma. And it was unexpected, but like really compelling and moving. Yeah, it felt, I feel like there are a handful of Disney movies that begin with like a traumatic event as and like, I don't know why I'm thinking of the beginning of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I am. But like, something terrible, a family member is lost, people are separated. But what never happens, and what I love what this movie does with such thoughtfulness and specificity to my knowledge is that it brings that theme back where normally it's just like inciting incident someone dies

and that's kind of all you get but bringing it back and rooting it in history and then also like taking the the care to I was trying to think if I've ever seen a kid's movie that takes time to do this, that like shows that yes, Mirabelle's grandmother has been careless with people's feelings and like should be called out for that. But Mirabelle, as part of growing up, needs to like understand the context of where that pain comes from instead of just because I thought it would have been so easy to do we've been I feel like we've been talking about this on the show a lot just kind of girl boss character decisions that are very rooted in the individual of like screw you mom I'm gonna be a dancer or like you know that thing yeah where it's like the the older generations

pain and experiences are just cast off as like you're old you don't get it and like this movie is so nuanced where it's like we are rooting for mirabelle when she stands up for herself because that is something she hasn't been able to do so far. But also she is open to hearing what her family's history is and like work on it together. And I just, there's, I can't think of a lot of movies that do that with such care. It's beautiful. Oh, absolutely. And I'm going to come out and say it. I am 100% an Abuela Almastan.

I love her character. I love her so much. And I think a big reason is because I have an Abuela Alma in my family. And in order for me to fully love someone, I have to understand the context. I have to understand where they came from, what happened to them, what trauma they've lived through that has made them that way. That makes them maybe a little bit colder, maybe a little bit colder maybe a little bitter maybe a little more stern but seeing especially i just love the way that you see you know in quote-unquote what happened in the beginning of the film but then you really

see it through her eyes what happened and the difference between the trauma that you see when she's finally opening up and explaining it or showing us what really happened and how violent it was and how vicious i also appreciate that the directors have been very open with communicating with fans especially jared bush he is constantly answering questions on twitter and it's through these tweets that I got confirmation from Jared that, like, listen to this, okay? This story, when she gives birth, right, that's exactly one year after the war broke out. So she gives birth through three kids. They flee their town. She hikes a Colombian mountain. Her husband is killed in front of her eyes eyes and she's given a miracle and then becomes

the de facto leader of this entire community on the same day oh the same day wow so like i don't care how much yoga you do and meditation how zen you are that is gonna mess you up yeah and so i appreciated that story so much more. And you can understand her. And I hope it helps people understand her more when you realize all of that happened to this one person, and why she holds on to her family, and the miracle, which she thinks is the protection, that violence is still out there. That violence lasted in Colombia for a very long time. And other types of hardships happen in that country. And that's all just across that mountain. So you have to understand all of that to understand why she holds on so tightly to her family and why she is the home that saved her from being killed and allowed her to raise a family in this safe haven. So no wonder she has such a strong investment

in the thing that protected her from this violence. And extends it to her whole community, too. I love that it's not just her immediate family who's protected. It's this entire community that she's like not just her immediate family who's protected it's this entire community that she's kind of the the unofficial leader of and it's like she's their protector and i i feel like it's at first and even as a viewer because i was so like mirabelle's the best ever um because i'm four years old when the first time I watch a movie, but like the, how,

you know, if you don't have the context for who she is, that incredible pressure is like easy to overlook, which is true of a lot of like matriarchs in particular. And, and, and I also loved how the middle generation, the parents,

or I guess Mirabelle's parents and aunts and uncles, like where they fell. Where normally I feel like in Disney movies, it's like parents and children. And this, the parents are kind of middle people in a way in like mediating this. They're a bit on the sidelines. Yeah, which I thought, I mean, I wouldn't, outside of Tio of tio bruno i feel like you know he's the most prominent but i i liked how those characters were often sort of used as a way of bridging where abuela was coming from versus mirabelle's frustrations and it just it works to to kind of return to the generational trauma that informs this story um so friend of the show jose maria luna also did a video essay on this movie and he talked he spoke a lot about

about what we see on screen regarding colian culture and the representation of Colombia in this movie. And he explained that it's not just the food, the geography, the architecture, the plant and animal life, the art, clothing, music, characters, gestures and expressions, which he felt was all very authentic. The thing that screamed Colombian the most was what you were talking about, Jessica,

as far as the themes of like dealing with trauma, trying to heal a broken community, because it's a country with a very complicated history fraught with violence. And that violence was mostly a result of colonization, ethnic cleansing, extremist political movements, killing and violently displacing people. So it's this, again, history fraught with violence that affects every person from Columbia or every person with family from Columbia. That is like really what made this movie feel Colombian to people who would recognize that because like I you know prior to seeing this movie or researching for this episode I the only things I knew about Colombia were what you tend to see in media which is like drug cartels and like right and I obviously

knew that that was like blown out of proportion and that you can't trust most media to represent, especially American media to represent like a South American country responsibly. Anything authentically. Yeah. So there was a lot that I didn't totally know about Colombian history. And upon again,

like researching for this episode, I learned a lot more. But I now have an even like greater appreciation for this story, for incorporating all this historical and cultural context so meaningfully in a way that because you can like, and we'll talk about this, but like the directors of the movie, it's three people. Jared Bush, Byron Howard. but like the directors of the movie it's it's three people jared bush byron howard and it was co-directed by uh sharice castro smith um who i think was brought on a bit after the fact and we'll talk about that but um i was like are these two white guy americans like how do you know which is the case for almost every disney animated movie because that was we had this same discussion six six years ago when moana came out we were just like why why and and

and for i mean well we'll talk about the production and it seems like everyone tried to but it's just like but why but why two white guys i mean we know why but right right you don't expect that a movie directed by two white guys are going to really fully incorporate all of that historical and cultural context as well as they seem to have done but they seem to so um but you but you're absolutely right you, growing up when I would tell people that I was Colombian, what can I show them that says, hey, here's where my family's from? I didn't have anything. I didn't have anything because everything that was out there was drug cartels. And even to this day, what is out there?

