Seeing Stories | Mirabel’s Gift in Encanto
Disney’s Encanto came out in 2021, notably with its primary female protagonist Mirabel Madrigal. Mirabel stood out for multiple reasons - her Colombian background added with Coco helped to create more than one Latina movie for the Disney arsenal. But what was particularly interesting about Mirabel was that she was the first Disney female protagonist to wear glasses.
Personally, I find this amazing. As someone who wears glasses herself, and have since I was a very small young child, I would have loved to have been given such a beautiful bespectacled protagonist to enjoy when I was very little. But Mirabel’s glasses go beyond nice representation for those of us less visually able. Her glasses point us as viewers to one of the most important aspects of Mirabel and one of the primary themes of the movie.
Throughout the movie, Mirabel’s amazing skill is shown - her ability to see the stories of others. And when I say she “sees” them, I mean this both literally - in terms of how we see the animation - and figuratively. She truly gives space to those around her, allowing them to be able to express themselves in ways they have previously felt unable to, allowing their stories to shine and be seen and understood. Mirabel’s glasses show us how important it is to see those around us, and its through this ability to simply see and listen to those around her, that she is able to heal the trauma plaguing her family.
Encanto revolves around a family touched by magic. As Mirabel explains to us - and some village kids - in the opening song, ever since her Abuela established the town, her three kids and each of their kids have been given a gift, a magical ability that comes to fruition when they turn five years old. Pepa, Mirable’s aunt, was given the ability to control weather with her emotions. Pepa’s daughter, Dolores, can hear pretty much anything at great distances, and her son, Camilo, can shape-shift into anyone. Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, heals through food. Mirable’s sister Isabel can grow flowers, and her other sister Luisa is super strong. There’s also Bruno, but for now, we won’t talk about him.
The movie starts with Pepa’s youngest child, Antonio, coming of age to get his gift. However, Mirabel has her own personal trauma surrounding the gifting ceremony. When she turned five, and had her own ceremony, the magical door that would eventually lead to her magical room slowly disappeared, leaving her with nothing. This moment of disappointment and confusion was witnessed by her own family, and her whole town. Her feelings of letting everyone down felt justified in this, and is a lot to take on as a five year old.
Since this event, Mirabel is quite literally kept out of view. During her cousin’s ceremony, the whole family is gathered out by the doors and with the village, but Mirabel is in the shadows, hidden behind a curtain. She’s relegated to continue to live in the nursery, despite being a teenager. When the whole family gathers to take a “family photo” at Antonio’s ceremony, Mirabel is not in the photo.
In fact, it’s not until Mirabel steps out of this role that the plot of the movie begins to tick forward. While hiding behind the curtain, Antonio’s fear of his impending ceremony consumes him, and he asks for her to join him. When she does, it makes a statement - the estranged Madrigal family member stepping out of the shadows and into the spot light. It shines a direct light and brings attention to the disappointing member of the family, the one without a gift.
This is because Mirabel moved from being hidden to being seen. Her story is suddenly on display. As she moves up the stairs with Antonio, she relives her own trauma of her ceremony, and once again is doing so in front of everyone. She re-enacts her story actively in front of everyone.
Seeing stories is a regular occurrence and refrain in Encanto. In fact, one of the first lines of the movie is Abuela saying “Open your eyes”. The line of opening eyes is said throughout the movie, either by Abuela or Mirabel. During her song “Waiting on a Miracle”, Mirabel sings “open your eyes” directly to Abuela. Mirabel also hears Abuela asking for her late husband Pedro to help her “open my eyes”. By stepping out from the darkness, even if it is in earnest wish to help out Antonio, Mirabel is directly forcing eyes to be opened.
And this focus on seeing as a way of hearing and understanding others and their positions is exactly how Mirabel moves throughout the movie. After seeing that her family could be in danger, and the magic that holds up her family potentially waning, she decides to set out to heal the rift of the magic in hopes this will heal the rift between herself and her family. And she does exactly that by doing two things: listening and seeing.
Being the outsider, Mirabel has grown to truly understand the strengths and weaknesses of each member of her family. She sees the roles that they play, and how she can learn and grow from each of them. This helps set her up on her journey by first turning to Dolores, the cousin who would have picked up on even small, seemingly innocuous, things.
She picks up on the issues of Luisa, noticing her eye twitches which point to Luisa having some problems. Even though Luisa, at first, pushes Mirabel away, Mirabel proves that she is willing to listen and won’t be deterred. This leads to Luisa sharing with Mirabel the immense pressure she feels to always be the one helping. Luisa carries a lot of pressure on her shoulders, and carries the weight of the expectations as if it’s the same as a piano to her. She’s one of the only Madrigal’s we see actively working on her gift and trying to improve it. We see a glimpse of her working out, trying to improve her strength mundanely even if its given to her supernaturally.
Mirabel does something very important during Luisa’s song “Surface Pressure”, something we’ll see repeated often throughout the movie: she does not sing along. At no point does Mirabel join in the song. She doesn’t harmonise, doesn’t add her own thoughts. She simply, listens. And she sees. The animation of the song shows visually how Luisa carries the town and her family on her back, and Mirabel watches it to such an extent that she’s experiencing it right alongside her sister. And when the song is over, when Luisa is done sharing her issues? Mirabel responds, not with words, but with a hug.
And this is Mirabel’s immense power: her ability to see and hear and understand the people around her and know how to respond and how to take it all in. She doesn’t offer comforting words, or tell Luisa to just “not stress so much” - these are all platitudes which don’t actually show an understanding of the realities of the stress of expectation. She simply hugs her sister, showing through such a simple action that she does understand. She heard it. She sees it. She gets it.
