A Grimm Proposal

Just a rat putting the pieces together. SPOILERS FOR ENCANTO (2021). LIKE, ALL OF IT.

Imagine leaving your home under the cover of night. Trekking through dense jungle, the perils of the path you chart lit only by the light of the torches as they run you down. Everything you own is on your back, and everything you love is in your arms, and by your side, the weight that you carry and cling to.

Your shoes are not made for slick stones, and your dress is not designed to withstand the chill of the current as you cross the river. But you can't stop.

As the inevitability of being overtaken makes your brain burn like an iron in the fire, and your legs continue to pump beneath you like the motions of a partially squashed bug that doesn't know it's dead, your life, and your children's lives, flash before your eyes, like a beat of lightening cleaving a tree. A family tree. Your family tree. In that moment, you are struck down not only by circumstance, but a forfeit of hope and delusion.

Your last moments are spent clutching your children to your breast like the rarest of books, as your love throws his arms wide to shield you from a rain of bullets.

Imagine you are then somehow transported to a magical place where you, your family, and "the many" are safe, and have no worries. You are isolated and protected from all evil. And you yourself are no longer one of the vulnerable "many", but a god that is worshiped for their ability to protect and provide. And every day is the same, untouched by time. Every atom is within your control.

All of your children are special, too. And your house is a magnificent sentient beast in whose womb you languish. No one is ever sick or hungry, and no one ever dies.

Until a child is born who is so different, so unremarkable, they threaten the very fabric of this immaculate deception, and have become death in your eyes. A plague which threatens to destroy paradise.

This is Encanto.

~

For those under a rock, Encanto is a Disney film.

An animated musical about a family (the Madrigals) living in an enchanted mansion (Casita) in an isolated village in Columbia, and the magical candle that saved their grandmother (Alma/Abuela) when she was young, and fleeing armed conflict with her husband Pedro, and their infant triplets. Pedro perished, but Alma and the children survived. Now the candle bestows supernatural gifts on all but one of the family's descendants, the "unspecial" child, Mirabel.

When it becomes apparent that the magic is fading, a secret prophecy suggesting Mirabel is the cause comes to light. Abuela, who sees Mirabel as a liability (and seemingly always has), seizes the opportunity to pile on more abuse, while Mirabel, pure of heart, and full of curiosity, sets out to solve the mystery and save the magic, as the rest of the family stands around bemoaning their fate, and struggling to keep up appearances for the villagers who are also captured in this enchantment.

~

It's a film about family and feeling special, and what that means. About generational trauma, and breaking cycles. There is no princess, unless you count Mirabel, the non-magical family member, who is a kind of bespectacled Cinderella. And no true villain. Unless you count Bruno, whose visions are seen as problematic. Or Abuela, who twisted her family to coddle her demons. Or the magic itself, for failing.

Just a family mystery, and some family drama, and a nod to the power of love and self-acceptance.

Awesome, right? Uh, maybe.

I've seen it about forty times, now. That's because I have a four year old, and we have a Disney+ subscription. It's a beautiful piece of animation. The songs are catchy, the house is stunning, John Leguizamo is delightful as Bruno. But from the first viewing, something about it bugged me. After forty viewings, I think I know why.

~

And it's not because Alma obviously died with Pedro at the beginning of the film, and everything beyond this point is a DMT-induced vision of Alma’s idea of Heaven as her brain shuts down.

I AM TOTALLY NOT SAYING ALMA DIED AT THE RIVER AND THESE ARE HER FINAL THOUGHTS. THIS IS NOT A CAILLOU (1997) MOMENT. I REPEAT, THREAT LEVEL "CAILLOU" HAS NOT BEEN CONFIRMED.

(kind of)

But stay with me.

~

Imagine you’ve grown up in wealth and privilege. Every physical need met. Every material wish granted. But you live in a tall Ivory Tower, and your only friends are your older siblings and cousins who have no time for you, and a cast of carefully curated “influences” and “helpers” who perhaps have too much. You learn to be introspective. To escape in books and day dreams. Despite having a vague understanding that the veneer of your existence is itself the dream of so many others.

As you grow and begin to explore the wider world, those others look down on you for how different your life has been, and how it has begun to mold your character. For your lack of self-awareness. For your connections and safety nets. For the ignorance of your innocence. They don’t understand it’s just a social divide.