It's still the same kind of violence, drug cartels, you know, a guy who's been dead for like 30 years, like, that's all that is ever represented in media. And so I think that's one of the reasons why I certainly watched this film feeling like a four year old, because I was so excited that I have finally something that I can share and say, like, this is where we come from. Look at all these, you know, beautiful plants and animals and look at the food and listen to the music and this is where your family is from and it feels like it represents the the people of Colombia in a way that most media doesn't where you have you know you see a multi-generational Latinx family you have indigenous representation you have Afro-Latinx representation in Felix and

his kids are mixed Afro-Indigenous characters. And the movie seems appropriately cast as well, where like Afro-Latine characters are being voiced by Afro-Latine actors, for example. You have representation of different body types, especially with the female characters. This is something we talk about all the time where like in animation, male characters tend to be, you know, animated any which way, like a huge variety of body shapes and sizes. Whereas the women tend to be, you know, like Barbie-esque in their design and animation. It's a sexy ghost. Sexy ghost in Ghostbusters. Why?

Yeah. This is most notable with Louisa, but you have different body types represented on screen in the female characters. While also not defining any character by their body type. Or you get, obviously, Louisa's strength is a huge element of her character, but that is not what defines her. What's strength is a huge element of her character but

that is not what defines her what defines her is um the bop of the movie and you know her her struggle to hold everything together and yeah I um Caitlin I think we talked about this when uh we were prepping for this but I really loved learning about the production of this movie and how this movie forced new technology in order to better represent a wider, particularly with hair. the technology because animation as we've discussed many times is so centered on white protagonists as is most media still that the technology literally did not exist to animate every hair texture and so one of the i mean of the many incredible legacies of this movie that technology now exists it started i guess the it was the whole thing but it like started back with tangled the the hair movie uh and then in moana they had to um develop technology that allowed them to authentically animate just darker hair in general because it's such a blonde you know

white princess centric franchise at disney and then in kanto they continued to push the technology even further so now um the studio and animators everywhere have a very easy accessible tool that will allow them to uh animate every hair texture which is huge that's awesome and as an animation, I was very excited to see that. Love it. Yeah. Beautiful. Another thing that, and this has been pointed out before and by you, Jessica, in one of your videos about Encanto. movie feel especially Colombian is um so uh magical realism um is something that is very prominent in Colombian fiction literature just like storytelling that takes place among family

and and friends stories that get passed down and most notably the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez who of course wrote A Hundred Years of Solitude. And it seems as though the movie Encanto was loosely inspired by that novel. A lot of like narrative liberties were taken, but there are different parallels that you can clearly draw that exist across both works, as far as like different characters being similar in the movie in the book um yellow butterflies being a motif in both yes absolutely there's like intergenerational tension and trauma there's all these like kind of common elements across both this movie and the book 100 years of solitude so

just wanted to point that out yeah absolutely and that's one of the first things that I wanted to cover in my videos, because I feel like it can be a difficult film to understand if you don't understand that aspect of the inspiration behind Encanto. realism because magical realism is so important in the Colombian, you know, world. So we see elements of things that were specifically written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, like the butterflies and the different generations of family, a hundred years of solitude. Actually, originally, this story was going to go through a hundred years of one family. Encanto was? Yeah, yeah. yeah yes and so anyone who wants to go more in depth into this i really encourage you to look at um the book uh oh i forget the name now but it's it's a book about the making of the film oh cool so you see some of the original characters animated and how they combine certain characters together to so that it's just these three generations. But it was going to go originally over 100 years.

But I think one of the important things that when people were telling me that they didn't understand it or they didn't get it, it's mainly because in magical realism, things are magical and that's just the way that they are. There's no real explanation behind it it's just this person has lived a thousand years and okay and so we just it's just accepted and i think there's elements of that in encanto like the house is alive and you don't need to know why or who it is the house is just alive and it interacts with the family members so once you grasp that explanation, I feel like it's more becomes a little more comfortable to accept the story a little bit.

And that does, it feels like that fits in very cleanly with like the Disney tradition, but in a very culturally specific way. I loved the way that the house is animated is so cool. The book is called The Art of Encanto. It it just came to me it's not some complicated title it's called the art of encanto there you go i'm adding it to cart i want encanto stuff yeah i i wanted to um and and i learned about this in part again jessica from your series of videos about encanto about the process of how because anytime a movie like Encanto that is directed by two white guys and ends up being good you're like okay let's let's follow this how did this happen um because it's never because two white guys were automatically like I'm so committed to doing you know so um I wanted to talk about the development process of this movie a little bit before we jump into the characters proper.

So these are the guys I believe that co-directed Copaganda Masterpiece. Zootopia. Zootopia. Yes. Eclipsed only by Paw Patrol as this developing generation's defining copaganda. But it sounds like Encanto went through quite a few different versions before it arrived at this, like you're saying, Jessica, this three generation Colombian story. Lin-Manuel Miranda was brought on very early and it sounds like was the one to push for not just a full-blown musical but also for a full cast of the family which I feel like is very unusual for a Disney movie to have so many main characters and then

they also as production continued i think realized even though i'm like how did you not realize on the first day but whatever uh that they needed to do quite a bit of consulting work and and so i wanted to talk about uh that a little bit and how they put together what was it called the uh the colombian cultural trust cultural trust yeah so uh i think like a lot of movies there was a lot quite a bit of research done but in in terms of how many people were paid to consult on this movie it sounds like it really shows where they had a um what's the word for flower person? A botany consultant. Yes.

To make sure that Isabel's storyline was not just beautiful Disney girl, it was authentically Colombian and all the flowers that were being shown. And they brought in Charisse Castro-Smith, who I also wanted to talk to. She is, I believe, Cuban-American. Yes.

She is not Colombian, but did have kind of a huge... Her career is kind of fascinating. I had not learned very much about her before, but she was like an actor, playwright, and then sort of pivoted to being a full-time writer, and this was sort of her huge break so they did bring in a Latina woman writer but she wasn't there from the very beginning right but and specifically because she writes about magical realism or she incorporates magical realism in

her works that's why they decided to work with her yeah so what i from what i read and understand is that jared bush and byron howard were like we're going to write the first latine disney animated musical what do we do like they weren't sure what the story should be or what country to set it in but they were collaborators with two filmmakers Juan Rendon and Natalie Osma who are both Colombian and they were like well why don't you go to Colombia so Jared Byron Juan Natalie and Lin-Manuel Miranda went to Colombia did some research started to conceive the story from there Juan and Natalie were then kind of brought on as consultants for the film.

And then Charisse, who started out as a co-writer, nine months into, I'm not sure if it was like the development or production or exactly what stage, but at some point Jared Bush was like, hey, Charisse, why don't you co-direct this with us? Which felt like a similar trajectory as as we talked about this for Coco, where director Lee Unkrich, who is like a legacy Pixar white man director, was like, I'm going to make Coco.

