Hollywood’s tendency towards harmful depictions of the autistic community on the big screen (if it’s even referenced at all) makes it no surprise that many of my own experiences as an autistic person have never been rendered in a feature film. One of these specific concepts was growing up autistic in a neurotypical family. It’s such a strange experience being surrounded by people who love you but also can never know exactly what you’re going through in life. I never realized how much I wanted to see this dynamic explored in a piece of filmmaking until I discovered this concept vividly reflected in, of all places, Disney’s Encanto.
I feel confident in saying that nobody involved in Encanto set out to make a film that captures perspectives and emotions specific to autistic individuals. That’s not an insult to them, it’s just that there are so many plates to juggle in the film (with its ensemble cast, big musical numbers, deft storytelling, etc.) that it’s understandable that this interpretation probably never crossed anyone’s mind. But much like how The Little Mermaid has taken on extra layers of resonance within the trans community, sometimes animated musicals aimed at kids end up taking a life of their own.
The parallels between this film and this specific autistic experience are immediate right away as the viewer is introduced to Mirabel Madrigal (Stephanie Beatriz). She’s part of the Madrigal family, a clan defined by how everyone has extraordinary superpowers…except for Mirabel. She’s just a normal person who has grown up her whole life feeling like a disappointment, especially to her grandmother, Abuela Amidala Madrigal (María Cecilia Botero), over something she was born with. Being conscious of how you don’t have control over these unique parts of your personality, though, doesn’t automatically erase the self-consciousness.
I’ve lived with that feeling for years as an autistic person who was diagnosed around the age of 3 years old. I didn’t understand all the finer nuances of my diagnosis, but I did know that I was autistic and that it made me different from other people. This was especially apparent during family gatherings, where my sensitivity to loud noises and crowds, not to mention difficulty in verbal communication, meant I was working overtime to keep things together. These social events were meant to be about bringing people together but looking around at all the adult’s faces, capable of not having to bury their ears during a Christmas dinner, I just felt more isolated.
These childhood experiences rang through my mind watching Mirabel in Encanto’s opening song, “The Madrigal Family”. The lyrics here gradually reveal that Mirabel is always hiding away her lack of superpowers. When you’re surrounded your entire life by people who aren’t like you, you inevitably develop the notion, like Mirabel has, that you’re the “outsider”. It’s not even that Mirabel’s entire family is abusive. On the contrary, we see several of her relatives (including her mother) being extremely kind to her. The same is true of my own family. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still escape the feeling of knowing they’ll never 100% understand the experiences you’re going through.
However, I did feel like Mirabel would understand my plight and my attachment to her as a parallel to an autistic individual proved extra easy to do since this protagonist is so far removed from typical pop culture portrayals of autism. Mirabel’s way of coping with feeling like an “outsider” in the Madrigal family isn’t to become withdrawn or an emotionless robot-like Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) on The Big Bang Theory, a figure the audience is supposed to laugh at because they’re different.
We’re introduced to Mirabel as she gets up early in the morning, exudes a bubbly personality, and commits to making everything perfect for each member of her expansive family tree on a special day. Mirabel’s actions in this opening scene echo the extreme empathy that crops up in many autistic individuals, who can’t help but take on another person’s plight as their own. Plus, Mirabel is conscious of the qualities in herself that define her as “different” in the eyes of her family members, a welcome deviation from how many autistic people in pop culture are oblivious to their diagnosis.
How wonderful to be reminded of an autistic person because they’re passionate, kind, and precise, not because they’re a passive individual who might as well be a robot. Encanto captures some difficult parts of being autistic, but the emphasis on Mirabel as a complex person fully capable of expressing and experiencing joy ensures it doesn’t dovetail into being miserable. It helps, too, that, filtered through an autistic lens, Encanto’s downbeat moments about being autistic aren’t about how autism makes you a “monster”, or whatever other negative terms Autism Speaks is using to describe autistic individuals this week.
Instead, all these challenges stem from how societal norms, catered to neurotypicals, just make day-to-day life hard. It’s a tragic reflection of reality, where even gatherings with blood relatives can be a reminder of how you exist in a world that isn’t built for you. This is exemplified in a crucial early scene where Mirabel discovers that something is wrong with her home. Here, during a coronation ceremony for her cousin, she begins to panic over loud cracks in the wall that nobody else takes seriously or even sees. Her grandmother even reprimands Mirabel for having ruined the gathering for everyone else.