Now, imagine you're a lower middle class kid attending an upper middle class school. It's the doctor's kid's birthday, and they've invited everyone in class. You're not friends, but your mom thinks you should go.

You show up, and everyone's wearing Gap jeans and t-shirts, and you're in you're Sunday best from Walmart, complete with too-tight shiny dress shoes. The gift is something from the pharmacy. A Tonka truck or stuffed animal. It's not as nice as anything anyone else brought, but still nicer than anything you have at home. The kid’s mom calls it, "So sweet!" and sets it aside, never to be mentioned again.

The kids form groups, play games, and retreat to the birthday kid's bedroom. If you follow, trailing at a distance, standing in the doorway like a beggar peering in a sweet shop, it's probably jam-packed with electronic toys, jumbo plushies, a personal computer, and a matching bedroom set.

You try to fit in, but nobody talks to you. Only the parents, who feel bad for you. And they feel bad because it’s not your fault. It’s just a social divide.

You end up wondering why you came, and why anyone wanted you there.

Now, imagine you're a kid living in a shelter with your mom and siblings, and you're reading about some Kardashian kid's birthday party in some old gossip rag you nicked from the waiting room at the free clinic, or Health and Human Services. There are pictures of blow-up slides and rainbow ponies, a cup cake station, and an ice cream truck. It’s hard for a kid to understand it’s just a social divide.

You go to bed wondering why some people are born lucky, and some aren't.

This is Encanto.

~

At first, I thought that the "unspecial" character, Mirabel, was supposed to be the audience standin. As the film progressed, though, I came to realized that the audience is actually represented by the village.

When Antonio, Mirabel's younger cousin, receives his gift, and his magical bedroom, he is celebrated. His father calls out, "Go, Antonio!" as if his son has won a spelling bee, or made a goal in soccer.

But those are things you work for. This magic, and this room, are given to Antonio like a fancy car at graduation.

The village children enter and marvel at the size and spectacle of the little boy's privilege as he circles his indoor rainforest on the back of a tame jaguar. The children are dressed well, and don't appear to be unhappy; they display no jealousy or resentment. But it feels strange. Like the Stepford version of children. They might as well be cardboard cutouts, with a button you push to hear a reassuringly positive and complimentary response.

I can't help thinking that a magical garden at the heart of the village would have been of greater benefit to the community than a magical bedroom for just one boy. And I keep thinking about how this separates him from the other children. None of them follow him into the magical forest, and you never see him talking to any of them. In fact, that really drives home his loneliness, and his seeming reliance on Mirabel. Is she his only friend?

I feel like the film doesn't want us to ask those kinds of questions. Questions like, what happens if the next family member to receive a "gift" turns out to be Nero, playing his violin while the village burns? I mean, that's valid. But the story is set up to help us overlook the social divides, and focus on the fireworks and warm fuzzies. We're obviously meant to see the "ungifted" as "the happy poor", and the "gifted" as "necessary to society and deserving of spoils", and never consider any "worst case" scenarios.

And you never see any money changing hands, just goods and services. The only authority figure seems to be Alma. Does the town have a mayor? Who represents the people? Wherefore art thou, Democracy?

As Mirabel sings about not being "special", but still being a part of "the family Madrigal", I mentally tack on, "because at least I'm not a peasant gaping at magic tricks". Like she's Tiffany Trump wistfully regarding a family Christmas card on which she finds herself absent. Tiffany Trump doesn't like being Tiffany Trump, but I'm pretty sure that she's still telling herself it's better to be a Trump than a dirty peasant.

I almost gave it a pass, like it couldn't possibly be what I was thinking. Then one of the villagers comes up with a basket, singing, "We don't have gifts, but we are many" as the faceless, giftless gather to rebuild a mansion for their ruling class. When I recounted this scene to my brother, he said, "That's like if the ghosts of the Irish immigrants rose up and rebuilt the Titanic, and happily assisted all of the upper class back on board."

Like the children, the villagers seem happy. But it's wet stucco over a Banksy mural.

~

I'M NOT SAYING WE'RE BEING BRAINWASHED TO ACCEPT THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN INTO WEALTH AND PRIVILEGE, AND BY PAYING TRIBUTE TO THEM, WE WILL REAP THE BENEFITS OF A TRICKLE-DOWN SOCIETY. I'M NOT SAYING THAT. THIS IS NOT A BERNIE SANDERS VS ELON MUSK LIGHTSABER BATTLE OVER TWITTER.