And then Adrian Molina, who started out as, I think, a conceptual artist or not a writer or co-director on the movie but he eventually became those things because he just had so much insight about Mexican culture and family dynamics and things like that that Lee Unkridge kind of realized oh I'm maybe a little out of my depth here let Let me bring on a collaborator to like... I thought it would always take them two years to be like, perhaps I'm out of my depth. And I'm very glad that, you know, Jared Bush is enthusiastic and wants to interact with fans

and he seems like a lovely person. I just like, I'm very ready for this era of like, two white directors realize two years into production that maybe they're not the appropriate director and then they bring in a co-director and I feel like I I hope that we are sort of exiting that era with I mean we we just covered Turning Red which was completely Domi she's you know a lot of her life experience and commenting on her own culture and like it just feels like we need to get to a point where that is the standard right because she co

wrote and directed that movie rather than like being brought on right a year or two later if anything it'll save them money it'll save them money not having to pay all those consultants it'll save time because like the movie doesn't need to be in development hell for three years if you just bring on people who like if if people who already know what they're talking about are the people to conceive and write these stories and then direct them like it saves time and money and everything i mean like and everything will be a development hell forever but it does seem like it will save a lot of time and money to not have to, like, hire people to explain the movie that the guys are directing to the guys directing it. Who probably also cost a shitload of money because they directed the animal copaganda movie.

So they probably cost a lot to hire. Right. Again, all due respect but yeah it it seems like a very roundabout Hollywood way to uphold a system that is costing them money time and you would get I mean this movie is absolutely incredible but if you know if you had just had a Colombian animation director from the beginning, how much easier and maybe even better would the final product be? But it does seem, I mean, I will not to hand it to a multi bajillion dollar corporation, but it does seem like there is concerted effort going on within that company to make sure that there are non-white and non-male filmmakers

that are being actively mentored to take on because to take on projects of this size but I just am like okay let's get to the era where it's like we don't need this like middleman legacy white guy director yes but the question I always come back to is yeah disney is putting in an effort to be more inclusive in their storytelling and the people they hire to tell stories but is it only because that's a hot and profitable thing right now and this company just wants to turn a profit and yes of course i mean yes i mean for sure maybe it's partly a company that does have a very nasty history of racism anti-semitism all kinds of really nasty things that they put into their movies targeted at children and families maybe they are like oh we should course correct this but is it

course correcting for the right reasons you know i think there's individuals within that company that certainly feel that way and have a vested artistic interest in doing that but yeah i know like i'm not no one's going to argue like disney famously anti-capitalist like they they want money i think what is important is because that is always going to be the situation with disney is them being able to realize that i mean in kanto it was gigantically stupendously successful and as was moana as was coco and it's like these there's a huge demand for stories that do not center around the same, you know, four white French people or whatever

that they've been making movies about for 500 years. So, you know, because they're freaky, scary capitalists, I want them to put that capital in the hands of the right people and the right directors and all that stuff. For sure. Yeah, I mean, how many times are we going to say Latinos are in like with Jennifer Lopez

and Ricky Marga, Latinos, it's the new thing. Latino. Guess. Yeah. Guess what? Maybe we might be in always.

And so let's, let's just keep going. Maybe it's, it's a long-term thing, which is like why it's so important to have people, as incredibly important as it was to have the consulting team built out for this movie to work the way it did, it's like we need more Latino people in leadership roles so that you can't just be like, actually, this moment is over

and we're going to have these two white guys go back to animal propaganda. Because it does feel like that, by keeping these sorts of patterns and systems in place disney's giving themselves the freedom to opt in and out of um giving a shit about not the same four white french people right uh let's take another quick break and then come back for more discussion. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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as a part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes. Most of the time. But yeah, that reminded me,

I was telling a friend, I'm like, listen, I love Lin-Manuel Miranda as much as anybody. He's a genius. That's just like a fact. But he can't, he can't write everything. We can't. Give someone else a chance.

He's doing the Cuban thing, the Colombian thing. Like he can't do it for everybody. Right. Yeah. One of the, one of the few criticisms I saw around this movie was, I mean, I just genuinely don't have the scope of knowledge to know. But that some of the songs, like they wanted, people wanted more authentic Colombian music worked into the soundtrack than was there. Which, again, I'm not familiar enough with music native to Colombia to know. But I was curious of your thoughts on that, Jessica.

Sure. I do have thoughts on that. I think that, listen, it's a Disney musical. It's not going to be like, I don't know. I don't even know what to compare it to where like everything, like it's not like when there's a musical and it's all ABBA songs or it's all Beatles songs. That's not going to happen. And I think Lin-Manuel Miranda did do a really great job in this. He did a lot of research.

And so what he said in interviews is that he took not only music that was born in Colombia, but that is popular in Colombia, that it is in the Colombian world. So, for example, like Surface Pressure, it's like a reggaeton song. Reggaeton wasn't born in Colombia, but it's definitely something that's heard all over Colombia. Isabel's song is based on rock and espanol from the 90s, which was huge in Colombia. There's a lot of rock and espanol bands from colombia so that was a way for him to incorporate colombian style music and um the song by carlos vives i was shocked when i found out that lynn manuel miranda wrote that song i could have sworn that that was just another carlos vives song if i would have heard it on the radio i was like okay

i guess he must be out with a new album is that the the Dos Oroquitas? No, that's Colombia Me Encanto. Oh, right. Okay, yes, yes, yes. So he clearly had, you have to be a fan. He said he was a fan of Carlos Vivas. You have to have known that music in order to write a song in his style that goes so well with him. So there were, even those songs that don't sound colombian there there is a colombian element to it but the part where you really get colombian sound is through the score

and uh germaine franco the person who did the the score did an excellent job i mean she brought in instruments that were made in colombia in choco they they had a an Afro-Colombian chorus sing background in it so there definitely was elements I think just people were expecting like all all like cumbias or all vallenatos and were maybe surprised by that but I as you know someone who who like who saw um what's uh Vivo, I knew it's not going to be all Cuban salsa songs throughout the whole thing. Because personally, I could see that being boring to someone else.

If you're not from that culture, you may not have the appreciation of hearing those songs over and over or that style of music over and over again. So I think they did a really good job with making the score very traditional Colombian from all over colombia and then having the main musical numbers that lima miranda wrote be colombian inspired or

based on colombian music that was popular throughout the years cool thank you yeah i was i was curious and and lima miranda the man can ride an earworm. Holy shit. Also, shout out to the Titanic reference in Circus Pressure. Caitlin and I are number one Titanic fans, Jessica. We're number one Titanic fans. You see a very Titanic-looking ship. Oh, they knew what they were doing. It was approaching an iceberg.