Mirabel uses this power also against almost the whole family when she begins to enquire about her long-lost uncle, Bruno. The family refuses to talk about Bruno, because his power of future sight caused a lot of problems. When the movie starts, we just get a quick moment of “we don’t talk about Bruno” before things get brushed along. Later on, when Mirabel pushes the same happens again. “We don’t talk about Bruno,” but she pushes, and like Luisa before, she shows that she’s open to hearing. Almost immediately, the family opens up and shares their experiences of Bruno, openly complaining and laying their issues out for Mirabel to hear.
Like “Surface Pressure” Mirabel doesn’t do a lot of singing on this track. She does a bit near the end, when she laments having brought up Bruno in the first place. However, this lament doesn’t have to do with the information being given to her by her family, but rather the information she got separately of one of his visions. And Mirabel’s part is only like two or three lines. The rest of the song is her family, each sharing their own experiences with Bruno that Mirabel actively listens to.
Mirabel’s ability to see each character individually for who they are is actually reflected in the music itself. Each of the characters in Mirabel’s family have their own style of music underscoring them. This is most prominent in We Don’t Talk About Bruno, when the layering of each person’s piece is not only a layering of lyrics, but also of musical styling. The accapella version of this is actually called a madrigal - you know, like the family name. I’m not going to go into much more detail here on the different musical styling because I’m quite a novice at musical theory, but another video essayist has done quite a lot of work on the magic Lin Manuel Miranda put into the musical styling.
The only exception to Mirabel’s relative silence on the songs of others is “What Else Can I Do”, which is a shared moment between her sister Isabella and herself. Mirabel’s relationship with her sister Isabel is fraught at best. It’s the classic discrepency between the older perfect sister, and the younger mess-up. Much of Mirabel’s frustration with her estrangement from her family is funnelled to her sister for her supposed perfection. Isabel has a beautiful power of growing flowers, has long envious hair, is beautiful, and is the first to possibly get married and therefore continue a new generation of Madrigals.
However, in What Else Can I Do, Isabel is surprised at having accidentally grown a cactus. She’s surprised, and pleased, and begins to go on a frenzy growing crazy imperfect plants that she’s never allowed herself to grow before. The process makes her messy and colourful, splashing her in strange bursts of brightness, in stark contrast to her typical pastels.
Mirabel’s joining of Isabel on this track is actually important, and shows a difference in what is actually needed in the relationship between Isabel and Mirabel. If Mirabel were to remain silent and then simply hug, as she did for Luisa, this would not do as much to heal Isabel as it was for her other sister. Here, Mirabel is able to slowly grow to understand the pressure her sister felt for being perfect, and that is was something she was actively working on doing, rather than something natural to her. She begins to see the fierce pressure her sister feels, and allows her the revelling release of the pressure in her moment of pure unbridled joy. Through her joining on the song, Isabel is also able to see Mirabel differently, and to understand the pressures Mirabel feels at being so ostracised. They heal their misunderstanding by sharing, which was something sorely needed.
I also really enjoy this moment, because I think it helps to shed different light on previous views of Isabel. During We Don’t Talk About Bruno, each character shares a negative reading Bruno gave them. When Isabel shows up, she sings what seems to be out of step with the others. She sings, instead of some dark omen, about how he predicted positive things about her, like how her power would grow like the flowers on the vine, and she would achieve all the things she sets out for herself. It’s not until listening to Isabel’s song, and also witnessing her absolute wild release, that we learn all she wasn’t to achieve doesn’t actually reflect how she wishes she could live. The perfection she is promised is one she wishes she could escape from. SO while it initially seems out of step, we see how Bruno’s seemingly positive foretelling of her future is actually quite the prison for her.
And this is an important aspect of Mirabel’s ability to “see”. While sometimes this is literal, like in her experience of Isabel’s growing of odd plants and Luisa’s pressure, it’s something that runs far more deep. It involves actually hearing and understanding. It’s all about understanding things at their natural core. Seeing another person is fully understanding them. It’s not about agreeing with them, or condemning them. It’s not about labelling as either positive or negative, but rather about fully empathising.
I think one of the things that’s sometimes hard for people to grasp is the ability for someone to empathise with another’s position without fully agreeing with them and thinking they’re right in all aspects. Seeing in the way of understanding is simply about fully realising all the facets of a person and growing to understand why they do the things they do.
Perhaps the best example of this is Abuela’s story, another song that Mirabel does not sing on. In fact, Abuela does not sing on this one either. Rather, it’s simply a song that plays while Mirabel actively sees what her grandmother went through. The song Dos Oroguitas plays while Mirabel watches, passively understanding and taking in, the experiences, traumas, and tribulations of her grandmother. Despite her issues with her grandmother, she comes to understand why she reacts to things the way she does. Mirabel came to learn that a lot of Abuela’s faults were coming from a place of fear. Like Isabel and Luisa, Mirabel embraces her grandmother.
This hug does not excuse her grandmother’s ostracisation of both herself and her uncle Bruno. It doesn’t erase the pain Mirabel experienced for ten years. But, it’s a step to understanding, and a movement toward forgiving. This is because truly seeing is non-judgemental. It’s not good, it’s not bad. It just seeings things for what they are.
Mirabel’s ability to see the people around her for more than just their gift has another dimension - she also sees them for more than just their faults. She gives space for the others, allows them to share their burdens and pains. She doesn’t carry them, or internalise them, but just allows them to be there. She gives space for them to talk. She pushes when she needs to, but she also listens. She gives them space to lean into her, to confide in her, to share their pain and passions in the form of their stories. And Mirabel simply sees them for who they are. And that is a special magical gift.