Mirabel and Bruno: The Black Sheep of the Madrigal Family (VIDEO SCRIPT)

I was one of those individuals who opted to wait until Encanto was available on the regular Disney+ plan instead of seeing it in theaters.

Not because I wasn’t interested in seeing it, mind you. But the combination of having movies I wanted to see in theaters that were higher on my priority list and just being a broke-ass bitch pretty much kept me in my place.

Thankfully, my decision paid off in the long-run.

/Because while there was minimal discussion of the movie while it was in theaters, EVERYONE started talking about it when it was made available to stream on Disney Plus, what with the recent surge in COVID cases thanks to the Omicron variant/

And the movie is definitely worth the talk and popularity, in my opinion.

The animation is great, the story is great, and I love that the more prominent characters that encompass the film’s main plot are women that are all unique and stand out on their own accord.

/But while I appreciate the story and the lesson it tells regarding not setting impossible standards for those you love and care about thanks to your own personal standards, only to ostracize those who can’t make them, this point wouldn’t have been as easily recognizable if it weren’t for the storytelling concept of the Black Sheep./

And for Today’s Lesson, I’m gonna explain not who is the more PROMINENT Black Sheep of the Madrigal family between the two...

/But how both Mirabel and Bruno both play into the role in order to establish the necessary change their family has to make so their magic can be stronger than it ever was. Let’s begin./

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Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media

If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for the 60th animated film from Walt Disney pictures, Encanto. It’s currently available to stream on Disney Plus, so please act accordingly if you care about spoilers. I’ll have an affiliate link in the description if you want to own it digitally or physically.

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That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.

So what is a Black Sheep?

Both its merriam-webster definition and how said phrase is utilized in media is pretty much the same.

/It’s a disfavored or a disreputable member of a group or family, who -- depending on the individuals in said group or family -- is most commonly looked at as a disgrace./

As a trope in storytelling and fictional media, there are multiple subversions and variants of it that still fit the bill.

Yes, it’s still popular for the Black Sheep to be the embarrassment or outcast that’s shunned by either the family or community they belong to. But the Black Sheep can also be the family favorite BECAUSE of their rejection of the conservative traditionalism enforced under their roof to the dismay of the one member who follows them to a T.

They can be the Cool Aunt or Uncle that the kid protagonist looks up to when they visit during the holidays. The GAY aunt or uncle who always claps back at their family members for questioning their “lifestyle” when they visit during the holidays.

There are so many ways you can flavor the Black Sheep in conventional storytelling nowadays and deliver the desired results one would gain by including them.

The way Encanto does it however, is a bit of a bait-and-switch. The point of the Black Sheep trope as we witness over the course of the film is to actually bring focus to the Madrigal family’s inner problems that they choose not to address that are doing both them -- and the magic -- more harm than good, for the sake of the village.

/And while both Mirabel and her uncle Bruno combined help accomplish this in the movie, there are definitely differences in how each of them are perceived over the course of it that try to get us to believe that one is more prominent in their role of the Black Sheep than the other./

And that has a lot to do with Disney’s recent take on trope subversion, ever since their 2007 reverse Isekai live-action film Enchanted displayed meta self-commentary on tried-and-true plot threads and devices commonly found in their animated movies of the past. And in order for us to understand why said Madrigal has been given this dark cloud, that means...

We should talk about Bruno

The fact that Bruno Madrigal got villainized during the first number of the movie immediately told me that they were going to use him as a red herring.

It was so obvious as well. The way he’s depicted in every mural around the village just screams that he’s not only the Black Sheep, but the black sheep that’s been ostracized from his family to the point where he might be the villain of the story; possibly even responsible for why Mirabel received no gift on some Maleficent cursing Aurora ass-shit.

/But it was the combination of seeing this imagery that the movie wanted me to assume about how they were framing Bruno, along with how both members of the Madrigal family and the villagers perceived Bruno from the film’s first song “The Family Madrigal” -- not the certified bop “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the first song of the movie (we don’t talk about Bruno) -- that told me not to expect a single thing they were trying to tell me about him./

And, just like I mentioned earlier, this is mostly due to the route Disney has been going in their animated features since they self-criticized themselves with Enchanted.

/And while most of that meta self-commentary has been about how Disney Princesses have been handled up until that point -- two of the most recent spotlights on their overall stereotypes being the first Frozen movie and Vanellope meeting the girls in Wreck-It Ralph Breaks the Internet -- the same can be said about the tropes and the use of Disney Villains as well./

With the last two AUTHENTIC ones in the classical sense being The Princess and the Frog’s Doctor Facilier and Tangled’s Mother Gothel...

/Disney has been trading in the unique, colorful and usually queer coded villains in their animated features for that of antagonistic forces of nature and semi-redeemable rivals./

And while Bruno DEFINITELY has the potential to be a more classically tuned Disney Villain because of his Black Sheep status -- especially in the queer-coded department considering everyone’s perception of him up until the film’s finale -- the film does a bait and switch for those who aren’t really that capable of successfully spotting a scapegoat.

/To the village of Encanto, he’s perceived as ominous because of his gift of predicting the future and his predictions not really being what they want to experience. Of course that’s not his fault, but that aspect of dread and worry regarding Bruno’s weirdness and his usually perceived negative visions of the future has even spread to his own family, according to their own experiences with the combination of his awkwardness, his vibe and his abilities./

As you can imagine, this causes him to internalize his presence to his family and community in a way that negatively affects his self-esteem.