And then there's the, the lyric, the ship doesn't swerve. Has it heard how big the iceberg is? And then you see, I think it's three donkeys playing like a string quartet on the deck of the ship. That really did it for me. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. I was like, they did this for me and Jamie. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Embarrassing how I was like, oh, Caitlin saw that too. How exciting for us. I can't wait to talk about it.

I guess that's all I have to say about it. But yes, I did notice. Just a shout out. Let's, well, actually, before we move into the characters, Jessica, was there anything else you wanted to touch on or discuss about the way that Colombian culture is represented within the movie with any sort of specificity? I didn't want to move out of that too fast. Sure. And to continue the discussion about having, you know, white directors at the forefront of a movie that is not about their culture.

I will say that I personally feel like they did a really good job. They were respectful about it. They knew what the burden was and that they went out and did a lot of research because you can see it throughout the film. I think most of the people that I spoke to, I would say more than 90% of the comments that I got from people who were Colombian or Colombian descendants said that they saw their family reflected in there they saw their homes um they saw even like gestures um even the choreography which the first time I saw it I personally I will speak for myself don't think about how that comes together yeah but um they brought on a colombian choreographer who's actually from my neighborhood

jackson heights jackson heights has a rich colombian population john leguizamos from jackson heights and so they hired uh jamal sims he's the choreographer but he brought on kai martinez and that's why those movements where you see the way that they you know wave around their skirt their pollera like that's truly colombian that's how we dance the little the gestures of pointing to stuff with your lips like that's how you know when you get into those details like you know that they did the work yeah that's amazing i yeah i was reading about the choreography process because it's also just something i don't think about when it comes to animation at all because you're like oh yeah someone had to do that um and yeah it seems like

they were um the choreographers were like involved in production like way earlier than an animation choreographer normally would be just to make sure that like that like you're saying like the emotions were authentic and also just like beautifully animated and it just ah it's so cool and one of my favorite colombian moments and i talk about it in my video is when mirabel's father catches her with the vision and dolores sees them he says miércoles do you guys know what that means oh is it because he's trying to say it's the way that like English speaking people will say like sugar instead of shit. It's like him saying instead of. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And that is like I do that. Like that. We we do that. So it was like you you you were hanging around with some Colombians. I know you were. That's very funny. I was like, I. I know you were. That's very funny. I know.

I was like, I think I get this joke. Thanks to years of Duolingo Spanish. And shout out to my two Spanish tutors who I know listen to the podcast. Mercedes and Adriana. Yeah. Should we get into the characters? Let's talk characters, baby. There's so many good characters to discuss. Shall we start

with Mirabel? Let's do it. Especially because so much of the movie and the story centers around female characters and their relationships with each other. Also was not totally expecting that to be such a cornerstone

of the narrative. But yeah, there's a lot so mirabel's whole thing is she is the one like non-magic family member or at least of like the madrigals like you know obviously her father and t.o felix don't have magical powers because they married into the family but she was expected to have a gift and she doesn't get one and then continues to deal with the aftermath of that throughout her life. I think she's a teenager. I think it's maybe like a decade after she she was supposed to get her gift. She's 15. 15. Okay. And so, you know, she's had like kind of a decade of like the community and like certain members of her family not taking her fully seriously. Relationships with her sisters have developed over the years in interesting ways that we'll discuss. And her abuela is like kind of the main perpetrator of this, I think, kind of like repressed inadequacy that she feels where she tries so hard to impress her family. She tries so hard to impress her abuela.

And her abuela is just like, maybe you should just kind of stay out of the way. And you probably secretly feel bitter that you don't have a gift. But don't like project that. But don't project that. Keep that repressed, please, is sort of the vibes. I really like, I mean, it's just like such a character you don't see very often of like a character who is being asked to make herself small and be okay with it. And like kind of the toll that that takes on her over time. And like people pleaser representation is strong. Strong and Mirabelle.

Yes. And to have a whole song dedicated to like her whole I like I want song. It's like I want to be seen as valuable to my family and to my community. And I want to like feel good about myself and i'd like it seems like a lot of where her self-esteem and where her like sense of value comes from is feeling valued by her community and that is sort of a trend for the whole family that's also something that comes up with luisa quite a bit is like she needs to feel like she is being a productive addition to the family and to the community and it's like breaks

your heart from the very beginning because mirabelle is extremely valuable to her family and her community we see her doing all kinds of shit she is beloved by the whole community but it's but it's also very easy to see why she can't see that right away and oh yeah i just love her yeah i really i really enjoy that scene of when the guy gives her the gift because she doesn't have any gifts the you know the not special special that happens so much in our culture well they will point out your deficiencies in a loving way though it's like uh it's totally fine like no i'm dying inside but okay right and then you hear mirabelle's song waiting on a miracle where she's like i'm not fine and i'm like i also repress my emotions

but in a way that is more emotionally mature than i was when i was 15 she does not take that out on other people in the way i think that we often see teenage characters do which i don't feel is like necessarily good or bad it's just different than what i'm used to seeing is like she i love her relationship with antonio where it could be so easy for her to see a kid that is about to get something that she did not get and take that anger out on them or create distance between the two of them but she's so loving even though she still has to live in the nursery because she'd ever i was like abuela let her out of that damn nursery i know i'm like can't they build her a room of her own

but but i just i i love her character so much because she is like a fully realized person and we know what she feel like, why she feels deficient. And also it's very clear that that's not actually true. And she still finds like a way to be very kind and empathetic towards people who can't extend her the same right away, which I think is right. It's beautiful. and it's also a burden all its own and the movie actually explores that because she does get her moment of being like abuela fuck you like i'm cool but then again we we also understand why abuela is the way that she is right because she's dealing with trauma that is so hard to deal with and and mirabelle has the empathy and the capacity to like want to know and understand i just she's a great she's a great character it's

great and i i like that they're both the only madrigals that don't have power like you're they're kind of like setting up like these are the matriarchs then this is the next one in line that you need someone who doesn't have power to guide the ship of the family yeah guide the titanic well let's hope not let's hope not well yeah that famously did not end very well a ship that doesn't sink right yeah i do i i like the elements of um that's always like a family story that I think is like compelling to watch of an older generation looking at someone of the younger generation and being like, I am in this picture and I don't like it kind of thing. in Mirabelle that she can't know because she didn't know her abuela when she was younger. And being able to connect on those points and see their similarities and how, I don't know, I feel like it's a, you know, sometimes someone in your family sees themselves in you and sees that as a threat or like a deficiency because of how they feel about themselves.

