100 Disney Things [013]: The Encanto setup

[chacusha]

100 Disney Things [013]

And here's another one, also about Encanto and also very disorganized but hey. I was having difficulty finishing up fic and art projects so writing essays and finishing them off is giving me a mood boost.


The Encanto setup

One thing I've noticed is that there seems to be a certain kind of premise recently which is: a Normal in a family of Superpowereds. Encanto (2021), which focuses on Mirabel, the only descendent of her family matriarch Alma who wasn't granted a magical power, is an example of this. The other major piece of media I've seen with this setup is The Umbrella Academy, which features Number 7, Vanya/Viktor, who is the only normal in a family of superheroes. While I can think of maybe a couple of other nearby examples -- superhero families where everyone has powers, with maybe some non-trivial amount of family dysfunction (e.g. The Incredibles, The Eternals); movies where a main character with higher ambitions has to ultimately accept being normal and unremarkable (e.g. Bladerunner 2049, and Monsters University apparently? I have not seen it yet) -- it generally seems to be a somewhat unusual premise.

As you might expect from a plot where the first few minutes establish the main character is unremarkable, the plot of these movies end up affirming the main character as contributing something unique and special, whether that's because they turn out to have powers after all or they end up healing the family that on the surface looks like moonlight and roses but actually is hiding serious dysfunction. (I mean, the dysfunction is usually not that far beneath the surface, apparent in the way the person without powers is ostracized and scapegoated within their family.)

This is what I would call a "you're not special anxiety plot." I kind of think this kind of story is indicative of two trends currently happening in the U.S.: (1) anxieties around family particularly around what I would call soft abusive families (not quite abusive families but ones where the kids grow up neurotic and needing therapy due to e.g. narcissistic, strict, or otherwise just not great parents (see other Encanto post), and (2) a widespread awareness of the collapse of the American dream.

I talked about the family dynamics in the other post, so in this post I will talk about the dead American dream.

I think a lot of people in my generation and younger have had to contend with a childhood that largely told us that we could be whatever we wanted, the sky is the limit, shoot for the stars, etc. Part of this is just normal things you always tell children regardless of decade or how realistic it is ("You want to be an astronaut / fireman / concert pianist / Nobel laureate / president of the United States? Sure! Dream big!"). But part of it is that we also went through post-Reagan neoliberal dismantling of many good jobs; multiple costly and failed wars; a global crash; a global pandemic; and soaring college, healthcare, and housing costs. While people my age are slowly starting to hit goalposts traditionally associated with the American dream -- starting families; getting stable employment; receiving their first promotion or being able to use their job experience to pivot to a new role; buying a house -- it has taken quite a bit longer to achieve than the media we grew up on would lead us to believe.

So I think it is only to be expected that we're starting to get stories where the main character -- who I think is meant to be a relatable audience stand-in -- used to be promising but have now essentially burnt out and had to spend years comparing their unremarkable performance to the talented superstars around them.

I kind of think another thing feeding this disillusionment/burnout is social media and a generally more international/globally-connected world, where it's very easy to come across real people who are in your same demographic (same age, same class, similar upbringing) and who are insanely talented. Another thing feeding it is maybe the whole "gifted program" initiative you hear people lamenting on the internet so much, which is being told when you are a young, impressionable, highly-undercooked child that you are "gifted," and then the rest of your life being a struggle to live up to the weight of those expectations, failing, and then having to reconcile yourself to that failure. The analogy to the "Normal in a family of Superpowereds" plot is clear -- superpowers are an entertaining fictional stand-in for "gifts" and a family of superpowered people naturally sets up the expectations for all the members of the family to meet that bar, and the story follows the neuroses of the one person who never materializes the gifts their family expects them to manifest.

I kind of think that one of the big challenges for people in my generation is coming to terms with the fact of one's own mediocrity. It can be a painful lesson, especially the later in life one learns it. Speaking from personal experience, I went to a very competitive high school so quickly learned not to put too much of my identity in my academics and math skills... but in high school, I did have a lot of difficulty coming to terms with the fact that my art (which I did invest a lot of my identity and time into) was mediocre. I was always "the art person" in my friendship group, and hooboy, being on DeviantArt and seeing what artists my age or younger were capable of producing was quite the rude awakening. I'm not sure how much of this phenomenon is specific to my generation and to specific technological advances and how much of it is universal. But in any case, everyone does at some point have to reconcile with a society that sorts people into winners and losers, and where some people's talents are just not good enough to make it as a career/monetize it. What do you do when your best just isn't good enough? What is meant to be done with "gifts" that don't get used because society has no real need for them? What does society owe the mediocre?