Watching this play out, I couldn’t help but shiver in my seat recalling how often I’ve been overwhelmed at parties by noises or details that nobody else understood or even experienced. It’s bad enough to live with a constant nagging feeling of being an outsider. But in trying to get her needs met, Mirabel’s outsider feelings are just reinforced ten-fold. It’s a sensation I’ve certainly felt in many social gatherings with neurotypical family members, that experience of seeing the gap between yourself and these relatives physically manifested.
Another quality of Mirabel’s that works as an even better parallel for autistic experiences is her desires. Never in Encanto is Mirabel striving to become superpowered like her siblings. Reading that prospective storyline through an autistic lens would inevitably come off as equivalent to someone trying to “cure” their autism. Instead, Mirabel, like many autistic people, has long since accepted who she is and the qualities that make her different from her family. The concept of her reversing her non-superpowered status never even crosses the script’s mind. Encanto as a standalone entity, and its ability to work as an autism allegory, is all the better for that. Instead, tying back to her actions working as a mirror of “extreme empathy”, Mirabel is concerned with helping others and raising awareness for issues hiding in plain sight.
Meanwhile, Mirabel’s frustrations over having to live up to her grandmother’s expectations of what makes for a “proper” member of the Madrigal family also intersects with autistic experiences. It’s not easy growing up autistic and navigating the complexities of what people think you can and can’t do, particularly the latter. I’ll never forget one social gathering when I was in high school and someone asked me point-blank if I went to “a normal school”. The comment was meant as just a way to strike up a conversation and not as a way of expressing malice, but it didn’t matter. Up to that point, a conventional holiday season gathering was suddenly punctured by me getting reminded of how neurotypical people saw me.
People can love you, care for you, and have those feelings be genuine, while still having inaccurate perceptions of your worth or capabilities. It’s a complex dynamic, and one whose nuances are rarely seen in pop culture. Encanto, though, embraces those intricacies, whether it’s through this more tormented grandmother/granddaughter rapport or in happier contexts, such as in an arc between Mirabel and her sister, Isabella (Diane Guerrero).
Isabella is initially dismissive of her younger sister and the qualities that make her unique. However, the two manage to bond once it’s discovered that the same rigid societal expectations that make Mirabel feel like an outsider also make Isabella feel as if she can’t use her superpower of growing flowers the way she wants to. Being autistic in a neurotypical family, you can sometimes feel like an outsider, but there are totally ways you can still bond with other people. They may never 100% understand what it’s like to be you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a connection.
Isabella and Mirabel’s problems are built on maybe the most important thing Encanto captures about being autistic: Expectations. Goodness knows how often my mind, once I’m out in public, is preoccupied with limiting my fidgeting, stimming, or any other pieces of behavior that could “give away” that I’m autistic. It’s a process tied into a form of self-shame over being autistic that I’m still working through. It’s easy to say I’m proud to be autistic, but it’s not so simple to untrain myself to not be ashamed of physical characteristics or any other piece of behavior that I associate with being autistic. This is especially true at family gatherings, where everyone is engaging in social behavior that comes so naturally, but I always have to be thinking about, concentrating on it.
Societal expectations and a desire to be “perfect” are something I deal with a lot as an autistic person, but Encanto provides a hopeful note to autistic viewers in its depiction of how extreme and restrictive societal expectations lead to rot even to non-autistic. “What could I do if I just knew it didn’t need to be perfect? It just needed to be? And they let me be?” sings Isabella during the tune, “What Else Can I Do?” It might as well be the thoughts of an autistic person navigating society’s perception of “normalcy”. We can just exist, we don’t have to spend family gatherings constantly thinking over every little gesture we exhibit. We can just be imperfect because, after all, who is perfect?
Through its outsider protagonist, Encanto provides a rich and detailed reflection of the experiences of growing up autistic in a neurotypical family. Best of all, these experiences are punctuated with feelings of love between autistic and neurotypical members of the Madrigal clan, the same emotions I know my neurotypical relatives and I also deeply share. Even being cognizant of that affection, though, I’ve often felt like the “family weirdo” in being the lone autistic person in my family. How lovely, then, to get a cinematic ode to those “weirdos”, as well as a normalization of various autistic experiences, in the form of Encanto.