Right. And just so many so many layers we got a shrek style onion wow okay i was wondering when shrek was gonna come up yeah i find that relationship between mirabel and abuela just like rich and complex and the more the story unfolds the more you understand where both characters are coming from and again because like as we discussed alma was violently displaced from her home she lost her husband was made the leader of this community in a single day in a day and then and then over the course of the next many years had to raise three babies as a widowed mother, living in constant fear that it could happen all over again, because it very well could, because of what was going on in Colombia at the time. like passed down to the next generations and because abuela is so concerned with losing this

like safe haven she is so hyper concentrated on like keeping the magic and in like making sure it's it's there and and so anyone who doesn't really have magic to contribute she kind of feels like it's sort of in the way so she feels like mirabelle doesn't there's not much she can really do which obviously weighs on mirabelle and she does so much but then like she knows she has worth like she's like i can help out i and so that's why she like sets out to like save the miracle prove herself you know she's trying to live up to her family's expectations which is like such a relatable thing for so many people it's like you know like the pressure and then these expectations and pressures are something that um Isabella and Luisa also feel which they sing about beautifully in their songs but so it's these three sisters all feeling the pressure and burden of these expectations and dealing with past trauma and

everyone's sort of bottling up their emotions everyone feels so much pressure to like be perfect and live up to these unrealistic expectations it's just like oh there's so much right and continue to be worthy of the miracle because you don't yeah when that's going away so that's another added pressure that abuela alma's in and what she instills in her children. And it's like, I don't know why I got this miracle. I don't know when it's going away. So we need to make sure that we are deserving of it.

Exactly, exactly. And then like, as we've discussed endlessly on the podcast at this point, earlier Disney movies didn't have mother-daughter or like daughter-grand daughter grandmother relationship like any type of like mother figure and daughter relationships and in this movie you know centers on a relationship between a young female character and the matriarch of the family which is a refreshing change of pace when it comes to Disney movies and I would say it's just an interesting dynamic that doesn't get explored enough in movies in general so yeah that that relationship is like at the crux of the movie is really cool I really yeah the last thing I had about Mirabelle's relationship with Abuela is just there's there's so many similar the more I watch the movie the more more you're like, oh, these two are so similar. One of Abuela and Mirabel's huge similarities is compartmentalizing in the moment and then privately expressing their frustration and emotion, which Mirabel doesn't even seem to really realize Abuela is doing until she overhears Abuela talking about how because abuela has to uh mirabelle

realizes over the course of the movie put up such a strong front of like everything is fine which is exactly what mirabelle does that you know she seems to think that her abuela does not realize that something is incredibly wrong and it isn't until she overhears her abuela that she's like oh abuela does know but she just can't acknowledge it because it's just it's too much and acknowledging it makes it real and if it's real the magic will go away and oh right yeah which is like such a theme and throughout the entire family but i think particularly with the women in this family because it also kind of popped for me with certainly with mirabelle's sisters but also with tia peppa whose whole power is she controls the weather which is like visually oh so fun but also like there are like

all of these moments and i feel like we've seen other characters. I'm trying to think of the movie that's like rattling around in the back of my head. But controlling the weather as sort of a way of the emotions have to be in order to, or that's how they operate at least at the beginning of the movie to uphold this miracle. And like the sacrifices that come with it. What I will say, what I really enjoyed about Bipa. Yes,

that's all absolutely true, but it was surprising to me and even shocking to, I think I was watching it with my aunt that she talks back yeah to abuela like what do you want from me you're lucky it's not you know this i remember watching it with my aunt and my own man and i was like yeah because we don't do that we don't do that so even though she yes she needs to control her emotions obviously but the fact that she talks back you know there's some strong women in this film yeah she definitely gets and also it's like i i liked i don't know i'm like and i

i feel like sometimes we hand it to male characters for the bare minimum but i just liked how much felix loved her and like didn't give a shit that like there was a hurricane on their their wedding and he's like yeah i guess that that's what's being married like what being with you is just like and i just i loved you don't get a lot of their relationship mostly in we don't talk about bruno i feel like it's the most time you got to spend with them but i just thought their relationship was very sweet and they were so and also taller wife representation we love to see it she is taller than her husband yes yeah yeah can we talk about Bruno Mirabelle's relationship relationships with her sisters starting with um let's start with Isabella where they don't get along feels to me like a you know familiar

sibling rivalry where Isabella kind of echoes their abuela's feelings that Mirabelle is kind of in the way and then Mirabelle seems to sort of resent Isabella for being so perfect and she thinks that Isabella is selfish and entitled but we learn that Isabella feels this pressure to please her family like she was going to marry that guy Mariano and have babies with him even though she didn't want to but that's what Abuela wanted she wants to keep the family miracle going and to pass the magic down generation after generation so she was going to basically make this sacrifice for the family and then she sings her song which you know mirabel helps inspire this shift in her character where she starts um making cactuses and you know prickly sharp plants instead of these beautiful

flowers that i mean cactus is also beautiful but like things have shifted and she's singing about how she wants to express herself more authentically then mirabelle realizes that she misunderstood isabella for her entire life basically that she was like bottling up so much and and putting on this kind of facade of perfection when she actually wanted to be way more chaotic maybe or just like make her own decisions yeah yeah and and that the the sisters are able to again just like operating on a way higher maturity level than i was at 15 able to identify like oh we're reacting to this pressure put upon us very differently and i mean it is like a really for for mirabelle has to be a traumatic thing to be constantly told, you know, your sister is fundamentally better than you because of how she looks and because of how she is.

And that is, I mean, Mirabelle, is she the youngest or is she the middle child? She has middle child energy to me. I understood her as the youngest. She's the youngest. She's the youngest. She's the middle child and she she has middle child energy to me but i understood her as the youngest she's the youngest she's the youngest of the three um but just to be told like that yeah that your older sibling is just fundamentally better than you and of course because you're like teenagers the older sibling's gonna be like yeah and i'm better than you and i was sort of i wasn't sure at the beginning what direction they were going to take Isabel in because I there was like a direction I saw going that I would not have liked as much as what happens, which is like, I don't know, like Disney has like this, I think, tendency and more recent years to like want to like comment on its past work and so isabel is a character that we would have you know like the the beautiful like chosen one stereotype um is a character that is like very often glorified in disney movies and and so i was sort of wondering like is she just being presented as

the villain because this is who disney would normally consider the hero but it goes way deeper than that and it's like I just love this movie does so much in such a short amount of time to develop like well what would that feel like to have that pressure put on you and how how would you be I mean she's compartmentalizing all sorts of shit as well because of the pressure being put on her and the fact that she and her younger sister can meet each other in the middle and be able to see and respect that and want something different for themselves. I just it's great. Totally.