I think these anxieties are things that people are working through, and superpowers and superheroes are often a good vehicle for exploring these concerns in a fictional realm. The notion that some people are capable of achieving a state of greatness above that of ordinary people is very much a core part of fascist politics and Randian libertarianism, for example. That is one way of making sense of society's sorting mechanisms and stratification, one that encourages people to identify with the super-men, and if you're not succeeding? It's society that is backwards; it's not a sign you're not actually an ubermensch. But the Encanto plotline takes some of the same real-world phenomena and spins it the opposite way by encouraging people to identify with the mediocre and framing the desire/expectation to be great as itself a damaging dream.

In some sense, I wonder if this plot is the opposite of the Chosen Hero plotline, which generally has the form of: you're a regular ol' average guy until the day you're sucked into an adventure and it turns out you have superpowers! Wow, no one would have expected this but you're really good at something and have risen to the challenge, and the world needs you to save it (think Star Wars, Harry Potter, Avatar (the blue aliens one), Sailor Moon, isekai in general, etc.). It's grappling with similar things but with opposite starting expectations (the starting place is that "no one expects me to amount to anything" vs. "everyone expects I'll be great like all the people who came before me"), but they both nevertheless share similar wish-fulfillment elements ("...what if I had value anyway?"). Those Chosen Hero type stories definitely still get told (Turning Red is closer to that than to Encanto, for example), but I wonder if they are relatable?

Anyway, I don't really have a point with all this other than to say that I think it is interesting what neuroses within the audience does the "Normal in a family of Superpowereds" plot tap into. Do you know of any other movies with this Encanto structure?

Oh dang, it was really bothering me because I was so sure I've seen plots like this, like deeply familiar plots, but I couldn't think of them. Then I talked to my partner and during the conversation, it came out that (1) I've actually WRITTEN a plot like this, and (2) there are a couple of really really formative stories for me that feature not quite the same plot but analogous. The story I wrote was for a video game I was planning, which featured a world where everyone gets either a dog familiar or a bird familiar (which comes with magical powers). The video game had kind of an ensemble cast with various characters with a different relationship to their familiar, and one of the characters is someone who just never gets a familiar. Holy cow, I totally forgot I wrote about that! Also, like with Encanto, this character's struggles come to a head when a younger sibling gets their familiar/powers like normal, so it becomes clear that they've been skipped/jumped over in the powers department. It's a bit different, of course, because the whole race/world in my story has superpowers and not just a family, and that changes the feel a little bit, but the angst of being underpowered in a world of superpowereds is at least the same.

And that led to the realization that two extremely formative stories from when I was a teen feature the same setup: (1) Angela from Trials of Mana -- I can't believe I forgot this!! Angela is the daughter of the strongest mage in a kingdom of mages, the True Queen Valda, but she has never been able to manifest magic. Here, the magic powers are again more widely spread, and there aren't other siblings to compare oneself to (Valda is Angela's only family), but the feelings of angst and deficiency are still there. I even wrote a story focused on those feelings. (What the heck, how did I forget this?!) And (2) Lirael from the Old Kingdom series -- another favorite character who I've always felt attached to. How could I have forgotten her too?! Anyway, Lirael is a member of the Cleyr (a clan larger than a family but possessing some of the closeness of family) who looks different and doesn't get future sight abilities like she's expected to. She's marginalized for this and struggles emotionally with it for a while before eventually finding a job she's happy with and accepting herself (and then later finds out that there's a reason why she's this way and she turns out to be special).

Wow, I knew that this plot piqued my interest but I didn't realize until now I glommed onto it to the extent of actually writing it multiple times. It's not quite the same as Encanto because of the different comparison class / the lack of a "special family" that is different from most people, who are ordinary. But it's nearby.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on Encanto's "Normal in a family of Superpowereds" setup and similar plotlines and why they might have appeal / what kinds of real-world feelings are they tapping into.

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