As the parent of an eight and a four year old, I’ve pretty much become an expert on the new Disney movie Encanto.  My kids know the words to every song.  We have dance parties every other night as our Amazon Alexa plays the music.  I’ve watched the movie over their shoulder while doing dishes or trying unsuccessfully to concentrate on other things at least fifteen times.

I am not going to summarize the movie for you: go and see it.  But there is something about the film, like so many other Disney films, that continues to leave me a little unsettled.  It’s the main character of the film: the abuela, and the way she nearly ruins her family and then is all of a sudden magically forgiven.

I am not going to psychoanalyze the character of the Abuela, but to paraphrase a humorous catch slogan I once heard about alcohol: in this movie, Abuela “is both the cause and the solution to all of life’s problems.”

On some level, Abuela holds the family together after a tragedy.  However, the main thrust of the movie occurs because the protagonist of the movie, Mirabel, goes unloved (to the point of active resentment) by her grandmother for not being the same as everyone else.  The rest of the family, taking their cues from Abuela, fall in line with her point of view and treat Mirabel badly.  Then, when things go wrong, Abuela lives her life in constant denial when Mirabel and others try to tell her inconvenient truths (thus the Billboard list’s top song, “We Don’t Talk about Bruno,” as he has been also ostracized from the family).  Then, finally, it is only when the family hits rock bottom after she has nearly ruined the lives of everyone around her that Abuela is willing to entertain the possibility she has been wrong.  She subsequently is quickly forgiven, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I sit with a lot of people in my office who have done wrong to others. In nearly all instances, I find that the work of teshuva is a lot harder than flipping a switch.  Mirabel should not have forgiven her Abuela so easily.  A sudden epiphany is not the same thing as changing your behavior: even people who have epiphanies relapse.  You can’t be a terrible, abusive person to a member of your family, expect your loved one to forgive you, and live happily ever after.

Encanto does a beautiful job exploring the complicated dynamics in the life of a family.  However, like many Disney films, it does a disservice in its quick resolution that does not reflect reality.

I get that it’s a children’s movie on a Disney Streaming service, and that Disney is all about princes and princesses and happy endings.  But I wonder if we are doing a disservice to our kids by letting them believe that the world works this way.

Forgiveness is a wonderful thing.  But not everyone gets a happy ending.  I am not sure in this story that Abuela deserved one.

– Rabbi Dan Dorsch