And then similarly with Mirabel's other sister, Luisa, she is under this intense pressure or feels intense pressure to basically do everything for the family and the whole community, anything that will require physical strength, she's like, I have to do it. Everyone's relying on me. I have to do it. And she sings in her song about how she places so much of her self-worth, if not all of her self-worth on whether she can be of service to people and help people and that she carries such a large burden and never has a chance to like take a break and have and like relax and she confides in Mirabelle so both of the sisters songs are basically Mirabelle showing up and being like anything you want to share any like do you want to talk and then they're like oh my god thank you so I need to get this off my chest and

they like have these wonderful either confiding in Mirabelle or a reconciliation and I don't know I was I wasn't expecting that either to have you know complicated relationships between sisters again another thing that you don't see in in disney movies especially in most media in general but then to have those relationships change over the course of the story and for like the way that mirabelle is to allow her sisters to kind of grow and evolve as people because they like i don't know mirabelle just like helps people look inward and communicate and express that's her special gift yeah funny funnily enough like she doesn't share her own things what she's feeling internally but she's amazing at getting other people to finally let out what they've needed to let out.

And, you know, you said you weren't expecting that. I certainly was not expecting it. When I'm sitting in that theater, like, okay, let's see how they represent Colombia and talk about arepas and the coffee. And then there's this character who just, like, spoke to me and, like, said everything that I've been feeling forever being like the older responsible child where you you're you're the accountant you're the lawyer you're you're looking at I think that's why it resonates with so many people like I saw on TikTok a lot of like

older kids a lot of first generation Americans or like they have all these responsibilities, all this pressure on them to do certain things. And that I mean, I was under my mask. I was just I lost it when I heard that song. It was incredible. Luisa song. Yeah, Luisa song. Yeah. And actually Lin-Manuel Miranda said that he had his older sister in mind when he wrote

it because she he saw how much under pressure their parents how much pressure the parents put on his older sister and so that that inspired that character oh that that song is the the hit of the movie and i i again i was very curious what they were going to do with lewis's character and i mean i the only, this is like a very, very small gripe, but like the, in the song, because it's a Disney story and like the storytelling sometimes has to be pretty,

I get, I don't know, but they kept kind of referring to Isabel and Luisa as beauty and brawn. And there are, and then sometimes I'm just like, but, but Luisa is beautiful. Like,

I wish that there was that was at least acknowledged even in like because I do appreciate that Luisa's power is concentrated in her body in a lot of ways where it's like she has super strength and then I would say on top of that she has a really strong drive to help other people because outside of that what is super strength for if you're not like using it to help other people because outside of that what is super strength for if you're not like using it to help other people seems to be kind of her right ethos um and i was really happy to see that like there was a lot of female bodybuilders or just like physically strong women who were really really happy to have a character like luisa be celebrated and complicated

and and have all these different facets to her because like, I mean, this is like the history of animation and, and American entertainment in general. Like there's, you know, 20 years ago, I feel like Luisa would have been treated very differently based on her body type. And so the fact that this movie, I mean, again, it's like cheering someone on for giving you pebbles. But like the fact that she is strong and that that is celebrated by the movie and it's not the only thing we know about her, which I feel like would have been even a movie 10 years ago would have like made either a joke of that or like had that be the only thing we would know about Louisa.

And I like that the movie, you know, is concentrated on like, well, her real thing is this incredible pressure that she's under and how that has affected her and how that causes her to like, you know, sort of want to ignore what's right in front of her. Because if the house is falling apart then what is her purpose so yeah she's yeah the best and then just with these fleshed out female characters and the fleshed out relationships between them also uh we haven't really talked that much yet about mirabel's mom julietta she doesn't get that much screen time, but I really like her character and her relationship with Mirabel. You know, she's very supportive. She seems to be more tuned in to what Mirabel is feeling. She's just like a very supportive parent. And I appreciate that their relationship feels a lot different from the relationship between Mirabel and Abuela and feels different from Mirabel's

relationship with her sisters. So it just adds to the wide variety of relationship dynamics within the family. All this to say, this movie has such rich relationships between the women in the family which present these really relatable and meaningful themes and messages that are in the movie like knowing your value and your worth and loving yourself and not comparing yourself to others it's things like you know the pressure that we put on ourselves and that we put on others and how that affects individuals, how it affects families, a lesson in not to make assumptions about people and their lives and what they're feeling and what they're going through, which is something that like Mirabelle does to begin with, especially with Isabella. But then she's like, oh my gosh, I made assumptions and I shouldn't have done that.

It's a lesson in the negative consequences of repressing your feelings and your pain. It's, you know, again, it explores intergenerational trauma and how that affects a family. But it's also about like family joy and community working together and helping each other out and everyone having a valuable part in a community whether or not you have a special magical gift and all these like themes are at the core of this movie and it's just beautiful and it makes me cry so so much the last thing i had about the sisters and i jessica you may have pointed this out in a video. I'm trying to, I've taken in so much Encanto content at this point. So I hope I'm correct.

Is just a small detail that I honestly didn't even register for me the first time I watched it. But then I was like, oh, yeah, the fact that Isabel is celebrated in her community as the most beautiful of them all, whatever, the fairest of them all vibe, and has the darkest skin tone of the three sisters in an animation company that has been so notorious for racism and colorism. Definitely, like I didn't realize that at first, but I was like, oh, that is actually a really impactful thing. Yeah, I don't think I brought that up, but I'll take credit for it, sure. Yeah, it was your idea. But what I do say is how she's clearly shown with indigenous features. And there is, like, no Latin American indigenous, indigenous like good indigenous representation like uh going back to

in particular disney like there's no real good latin american representation in media but also in politics and all of that so so many people that's why it like it really did touch a lot of people to see someone like hey hey, that looks like me. You know, that looks like my aunt, you know, the women in my family who live in Ecuador. Like that's, you know, that person looks like me and she's beautiful. And yeah. I wonder, Jamie, if you're referring to a quote in a piece I found by Vanessa Giron in Refinery29. I definitely did read that, so it could be. Critics in TikTok love Encanto, but as a Latinx woman, it means a lot more.