I REPEAT, THREAT LEVEL "BERNIE" HAS NOT BEEN CONFIRMED.

I think it's more of an unintentional mirror situation. This is the reality, and being in the thick of it, most of us don't see it.

~

Take Louisa.

That "drip, drip, drip" song, about feeling the pressure. That's every person, young or old, going on Instagram, and feeling like they're not good enough, and that to "add up" in society, they have to be a superhero, or a model, or very, very rich. And if you aren't one of those things, you don't have value. You literally have to win the lottery to qualify for basic human rights like education, healthcare, housing, and food, and to sidestep premature aging, illness, debt, and disease.

We all know it. Influencers going on luxury vacations during a global pandemic? Teenagers in content houses wearing thousand dollar sneakers? No wonder people are leaving their unsafe and unprofitable life-draining fast food, warehouse, and janitorial jobs, and trying to pursue side hustles. No wonder kids out of high school are opting out of college, and trying to become YouTubers. You can't make the game unwinnable and expect the "villagers" to keep playing.

And what happens if we do keep playing? What is the end result? We end up helping to create a system that will never allow for change. Instead of learning to do for ourselves, we will learn to be nothing more than supporting characters in the lives of the rich and famous, and reliant on their benevolence for the barest of necessities.

The theme of Encanto was meant to be that we are more than our gifts, or the roles we play within our family and society, and to not get locked into those roles. And even if you think you are giftless, or are made to feel so within an unhealthy dynamic, you can always step away from that, and reassess through a lens of optimism. Mirabel's gift was being on the outside of the spectacle, putting her in a unique position to see what others in her family couldn't. From the outside, she could see the cracks, not just the clever facade being driven by her abuela.

That's why Mirabel's character wore glasses. She was the one with the clearer vision, because she was outcast. Although, I'm probably giving the creators too much credit. Mirabel probably wears glasses to be more inclusive, and make her more relatable as an audience standin. I'm skeptical of the intentions behind this defining character trait, because it's never really made clear.

Mirable only sees her FAMILY from the outside, though. And falls short of seeing things from the perspective of the village. She is, after all, "still a part of the family Madrigal." And the village only comes into perspective when they need something, or are needed. It's very transactional. Not at all like the opening of Beauty and the Beast (1991), where we get to know every aspect of village life and it's "little people", in a song that effortlessly communicates the situation in which Belle finds herself, and her feelings about that.

And yet, as someone with one foot in, and one foot out, Mirable is perfectly positioned to see the cracks that neither the family nor the village perceive. The village is busy being starstruck, and the family is self absorbed. Mirabel, standing on the outside of the mansion looking in, with her back to the village below, can see where the family falls short of the propaganda, but fails to see the needs of the village. In fact, the village has no needs beyond church moving and donkey juggling, which seem like unrealistic and unusual requests created solely to demonstrate the scope of Louisa's gift.

~

At times, I feel like the film is spitting confetti in my face while I try to locate breadcrumbs on the glitter-bombed floor of a bouncy house.

The "rap" segments are messy. The storytelling is feverish. Everything feels compressed; like a bunch of burnt s'mores, smooshed together till the crackers break open, and goo gets all over your fingers (hold your peanuts, Freud). You never get a chance to catch your breath, or process what's happening.

And they've got more characters than they know what to do with. The Eternals (2021) had the same issue (not the only issue). Too many characters, not enough screen time. I was left wondering if this story might not have been better served as a Disney+ miniseries.

Ironically, lack of action is another complaint people are lobbing at this circus. That it doesn't feel as "sweeping" or "epic" as other Disney films. That it felt like a stage play, because everything takes place inside the house, over a short period of time. Which, damn. When you go big, and make the Cthulhu of Build-a-Bears, and people are like, "It's smaller than I imagined."

Fans of Lin-Manuel Miranda will probably be more forgiving than me. But having seen Moana (2016) many times, and enjoyed it, I have to say, this is a weaker effort. "We don't talk about Bruno" and "Surface Pressure" are the exceptions. But where "Bruno" serves the story, "Surface Pressure" seems shoe-horned in; Louisa disrupts the flow of rivers AND intimate exchanges.

