The heart-warming story of the movie Encanto begins with Latinx migrants fleeing violence (in Colombia) and almost immediately getting a free house (created by a magic candle).
This was a hit with the elementary schoolers in our household, though it lacks a villain (there are no white non-Latinx characters and therefore nobody can be truly bad). Without a villain, a traditional element of drama is missing. The virtuous Latinx characters are essentially fighting with themselves.
It doesn’t seem as though anyone Colombian worked in a senior role on the film and therefore the work is solidly in the Hollywood tradition of cultural appropriation. Partial redemption for this sin is achieved by having the physically strongest character, able to lift an entire church due to a magic gift of strength, be someone who identifies as a young woman.
Students of zoology and geography will be pleased to see that one of the South American animals that is included in a menagerie is identified in the dialog as a “leopard” (i.e., not a jaguar). Loyal reader Toucan Sam will, no doubt, be willing to overlook this issue…
Thank you for introducing us to this masterpiece. The children viewers are prepared for real life and even learn that marriage is bad:
“Mirabel apologizes to Isabela and accidentally provokes a cathartic confession: Isabela does not want to marry Mariano and is burdened by her image of perfection. Mirabel helps Isabela blossom into her true, imperfect self and they embrace, seemingly strengthening the candle and healing the cracks.”
The plot could be improved by having Isabela marry and instantly divorce before she loses her strength.
Funny that strong women lifting heavy objects just get banned from the gootubes for being unsavory. 50 shades of christianity in the democratic party.
Wonder if we’ll soon be getting movies about Ukranians fleeing Russia & immediately getting free houses subsidized by the homeless.
Probably not. Google recently purged a Ukrainian engineer for objecting to the notion that all whites are privileged.
Ukrainians tend to flee _to_ Russia. It’s hard to find reliable numbers, but current Russian estimates place number of refugees / migrants from UA to RU at about 2 million (I suspect that while a number of them the civil war refugees, the majority moved for economic reasons). Russia also gave about 500 thousand passports (i.e. citizenship) to eastern Ukrainians.
I couldn’t find any useful estimates of the number of Ukrainians who moved to Europe. The current war scaremongering parades the number of 5M of possible refugees.
Talk about cultural appropriation! This bird brain counts 3 toucan sams in just the photo alone.
And I thought it was Super-Toucan Sam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano, not just Froot Loops kind
Tricks are for kids!
There are at least FOUR! There’s another Toucan in the Gramaphone! Like some kind of obsolete antique phonographic Alexa, the record player doesn’t just talk, it listens! I think there is a *fifth* Toucan in the photograph on the wall, also.
Alex (1.0?) for the win!
@Toucan Sam: Yup, 1.0. “Gun Control Means Hitting Your Target” Alex.
It is of course a sign of our very weird and stupid times that children can grow up being force-fed a completely fabulous version of fantasy reality in which there are no villains.
I’ll stick to Looney Tunes, thanks very much.
Even better, from the same episode. Real villains (it takes a village!), real heros, and Tweety Bird, and much better background music. “This sucks” doesn’t begin to describe how bad your movie up there is, but in their hearts, all the kids know the truth, and I think they’re going to feel robbed when they realize it. I hope all the mental Giants producing these movies realize that no matter how much money they get from producing this garbage, they’re still full of ***t.