/He can’t see himself capable of being anything but a burden that constantly delivers bad news, especially when he’s given the task by Abuela Alma -- the Madrigal family matriarch -- to see why Mirabel didn’t receive a gift when she was younger./

Because of this constantly compounded feeling of only being able to bring bad vibes /and just being weird/ (I cant fix these cracks)

/Bruno has established himself as a passive type of Black Sheep that only feels that way because of how he interprets things internally./

And with him not wanting to be perceived of being MORE of a herald of ominous omens than he already is to either his community or his family -- especially with something as serious as the fate of the Madrigal’s miracle...

/This gave both parties ample time to develop this perceived antagonistic notion about him usually associated with black sheep over the course of his “disappearance.”/

Bruno is a Black Sheep in self-exile. He’s passive in this regard because the feelings of rejection and the like associated with being a Black Sheep are assumed instead of experienced, regardless if they’re correct or not.

But as previously stated, Bruno isn’t the only Black Sheep of the Madrigal family.

Not only does Mirabel tick a lot of the boxes regarding angles and avenues regarding what you can do with the concept, but she also compliments Bruno’s “sheepishness” for lack of better words with her gusto and abrasiveness.

So in order to understand how, in the words of Jennifer Lopez...

Let’s Get Loud.

By making her the only Madrigal by blood without a gift, Mirabel is kinda a Black Sheep by default, and it's something that the movie takes advantage of from beginning to end in order to progress her development.

/And while we definitely see positive subversions of what it means to be the Black Sheep of the family in her character -- Mirabel is definitely a more positive take on the Cool Relative to her young cousin Antonio over the course of the film.../ (I need you)

/Aspects about her possibly being outlined as different from the rest of them, especially in the eyes of Abuela Alma, is when she starts to receive visions of Casita crumbling and the Madrigal miracle fading away and learning through Bruno’s vision that she’s the center of it all./

Where her loudness comes from in comparison to Bruno’s quietness however, is Mirabel’s want to belong and make herself useful to the family.

She does it in ways that are well-intentioned, but it comes off to members of the family that aren’t in the position she’s in to not help but think that she’s either being rebellious against, or at odds with the Madrigals overall reputation as the providers of Encanto.

/So much so, that when she first received hints of the Madrigal miracle waning and receiving second-hand embarrassment in trying to prove to Abuela Alma that what she saw was real during Antonio’s celebration upon receiving his gift, even her mother started to grow concerned that she was gonna follow down Bruno’s supposed dark path/ (My brother Bruno lost his way in this family. I don’t want the same for you).

But it wasn’t until she realized what possibly needed to happen in order to save her family’s magic that she REALLY began to get loud in her depiction of being a Black Sheep.

And that was in finally acknowledging that not only SHE was being looked at different because of her lack of a gift, but that her sisters were also experiencing the struggle of keeping up with the expectations their grandmother bestowed upon them in order to keep the Madrigal’s appearances as the head family for everyone else in the village.

/Despite learning that her second oldest sister Luisa has HEAVY anxiety about not letting her family down by being the strongest that she can be -- physically AND mentally -- learning that her oldest sister Isabela’s gift has much more range than what Alda constantly wants her to display to keep up appearances, and even everything Mirabel does in order to show that she can contribute to the family despite not having a gift, in the eyes of the one who sets the expectations that the community perceives the family by,/ (I will never be good enough for you, will I?)

Despite Bruno and herself actively being Black Sheep in the movie, Mirabel calling out her grandmother’s toxicity the way that she does in the movie’s third act -- despite it being an ABSOLUTELY necessary thing that needed to happen in order for the family to properly heal -- is damn near exactly what you’d expect from a Black Sheep that challenges the reputation and morality that the family represents overall, regardless of the reason why.

And while the Black Sheep calling out the family head goes with the territory...

/What makes it loud in the sense of Encanto in comparison to Bruno’s quietness, is that she eventually advances as far as she does thanks to what I assume is years and years of feeling insignificant over something she couldn’t help, because she loves her family enough to address what’s really causing the cracks (the magic is dying because of you), while Bruno internalized everyone’s perceptions about him and his abilities because of the crack-causer in a way that caused him to retreat./ (My gift wasn't helping the family, but I love my family)

Conclusion

Now this is a Disney movie, so of course it’s going to end with Alda learning that she can’t project her personal expectations onto her family without them suffering or sacrificing who they truly are trying to reach them.

/Things aren’t going to be as easy as they were depicted at the end of the film when it comes to acceptance, support, healing, and rebuilding among real families and their estranged members of said families./

After all, we black folk who watched the Soul Food movie came to that realization after we saw the successful Sunday Dinner without Big Mama at the end of it, but god damn it did we feel seen.

But I am thankful that the way Encanto handles said topics gives others who sought the representation, and those who can both appreciate and relate to the inner workings of the Madrigal family, a proper picture of how this type of dynamic can affect others within it.

/And also, maybe show that the black sheep in YOUR family may not be as BLEAT as you imagine them to be./

Get it? Because bleating is what sheep do. (Sighs) This is what happens when I try to pun on purpose.

But I digress Readers, your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section below what you thought of Encanto if you’ve seen it.

Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a film or tv show that YOU’VE seen that utilized the Black Sheep trope-slash-literary device in a way that successfully subverted your expectations.

Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.

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Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to see if you want to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.

Until next time, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./