And Mirabel's emotional ballad, "Waiting on a Miracle", suffers from Stephanie Beatriz's inability to perform at Idena Menzel levels of perfection. I get it. Mirabel is meant to be "average", and proud of it. But the song is an expression of how she feels inside, not a realistic representation of any vocal talent the character has. The voice should meet the standards set by the music. Otherwise, we're left hanging.

Like Louisa and those donkeys.

~

Lousia's music video feels like a commercial for antiperspirant.

Especially, those pop-n-lock dance scenes. I kept expecting her to point to the absence of stains on her shirt every time she raised her arm to elbow punch the air. "I feel the pressure, but my clothes don't!"

I get that this is supposed to be her "Maui" moment. That this is the film's "You're Welcome". I just feel like a whimsical approach to this type of animated sequence works better for someone who's boasting and bragging, than it does for someone signalling their grave distress.

It's a real catchy song, though. Nothing wrong in that department.

~

Were those unicorn donkeys repurposed from Onward (2020)? Are those trash unicorns? If so, I love them. Come to me, trash donkeys!

~

I feel like Louisa is representing women as a whole. If all the strength they're supposed to have, and all the crap they're asked to deal with, had a more obvious physical representation that people could respect. Like, if the "mental load" were a pile of donkeys on their backs.

Teachers, too. Just draw the biggest fucking hero, with obvious bulging muscle, and a pile of kids, their parents, and the rest of the community riding on their backs, and take out a page in The New York Times.

We take women, teachers, and STHPs for granted, but we expect them to carry an extraordinary amount. I think the pandemic did a good job bringing that to light, but some people still need to see a literal strongwoman juggling a house while singing, "Calgon, take me away!" to get it.

~

Isabella's gift is used as a status symbol, similar to footbinding or corsets. It's ornamental. And when it evolves, it's still ornamental. I get that it's on-theme: the flowers are an expression of her family’s toxic expectations, and the cactus are an expression of her healthy self-acceptance.

But what if she'd grown corn instead?

~

Pepa is an example of a Golden Child whose parent decided to feed rather than starve inappropriate behavior, creating an appetite for negative attention.

Think about Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter novels. He stamps his foot, and screams at his parents, and they rush to placate, and make excuses for him. At times, they even seem to take pride in his ability bully, and put himself first. The end result is someone with very little self-awareness, who is easily triggered, and has little to no ability to respect boundaries or appropriately manage strong emotions.

A similar thing happens when a parent thinks that baby talk is cute, and encourages their child to continue mispronouncing words instead of modeling correct pronunciation. You can stunt emotional intelligence as easily as you can stunt language acquisition, but the latter is often overlooked.

~

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Pepa has big emotions, and formidable power. One would think the potential to harm with that power would create concern, even anxiety, about managing the emotions which threaten to trigger it. Like Elsa, in Frozen (2013).

When the house is falling apart, and the family is in crisis, Abuela asks Pepa to calm down. Presumably, because the last thing they need is one of her thunderstorms. Which is rich coming from the person who taught her to rock everybody’s boat with her bad weather.

Pepa snaps, "You're lucky it’s not a hurricane!" like a child locked in a tantrum.

In my opinion, this is a cry for help. She's saying she's overwhelmed with anxiety, and doesn't know how to cope with her feelings.

~

The husbands. I kept wondering why they, who also had no gifts, were not in the same leaky sailboat as Mirabel. Then it hit me: they're breeders.

Ew.

Ew, ew, ew, Disney.

My mind jumped back to an article from 2013 called, "Royal Bodies", written by Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel, a historical fiction novelist famous for her explorations of Tudor England. In the article, Mantel describes the Duchess of Cambridge, the future Queen Consort of England, as, "a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth."

The husbands were valuable in a way that Mirabel was not, which is gross and dehumanizing to both parties in equal measure.

~

There's no evidence Mirabel is the "miracle" bringing everyone together. As far as I can tell, she is only a match left too close to the fire. A match that her grandmother was ever mindful of, but never inclined to stoop and collect. Whether she would pocket that match or dispose of it is not a thing I like to imagine.

Is she the victim of psychological abuse? Yes. Is she enthusiastic, optimistic, and kind? Evidently. But what what action does she actually take to unravel and disarm the family trauma? She finds the prophecy, then loses it, then follows some rats to find Bruno, and it all feels more like accidents than any intentional sleuthing. Isabella discovers she's more than her gift without the help of Mirabel, who's just sort of there for it. Louisa breaks down, and Mirabel doesn't have any advice. "Bring it in" is the beginning and end of what her character offers. Which is cute, but it sort of highlights how much emotional intelligence and maturity Mirable doesn't have.

