#28: Ariel, Stef, and past host Josué team up for a second time to do a deeper dive into Disney’s Encanto. In this episode, themes of dysfunctional family roles, inner child archetypes, and how to inspire students and clients to discover their own inner talents.

Episode 26 is part one of this two-part Encanto deep dive, where we discuss our reaction to, and highlight themes from the movie.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

Resources for this episode:

1. Kulture Karaoke
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. The Art of Disney’s Encanto by Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones
4. How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole LePera

Become a member of Geek Therapy on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/geektherapy

Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Stef.

Ariel Landrum 0:16
I’m Ariel.

Josué Cardona 0:17
And I’m Josué.

Stefanie Bautista 0:18
And I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:24
And I’m a therapist who uses a client’s passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma.

Josué Cardona 0:29
And I’m a former educator and former therapist who teaches other educators and therapists to use their passions and fandoms in their work.

Ariel Landrum 0:35
And Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens.

Stefanie Bautista 0:40
Why do we do that? Because just like we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums we consume.

Josué Cardona 0:46
So team, what is the experience are we discussing today?

Ariel Landrum 0:49
This is the We DO talk About Bruno Reprise. We’re bringing Encanto back.

Josué Cardona 0:54
A sequal?

Stefanie Bautista 0:55
Oh, dang!

Josué Cardona 0:55
Para te dos?

Stefanie Bautista 0:56
Before we even knew we were gonna get one.

Josué Cardona 0:59
What?

Stefanie Bautista 1:01
Lucky, lucky you all. You got your sequal before the sequal.

Josué Cardona 1:07
Encan-dos!

Ariel Landrum 1:07
Encan-dos!

Stefanie Bautista 1:08
I like it! I like it!

Josué Cardona 1:14
Don’t use. Cut it out.

Ariel Landrum 1:15
No I’m keeping it.

Stefanie Bautista 1:18
Too late. I don’t know about you all but it has been everywhere it has not left is in and around. I hear it every day at school. We don’t talk about Bru-No, no, no, every single day Monday through Friday. The kids love it. And I mean, I think it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Like we mentioned before.

Ariel Landrum 1:39
I was walking my dog with my roommate the other day and some kids were playing musical chairs with the we don’t talk about Bruno song. And literally I heard I would say six tiny little voices go “Isabela, your boyfriend is here!” All sounds even the music stopped and it was like, “A chair!”

Josué Cardona 2:02
I don’t think we talked about last time. I’m like that song was charting, right? Like it was it was on the chart on the Billboard charts like it was on the radio.

Stefanie Bautista 2:10
I have a fast fact about that.

Ariel Landrum 2:12
Yeah.

Stefanie Bautista 2:12
So currently, we don’t talk about Bruno has 100 million streams. And that’s Apple, Spotify. SoundCloud. What have you? Disney Radio! So 100 million. I’m pretty sure. That’s probably changed by right now as I’m talking, but…

Josué Cardona 2:32
I appreciate the shout out to Disney Radio. Yeah, it keeps on giving. I had a huge epiphany about it today. I had therapy earlier today, and I brought up the stuff and then I was listening to the soundtrack in preparation for this conversation. And I Oh, it was like, You gotta be kidding, there’s still stuff in like, I didn’t see or I didn’t realize before.

Ariel Landrum 2:56
Like what? Share!

Josué Cardona 2:57
You know, what we talked about all the different abilities and, and, you know, I’m, I’m sticking to my version, that each of them are used to to uphold this illusion, right? That Abuela that I what I wants to protect everybody by any means. So every every ability to make that more possible. And one that I really didn’t think about was Julieta’s power. Like, and I kind of like I feel like we just like talked over it. But then it’s in the first song in the Family Madrigal, where Maribel just says real quick, like, “Oh, like she makes everything better with food.” I was like oh, that’s it, you avoid talking about stuff, right? You just you just you just cook something up, you just make a meal, you just sit down. And we don’t talk about it at the Eat this and you’re and you know, forget about it. What? And then so this morning, when I was meeting with my therapist, I was talking about basically I developed a eating disorder that I was diagnosed with. And I attribute it I’ve always attributed it to the fact that when I was a kid and my parents were getting divorced, I was six years old and my mom my grandmother just would feed me just constantly just to make me feel better. And like I gained so much weight and like I still have stretch marks from when I was that that small. And and it’s been something that I’ve struggled with always and but it’s that it’s, Oh, I’ll make it better. Don’t worry, I’ll cook you something. Let me make you something right we don’t need to talk about it. I’m not gonna tell you the truth. We’re not gonna fix it. We’re not gonna address it. But eat this.” I was like, “Damnit. It was right there!” Like I didn’t think about how obvious that version of who you know what, who yet does roll there is but it’s still it’s it’s another version of we don’t talk about anything.

Stefanie Bautista 4:51
We tamp it down.

Josué Cardona 4:52
And the version in the in the movie is is so is so harmful because it literally fixes things.

Ariel Landrum 5:00
Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Josué Cardona 5:01
Right. But superficial and physical things, you know?

Stefanie Bautista 5:04
It causesyou to not confront it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Josué Cardona 5:08
“How did you get hurt? Don’t worry about it, eat this. It’s fixed.”

Ariel Landrum 5:10
The best way to shut up piehole is to put a pie in.

Stefanie Bautista 5:15
I feel like that’s a running joke in Filipino culture where, if you, if you argue or you get in trouble with any of your elders, they don’t apologize to you, they just their way of apologizing is, have you eaten yet? And that’s all you’re gonna get. Because they’re choosing to keep you alive by feeding you. That’s all the sorry, you’re gonna get ...