A quote from this piece. A lot of praise for Encanto has centered on its diversity within the family, with a female-dominated character lineup, Felix and his children being Afro-Latinx, and Isabella being the perfect, beautiful young woman while not reflecting whitewashed standards of beauty. Unquote. And that's the case even within Latin American media. Like, you don't see a lot of indigenous characters

in Latin American-produced media unless they're, like like the butt of the joke and I think it's this like took me back to time is a flat circle but Disney had a huge and rightfully so call out in

2021 for failing to represent Afro Latino people in when In the Heights came out. And that was obviously a project that Lin-Manuel Miranda was very close to. I sort of forgot that those projects came out so close together. And at the time, Lin-Manuel Miranda

released a statement, the notes app apology, which did seem sincere, but like notes app apology after the movie was completed and released but that is not an issue that Encanto has so I just thought it was I don't know I mean it could be for any who knows how many Disney related production related reasons that that that these two movies one movie has the issue one does not have the issue but it did sort of make me appreciate even more how Afro-latino people are

just a part of this world like no questions asked because as you could see from a movie that came out like two months before that is still not a given in um in big budget movies right totally the last thing i wanted to discuss is the magical gifts, because it felt to me as though for the women, especially some of their gifts felt kind of like stereotypically feminine or felt like they kind of leaned into some prescribed gender roles for women in a way that it didn't feel quite so gendered for the male characters. For example, Isabella creating flowers. Flowers are generally associated with femininity. Julieta is kind of like the caregiver slash healer and she heals people with cooking and food.

Another kind of prescribed gender role for women to cook and feed her family. Peppa, I would say, like, doesn't control the weather. It's more that, like, she has emotions and then the weather around her is affected by her emotions. Yeah, response to her emotions in a way that kind of felt like, oh, women are so emotional and like the weather's having a storm because of it. The two that didn't felt gendered to me were Dolores who can hear super well. And then Louisa was kind of the only female character's gift that felt more masculine

because her gift is to be very physically strong. Yeah, or like what we're conditioned to think should be a masculine gift. Exactly, exactly right i see what you're saying and i feel like that is such a across the board like guys always get the fun powers you know like it's always right the shape-shifting and getting to talk to animals and getting to see the future yes all felt like so those are so those are like the three male powers and all of those feel just gender neutral to me. So it makes me wonder why the like women's powers

couldn't also feel more gender neutral. But there also might be like a cultural context that informs those powers that I'm not fully understanding. But just kind of on the surface, surface pressure, it felt to me like some of those powers felt a bit gendered and a bit kind of like stereotypically feminine, but curious about other people. And again, like, to be clear, I'm not saying that feminine things are bad, or that you know masculine or gender neutral things are good it's just more than like you know why do people have to be put in a box but also it felt like there was enough departure with luis i don't know like yeah curious about other people's thoughts yeah i i i can see that with isabella with her thing being beauty and flowers and certainly you know creating life in nature

that's more of a feminine uh feel to it but um i don't i yeah well certainly luisa getting strength that's definitely not a right something that we see typically for a feminine character and even foresight i feel like i feel like foresight like seeing into the future might be gender neutral because you know i agree i don't know when i think psychics i think women sometimes oh yeah um that's true yeah like the into the whole like intuition sort of thing yeah or like you know the the witches looking into the cauldron and seeing something yeah i was thinking of x-men because a lot of the x-men powers are also powers that incanto characters have where like where um oh my gosh and i'm gonna get the names wrong storm controls the weather she's a female character but then you have oh my gosh

what's the blue lady i'm so i'm embarrassing myself right now but she's the shapeshifter miss um rebecca rom, Stamos mystique. Is that right? I know that I've never seen an X-Men movie. Wow. Go. I don't know. I didn't interpret the men as having traditionally masculine powers.

I just thought they were like a little cooler. Like that, that was more of like women were given, I guess. I don't know this. And this didn't like super bother me i think i feel like again like isabel is the one character where you're like okay this is a bit much and i at first i mean i i don't know i mean with with mirabel's mom i i think that like defaulting to food is a very easy

thing to do but also it's so culturally important but also it wouldn't have lessened the impact for a man to be you know making traditional Colombian food as well so I could go a lot of ways on that yeah um but I just in general like man I like Bruno can see the like he has the narratively impactful power like I think that's maybe more where I'm like, okay, being able to, like, that is the most powerful power in the movie. And it's, I mean, I guess it did ruin his life. So your mileage may vary. This is also something that I didn't even notice on the first watch. Like, you know, arguably gendered nature of the gifts, the magical powers, but just something that i wanted to bring up but um

yeah does anyone else have anything they'd like to talk about um well i wouldn't we're speaking about characters um i wanted to clarify my dolores gossip oh yeah sure i feel like if she were a gossip, she would have used what she overheard from Mariano's house to benefit her. True. Because she was in love with him the whole time. And at the end of the film, she says that she knew that Bruno was in the walls the whole time. Right. But she didn't say anything. I feel like she was protecting him and because it wasn't affecting the house or the powers in a negative way.

But as soon as it did, that's when she let that information out. I am fully on board with this. I really love Dolores's character. I hope that. Oh, me too. I hope that that Disney Plus rumor is true. But that does bring up something that we didn't hit on because I think that this movie, I mean, anytime, whatever. Another Disney classic is a teenage girl protagonist that we need to have fall in love.

And then in the case when you get around to like Frozen era, it's like, oh, they're going to fall in love. But it's going to be like self-aware. And like we're going to like maybe comment on it a little too much to the point where maybe it's a little annoying. And then in this movie, it's like there's no need for Mirabelle to have a love interest. One doesn't even really get presented because it's like a family story. Not that, you know, whatever, you know, 15 year olds have crushes and all this stuff. But it's just like it would have muddied up the story in an unnecessary way and i like that you do get like side stories about relationships between characters where like we were discussing isabel was going to be basically married off to a guy she didn't love and then extracted herself

from the relationship and then dolores like got you know i don't know that didn't bug me at all because there was so much to because i mean we've been talking about this on this show for years where it's like a relationship being added to a character is mostly frustrating for us when like that's the defining thing of their character it's but that isn't who like like you were just saying jessica there's so much going on with dolores in the very little time we get with her that I was rooting for her to get the man of her dreams like because she deserves it you know she's she's great so I did I liked how relationships were um and it is all hetero relationships in this movie but I thought that the way that they were woven in was pretty cool and realistic and

and you see like a lot of different kinds of relationships too like the tia peppa and uh felix have like a very very sweet relationship that i am jealous of and then mirabelle's parents also have like a different kind of sweet relationship I also just quick shout out to Wilmer Valderrama uh yes just who voices uh Mirabel's dad and he kind of fell off my radar after that 70s show but then I saw a recent picture of him and I'm like oh my god he's the hottest man alive it's a little scary I know that's neither here nor there It's a little scary. I know that's neither here nor there. It's a little scary. But he's intensely attractive. I wanted to say shout out to a protagonist who wears glasses. This should not be noteworthy, but you rarely see main characters, especially women.