She's as clueless as a toddler watching their mom fall apart in the parking lot of a Safeway.

~

Mirabel is the scapegoat in a family of golden children. If someone is hurt or upset, she must have done something to cause it. If the house is falling apart, she better get a hammer. It's pretty clear-cut, but also unacknowledged.

When Louisa sings, "Who am I, if I can't carry the ball?" I thought, "That's obvious. And pretty insensitive." Without her strength, Louisa is Mirabel. And it's ironic that Louisa's song, "Surface Pressure", is being sung at the person carrying the weight of a dysfunctional family system.

Bruno broke under the pressure, and disappeared to protect Mirabel from the implications of his vision. To protect her from his own mother. Who kind of demonstrates what a monster the family matriarch can become when everyone's bending over backwards to accommodate unhealthy behavior.

When Mirabel makes a scene at the party, Abuela (the anxiety-riddled vulnerable narcissist) doesn't bat an eyelash as she calls her granddaughter a drunk in front of the entire town. The film normalizes gaslighting and blame-shifting, blundering on as if nothing happen.

~

Why did they keep a teenager in a nursery?

Why did no one say, "Hey! Casita! Could you build a room for a teenager, for Mirabel? Thanks!"

This feels like shaming and indentured babysitting.

~

How does young Alma know she's having triplets without an ultrasound?

Were the writers just stuck on that Chris Columbus, Hugh Grant in Nine Months (1995), slapstick imagery? Or could they really not think of any other way to tell the story of the triplets in six words or less?

This scene has white people dancing to Motown all over it.

~

Encanto is fundamentally a Marvel movie; our bread and butter in this age of false hope. The Madrigals are the X-Men, Abuela is Professor X, and Mirabel is Thanos. Or, something. You can work it out.

Yes, Riddley Scott, you old demon. Take my upvote.

And hold my beer.

~

If you're familiar with the original Grimm fairy tales, you'll know they were meant to teach morality to the masses (albeit, a morality relative to the time and culture), and the harsh realities of life (it finds a way).

What moral judgements, or harsh realities, are communicated in Encanto?

You have to be born special. If you're not born special, you're born a villager. A villager lives a life of socioeconomic dependence, and happy servitude, to their "born special" patrons. If you challenge the facade, be prepared to face the pitchforks, And hope that you have a magical house or castle that will fight the rabble on your behalf.

When we pass down moral judgements without questioning their origin or relevancy, it is the same as signing a contract that you haven't read. If no ever questions the fine print for fear of reprisal, how do we move beyond the limits of our current reality?

We don't. We stagnate, and sink under the weight of an inability to evolve, like prehistoric beasts trapped in a tar pit.

~

In The Little Mermaid, Ariel wanted legs. Legs are a big ask. The forfeit was her beautiful voice. An enchantment is also a curse, because it is an exchange that requires a sacrifice. Without sacrifice, there is no balance.

This magical candle came at a price that is undisclosed. This got me asking a lot of questions. The gain is power and protection from the forces of chaos. But what is the tribute? And to who is the tribute paid? Who's the Sea Witch in this story? THAT'S why it's so strange this movie has no villain.

The children are beneficiaries of a huge inheritance. But who died, and who paid out?

~

The questions brought forward by this film made me think of the Aztec deity, Tezcatlipoca: god of smoke and mirrors, war and beauty, ritual and prophecy. Also known as Titlacauan: "We Are His Slaves", Ipalnemoani: "He by Whom We Live", and Necoc Yaotl: "Enemy of Both Sides".

His animal counterpart was a jaguar, by the way.

Sacrifices to the god lived like kings for a year, as a living embodiment of the deity, before willingly surrendering to their death. Are the Madrigals living embodiments of a deity, meant for eventual ritual sacrifice? In Pre-Columbian cultures, child sacrifices were performed to satisfy a deity. Was Maribel not given a door because she was meant to be a sacrifice to a deity?

Is the Madrigal home like the house in Poltergeist (1982)? Not a haunting of a house, but a person (and possibly built on the site of a Columbian mass grave)? And not a haunting, but something more like an exchange of goods and services? The kind of exchange the villagers have with the Madrigals, and with the house by proxy, and that Abuela has with the magic that flows through the house.

