"Encanto" is a defence of colonialism

Encanto is the latest Disney animated family film. It's fine and it will entertain a young family adequately. Some people like it a lot. 

In short, it has: 

- Great animation. The technical standards for these sorts of thing nowadays are really very high. Many passages are great to watch. 

- An appropriate number of professionally delivered but (to my mind at least) instantly forgettable songs. The song and dance routines rely a bit too much on fantasy sequences for my liking, but tastes vary.

- A plot which doesn't really make sense. I won't go into details as that would spoil the story (read the summary on Wikipedia if you want) but the problem seems to be that the film's symbolism has overwhelmed the mechanics of the plot: one can see that things are happening in the physical world that echo what is happening in the family's personal relationships, which is all well and good, but quite how those things are happening in the physical world - what is causing what, what the rules of the magic power are - is not really explained. 

But what I found most striking is the underlying values of the film. This is a Disney film, which is to say that it is carefully and respectfully made with an intention to offend no one and to please as many people as possible. It is set in Colombia and duly cast with Hispanic/Latino/Latinx actors. The design of the clothes and locations is based on diligent local research. It's all meant to be a celebration of Latin American culture.

And yet it somehow ended up being a celebration of colonialism. Let me explain. 

The story starts with a family from outside the area coming to settle in a new part of south America, i.e. colonisers. (They are fleeing persecution, as the Pilgrim Fathers were.) The family has special powers denied to other people who live in the area, i.e. they have technology inaccessible to the natives. These magical powers includes phenomenal strength - the settler family has "power" in a quite literal sense. The special family has a big house and a better standard of living than their neighbours, and they essentially run the local society. All of this is presented as a Good Thing because they have the special powers that they brought with them and because they are generally well-intentioned. Wikipedia tells us that they "serve the villagers", which is broadly correct, but they do from a position of status and comfort which is more reminiscent of colonial officials than, say, Mother Teresa, and they spend most of their time concerned with their own affairs rather than those of the locals. The local community celebrates feasts that are particular to the powerful local family (their children's coming of age): they are invited to the big house to do so and are entertained as a form of noblesse oblige. Intermarriage between the locals and the dominant family is permitted, but the outsiders, whether male or female, must join and support the ruling family and they do not exercise any power within the family. When something bad happens to the dominant family - as it does, towards the end of the film - we are shown that it is only right and fitting for the locals to band together to make it good at no cost to the family. The moral of the story seems to be that the family should stick together in order to maintain the special magical powers which give their special status in society. Any idea that members of the family should leave their comfortable compound, or that they should mix on level terms with the locals, or that there might be dangers in having such great powers, does not arise.

I am not making any of this up. I am just describing the unquestioned premises of the whole film. And I am plainly describing the structure of a colonial society - as explained and justified by the colonial power itself.

All in all, it's pretty weird. The dominant family, and indeed the film as a whole, is matriarchal: the abuela runs the show, the main character is a teenage girl, the biggest and strongest characters are all female (including the physically biggest and strongest character) and the biggest male character is a bit of a weirdo who needs to be guided by women in order to realise his full potential. I can only assume that, in spending so much time freeing the film from any taint of old-fashioned Latin American patriarchalism, the makers took their eye off the ball and ended up making a rather old-fashioned justification of colonialism by mistake.