I mean, it shouldn't be noteworthy that like a person is wearing glasses because so many people wear glasses but like and have it not be like and they are smart or like just like the laciest and they need to take them off in order to be sexy but yeah you just have Mirabelle wearing glasses and that's just part of her look and and on that note one final shout out to a friend of the cast, Melissa Lozada Oliva, who is Colombian-American and is a dead ringer for Mirabelle to the point where her family got her Mirabelle dolls to piss her off for Christmas because she was so like, yeah, Melissa was like, I know I was on someone at disney's vision board like i know i was because it the side by side went viral it was a whole thing um hi melissa yeah yes shout out to melissa um with that does the movie incanto pass the bechdel test oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah between multiple combinations of characters very frequently throughout the film um which brings us to our media metric the nipple scale in which we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens and how it how

well it does through that lens i'm gonna go four and a half nipples it's getting a pretty high rating for all it does in terms of responsibly representing colombian family and community and culture that you get um representation of people that you tend not to see on screen as we've discussed um indigenous representation afro-latina representation representation of glasses a character wearing glasses tall wives a titanic strong like physically strong women like that is genuinely a huge one yeah different hair textures different skin tones exactly so much as far as representation goes so much as far as um female characters and their relationships being thoroughly fleshed out and developed and just like compelling and, you know,

relatable family dynamics and just so much. I'm only just taking a little bit off for not for the movie itself, but for, and even though the two white guy directors did the research, they made a terrific movie. It still begs the question why weren't Colombian filmmakers the people to make a movie about their own lives and culture why did these white guys feel entitled to be the ones to make this movie also shout out to co-director Sharice Castro-Sm, who also a co-writer and was brought on later in the process

of the film being made as a co-director. But this is more criticism of the Disney Corporation than the movie itself. Because again, the movie is terrific. I love it. It makes me feel more feelings than I realized I even had. And I'll give it four and a half nipples. One to Mirabel. One to Abuela Alma. One to Luisa. One to Isabella. And one half nipple to the Titanic reference.

Wow. I'll meet you there at four and a half. I agree that in terms of like, I think the movie is very well directed and I am glad that Disney did all their research, which again, it's like should be a standard, but it is not, which it's kind of only been a thing for them

for in the last 10 years or so. In any case, this movie is so beautiful and gives all sorts of representation and i like not only in a story sense and in an authentic casting sense and authentic research sense but also literally developing technology so more movies like this can more easily exist i feel like like that is just so huge and the the fact that a, you know, company that has the resources to do that actually did it is is pretty impressive to me. For sure. So I echo what you said, Caitlin, and I think it is beautiful. Also, like just for me, and for, you know, a whole generation of kids, this is going to be like a primer on Colombian

culture, and will be how they understand Colombian culture versus, you know, the whole generation of kids, this is going to be like a primer on Colombian culture and will be how they understand Colombian culture versus, you know, the heaps of kind of disingenuous stuff that we grew up with. So I'm very, very glad that this movie exists. And I just think it's going to be a new comfort movie for me personally. Same. So four and a half nipples.

I'm going to give one to Mirabelle. I give one to mirabelle i give one to luisa i give one to abuela i give one to dolores and i give my last half to tia peppa nice no offense isabel i just ran out how about you jessica um i i'll just you know i biased. I'm giving them five nipples. I just love that film so much. There's just so much in there that, you know, being Colombian of Colombian descent, having, you know, spent my summers in Colombia, seeing my family represented in the film, seeing the food that I eat. I could almost smell, you know, the flowers, seeing my cities, different cities represented in the film. I just, I just love it. And I, again, you're right on Jamie. I like, I have so much appreciation that now that my daughters can say to their friends, Oh, my family, you know, my mom's half Colombian and this is what my, you know, where she, her family comes from, you know, that I can show

that to them and that they can show that to their friends, which is something that I didn't have. So, yeah, they're getting five. If they had more Colombian representation in the forefront, you know, when it comes to, like, directors, writers, music, they would have gotten a complete six sets. I mean, six nipples, like, complete three sets of nipples. But they'll get five from me, and I'll split it's six nipples, like complete three sets of nipples. But they'll get five from me and I'll split it between Luisa and Abuela Alma.

Oh, my bad. And they deserve it. They do. They do. And I hope that now that this, I mean, I think Disney has expressed like, this is a whole franchise forever because it made us a lot of money and it sold a lot of backpacks. Honestly, like Disney will, like if you can sell backpacks,

you're set for life. So I do hope and I'm optimistic that as this franchise continues and as there's Disney Plus shows and sequels or whatever it is, that more Colombian filmmakers will be brought in ahead of the institutional white guys.

So we'll see. For sure. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us and for having this discussion with us. It's been our absolute, I'd call it an incanto. Thank you so much for having me. This was great.

You don't have to twist my arm to get me to talk about this film. So I'm happy to be here. Well, come back and bring another movie you love next time. We would love to have you back. Definitely. Where can people check out your stuff? film so I'm happy to be here well come back and bring another movie you love next time we would love to have you back definitely where can people check out your stuff follow you online plug away okay so my blog is domesticatedme.com my youtube channel is youtube.com backslash domesticated me and you can find me on instagram at jessicayeloflores f-l-o-r-e-s awesome amazing and we'll

link to your Encanto videos in the description as well if you haven't watched them listeners you're missing out buddy you what the fuck was that you gotta watch the videos thank you thank you that was good I don't know I was like where? I lost control of the sentence in the middle. You can follow us, buddies, on... That's what I'm going to call our listeners from now on. Hey, buddies. You can follow us. I take it back.

At Bechtelcast on Twitter and Instagram. You can scoot on over to our Patreon, aka Matreon, where we release two bonus episodes every month on fun little themes that we cook up. Yeah. Plus you get access to the entire back catalog of bonuses, of which there are over 100 bonus episodes. And that is all at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast for $5 a month. And we're getting into horror movie season, and we'll be covering some popular horror requests over on Dematrion. Malignant, ever heard of it? I cannot wait to watch Malignant again.

And if you need merch, you can go to tpublic.com slash The Bechtelcast for all your merchandising needs. And with that, ooh, how do we close out? There's so many possibilities. Well, we did talk about Bruno, but we also talked about Mirabel. We talked about Abuela.

We talked about Isabella. We talked about Luisa and many other characters. And so we did it. We did it. We talked about everybody so we can go home yeah so we can go home now okay bye-bye bye bye Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated crooks everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one woman wiki leaks

she exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds. But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress,

I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.