In Howl's Moving Castle (2004), the wizard Howl had to give up his heart to the fire demon Calcifer to make his house move and perform as it does. Could the spirit of the house have been some kind of hitchhiker demon, sensing a young woman's fear and pain, and attaching itself to her in a moment of raw vulnerability? Then, feeding off that vulnerability, and ensuring it's continuance through generational trauma?

Or was Abuela's husband's sacrifice the catalyst for the creation of the candle? Is his soul in the candle? Is the house powered by the soul of their murdered abuelo? Is 'Casita' actually 'Casito'? Is the house the dead grandfather, and they somehow don't know it? How could they not know it? Maybe Abuelo was secretly a bad man, and when he died, he was given a chance to make amends by being of service to his family through their magical house. Now that he's done enough penance to cross over, the magic is fading as he begins to fade, and a new sacrifice is required at to maintain the integrity of the illusion.

~

I'M NOT SAYING ABUELA IS A CULT LEADER AND HER HOUSE IS MADE OF SOULS ENSLAVED BY HER MAGIC. THIS IS NOT A TOM CRUISE AND EVERYONE HE'S EVER COME IN CONTACT WITH SITUATION. I REPEAT, THREAT LEVEL "CRUISE" HAS NOT BEEN ESTABLISHED.

But if I were saying that, am I that far off?

~

Manifestation is magical realism in a holographic Universe.

Hear me out.

In theory, manifestation is only possible if you can convince yourself, as well as others, of the reality you wish to see. Like, say you want a palm tree to spontaneously burst out of the tile floor in your kitchen. In theory, you'd have to convince yourself that such a thing could happen. That is DID happen. Then convince others of the same reality, because your unusual belief is competing with other already established beliefs. An Emperor has no clothes situation.

In theory, you are rearranging all the tiny pieces that make up a holographic Universe through your projected belief, and the projected belief of those around you. And the more people who believe the same as you do, the more control you have over the manipulation.

You could say that in some ways, this is how abuse subsists. Those born into the abusive situation, or those who have endured the situation long enough to erase competing realities from their memory, support the belief that you cannot leave, and must continually pay tribute to the monster in order to survive.

You're establishing patterns, and manipulating reality. Abuela has established a reality where they are all safe, and they all have magic. Those born into this reality have no competing established faith with which to challenge this, and their innocence reinforces the demonstrated belief. If we were to assume that manifestation is real, this is how you could keep the simulation online. A sort of grown-your-own-cult. Er, family. Swap magic for abuse. You establish patterns and pass them on.

The village and the Madrigals live in a bubble they connot leave, and there is no one to challenge the established belief that magic is real, and only the Madrigals have it. Abuela has built a simulation, and established a pattern of abuse, and a belief in magic, as commonplace and acceptable. As useful and needed. Everything about their lives works in service to this belief.

What happens if an Emma Swann character (Once Upon A Time, 2011) shows up in the village where nothing changes? Is THAT when the Madrigals begin to lose their magic? When their established faith is challenged by a competing reality?

Is Mirabel the anomaly that breaks the curse? Is SHE the Emma Swann of this story?

~

When the family made choices based on love, the magic flourished. When they made choices rooted in selfishness, the magic died. Selflessness and self-love are the messages I think the the film wanted to project, but execution was kind of like an amateur baker trying to make some ill-fated cartoon-themed cake art. The effort is appreciated, but it's still a nightmare demon cake.

Encanto's animation and voice acting are stellar, but the story and songs are hit and miss, at best. And the themes of classism and narcissistic abuse are treated like an extension of the film's magical realism: something astonishing that's taken as commonplace and acceptable.

And that's a strange message, however you want to slice it.

In this modernish-day fairy tale, no one loses their life (except Pedro). But Bruno going into exile to protect Mirabel from Abuela is pretty concerning. What would have happened if Abuela had received confirmation that Mirable's existence threatened the magic? That's not something I want to think about.

I don't think the creators wanted to think much about it, either, but for different reasons: the adults are aghast at the dark story the child has absorbed, and in their innocence, repeated. The child is happy to have the attention of the adults, and cannot interpret it's nature to detect that anything is wrong.

Our realities are being manipulated all the time. Whales are thrashing around in the shallow waters of the public pond. Dinosaurs are tearing up the community garden.

And if you've got your glasses on, you can see the cracks.