stray thoughts about the structure of encanto from watching it for the third time in three days (heavy spoilers):
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1. you can read the moment when the miracle candle appears as the moment abuela makes an unconscious contract in the sarah peyton sense:
"i vow to protect my family from harm, at all costs"
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so instead i want to thread in another idea / frame i got from @Malcolm_Ocean, sarah peyton's "unconscious contracts." there are other ways you could talk about this like schemas, i like this language because it feels respectful and true to the experience
sarahpeyton.com/category/how-t
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there's an important thing here about how the intent behind the vow is noble and heroic and beautiful and good; the problem is that, as we see in the movie, "at all costs" involves doing a lot of emotional harm to her family in the name of protecting it
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(this thing about nobility and heroism and beauty and goodness is maybe the main thing missing from "trauma" language; "trauma" focuses on the harm that was done, not on the incredibly powerful magic you summon in response to it)
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the candle is the physical manifestation of the strength of abuela's vow; it weakens as her resolve to maintain the vow weakens, and it goes out entirely during the scene where mirabel gets through to her that *she* is the one harming the family, which *breaks her vow*
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this is why - i missed this completely the first two watches but it was pointed out in the theory vid - the candle *does not come back* at the end of the movie, even when the house and magic do
abuela releases the vow because it costs too much and she doesn't need it anymore
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2. the last scene when the house comes back to life is actually the first time (that i can remember) that the candle and the house get distinguished as symbols; prior to that the two have gotten stronger or weaker in lock-step
so, what does the *house* symbolize?
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in reply to my original guess: i think a simpler guess is that the house symbolizes the social dynamics and health of the family as a whole (it's the *magic* that symbolizes the ground of being)
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THE HOUSE IS A METAPHOR FOR THE GROUND OF BEING
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the health of the house moves in lock-step with the candle for most of the movie because abuela's vow is what runs the family for most of the movie. at the end everyone runs the family together, *without* the vow; hence everyone appearing on mirabel's door, no candle
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the entire montage where they rebuild the house without their gifts and with the help of the rest of the community is pitch-perfect symbolism; mirabel is saying "we don't need to run this family off the strength of abuela's vow anymore, we can do it ourselves"
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3. incidentally - and this is also brought up in the theory vid - this analysis implies that the candle and the house are *not* the spirit of abuelo pedro. the candle is abuela's vow and the house is the fruit of abuela's vow
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but! the original candle is their wedding candle (which i learned from the wiki). so, in the analysis where the miracle candle represents abuela's vow to protect her family, you could say she is making that vow on pedro's behalf, or in his memory
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Replying to @MergIsTheBird
It’s their wedding candle.
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4. one of the first things that happens when the miracle candle appears is that the river where pedro died is blocked off. this is again pitch-perfect symbolism; abuela's vow blocks off the traumatic memory until mirabel prompts her to look at it again
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mirabel prompts her to look at it again via *deconstruction*; she literally deconstructs the house, and symbolically deconstructs the dysfunctional family dynamics abuela's vow generated. this makes the family function worse in the short term but much better in the long term
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this is among other things a description of a dynamic that can happen when you build a lot of your ability to function on top of a big, old trauma and then part of the trauma healing process involves rebuilding a new ability to function
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Trauma's like a stack of PersonalityCoin. Therapy is supposed to help you knock it down and then put it back together.
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5. i wanted to do an analysis more directly in terms of internal family systems, with abuela as a protector and bruno as an exile, but i can't quite get it to work; bruno exiles *himself*, and arguably the most exiled characters are actually mirabel, isabela, and luisa
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in any case it's not too hard to read many characters as parts in an IFS-ish sense. abuela is a part that ignores your feelings to keep everything running smoothly; isabela is a part that maintains a flawless performance; luisa is a part that shoulders everyone's burdens; etc.
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these details about specific part roles are less important than what i see as the key feature of how the characters of encanto are written: they are all trying (desperately) to do something good, just like (i claim) your parts are
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every single character in encanto wants something good and is trying to get it as hard as possible
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this is perhaps the closest thing i have to a religious belief, this belief in the fundamental goodness of every aspect of the human psyche. "the most revolutionary idea in psychology is that everything people do is rational"
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the most revolutionary idea in psychology is that everything people do is rational
and it is an uphill trench-to-trench battle to apply it in practice because we have been mocking every phenomenon we identify for so long
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so it's quite nice to have such a stunningly beautiful and lovingly crafted articulation of this idea as encanto to be able to point to 🥲
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