#26: Ariel, Stef, and special guest and past host Josué welcome listeners to the family Madrigal! In this episode, they highlight the themes of visual symbolism and color schemes to generational trauma and family roles that can be found in Disney’s Encanto.
Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.
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Transcription
Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef.
Ariel Landrum 0:15
And I’m Ariel.
Josué Cardona 0:16
And I’m Josué.
Ariel Landrum 0:17
And we’re all Disney fans! But really so much more.
Stefanie Bautista 0:20
Yes, I’m an educator who uses her passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.
Ariel Landrum 0:26
And I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental and wellness.
Josué Cardona 0:32
And I used to host this podcast and now I’m back.
Ariel Landrum 0:36
And Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with the critical lens.
Stefanie Bautista 0:39
Why do we do that? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.
Ariel Landrum 0:45
So Josué. what are we talking about today?
Josué Cardona 0:48
So um, you know, last time I was here, we wrapped up by saying what we’re most looking forward to regarding Disney. And I said Encanto was the thing that I was most looking forward to.
Stefanie Bautista 0:59
Yes.
Josué Cardona 1:00
Yeah. And it delivered.
Stefanie Bautista 1:05
It sure did.
Ariel Landrum 1:06
So what specifically is in Encanto that word or term? How are we interpreting it? And then how are we interpreting it in the form of this movie?
Josué Cardona 1:14
Good question. I’m curious I’m curious what but both of you think. I have I’ve done I have like five layers the more I watch the movie.
Ariel Landrum 1:22
We watch these I don’t know if they were called like shorts or like it’s short interviews with Lin Manuel and some of the cast members and they were describing encanto as like your joy, your magic. The the reason you lived almost like not so much purpose. But the the value that you see in your life in your world, in that you can almost ascribe it to anything you can describe it to a location like this place is in cncanto. Or you can ascribe it to a feeling.
Josué Cardona 1:51
Yeah, yeah, it’s funny in Spanish. When you say like, “I’m pleased to meet you,” or like “It’s a it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I guess it’s it would most translate to in English like, “Oh, I’m Charmed.” Right? But but But you say like, oh, you know, and un encanto like to meet you, it’s like, oh, it’s a pleasure. And it can also in Spanish, at least I do. And in Puerto Rico, they use the word to, like in English when we say “I really like something” or like, “I love something.” So in Spanish who would say you know, megusta would be like I like but me encanta would be like, like, I love that thing. And it’s almost like again, like you’re maybe you’re enchanted by it, right? Like it. There’s something I never think about it in that way. And so so when I first heard about the movie to me, it was like, oh, like, oh, there’s this enchantment. Right. And in very much the, the magical fantasy fairy tale way. And I had no idea what the movie was, was going to be, but that’s cool. It’s like it’s gonna be a, like a, like a Latin American fairy tale. But I have a completely different way of thinking of the word now after watching the movie.
Stefanie Bautista 3:03
Yeah, definitely.
Ariel Landrum 3:04
Okay, how did it change?
Josué Cardona 3:06
But I see it as an enchantment in the sense of an illusion, like something that’s not real, almost like a lie.
Stefanie Bautista 3:16
Foreshadowing.
Ariel Landrum 3:18
Trickery!
Josué Cardona 3:21
It can definitely I feel like it can definitely be that. Ya know.
Stefanie Bautista 3:25
I mean, for me, I speak Tagalog. And obviously Tagalog has a lot of Spanish background, and it pulls a lot from you know, Spanish. And when I heard encanto the, the word itself, I pulled canta means to sing. And so I’m not sure about the evolution or the history of that. But when I watched it, I was like, “Oh, this makes sense. They’re singing a ton.” I mean, I knew that it meant something like enchantment, and something like that. Because, you know, all the interviews and all the things that all the trailers that were leading up to it, you know, there’s magic, everybody has powers, and you know, even the houses alive, like, I knew it was going to be some sort of magical thing, but I just kept thinking sing in my head.
Stefanie Bautista 4:12
And even before knowing Lin Manual Miranda was involved in this. I was like this is gonna be a musical for sure. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it’s an your worm…
Stefanie Bautista 4:22
For everyone and everything. It’s everywhere.
Josué Cardona 4:25
Because it’s funny the language aspect of it. And I’m sure I’ll bring this up, like 100 times during this conversation, but I went, I watched it in Spanish. And of course, there’s a lot of Spanish words in it. I even watched part of it in French afterwards, just to see how they treated the Spanish in it. And it’s really respectful and I like that. One time I was watching it in English, I had the subtitles on the closed captions. And they miss translated one of the one of the words in it. And it’s so funny because it just like you said, like Encanto like, oh, and Encanto has gone to like the word singing in the word. So there’s a part I’m in the Dos Oruguitas scene where they sing in Spanish it says “Con sentimiento,” which is with feeling the subtitle it says, with consent, because consentimiento is the word for consent, but it’s actually two words in the song with feeling, but they translated as as as consent. I love language anyway, I think that’s gonna play I think that plays a big part of in the movie, like, because the words that we use to describe things aren’t necessarily the best ones or, or we’re not all in agreement.
Ariel Landrum 5:41
That Google Translate, though.
Stefanie Bautista 5:44
It’s not always reliable. And I feel as Disney reaches out and does more ethnic content. I mean, you really have to think about the way it’s being translated into English. I mean, there’s so many times I know Josué you know, when we’re watching anime, and you know, certain words mean something in, in Japanese, but then when you read the English subtitles, you’re like, “That’s not what they mean. That’s not exactly what they’re trying to say. But I mean, I guess, good job?” But it doesn’t necessarily convey exactly what the feeling is. So I’m curious to see that, you know, how they’re gonna take it from now on.
Josué Cardona 6:20
I mean, so when I, when I lived in Puerto Rico, whenever there was a Disney movie, it would always appear in theaters in Spanish. And I feelings about that. And as a kid, like, that’s a whole other podcast. But I think, you know, they’ve, and you can tell on Disney+, like, whenever you go into any, any new movie, it’s just in so many languages. And, yo...
