Following family

The past couple months I've watched the following films by Disney: Coco (2017), Turning Red (2022) and Encanto (2021). I noticed that all of these movies highlighted intergenerational trauma. In Coco it's Imelda Rivera who bans music from her and her family's life after her husband, a musician, leaves her to raise their daughter on her own. Mei Lee from Turning Red deals with the conflict of being herself and adhering to filial piety as a child with a migration background. In Encanto the family Madrigal has Abuela Alma Madrigal making sure all of her off-spring helps the village with their gifts unknowingly putting tons of pressure on them. Personally I can find myself in all of these stories and I know I'm not the only one. I feel like every family has had to go through something similar at some point: every family has its secrets.

In Turning Red the secret took its own shape: a giant red panda. Mei's mother Ming reveals that they are descendants of Sun Yee who was blessed by the gods with the ability to turn into a red panda when faced with danger. The family started sealing this gift in a jade talisman because in the West it had become an inconvenience. The reason they needed to do this is because the definition of danger is taken very broadly: every intense emotion is enough to trigger the transformation. Even though Mei finds a way to control her gift, Ming still thinks it's safer to perform the ritual. Eventually we find out why Ming thinks it's best for her to do this. Mei's father Jin tells Mei that when he and Ming were still dating Ming's mother disapproved of their relationship. This got Ming so angry that she unleashed her red panda and hit her mother leaving her with a scar over her right eye. This makes Ming's reaction to Mei's red panda understandable but that doesn't make it right. Ming's mother had forgiven her for it and Ming should've accepted that. She also should've known better than to judge Mei's friends. She was doing the exact same thing her mother was doing when she was dating Jin.

Miguel from Coco lives in a family that has banned music from their lives. This is because that's what his great-great-grandmother Imelda had decided decades ago when she started her shoemaking business. However, Miguel has a passion for music that he just can't let go. He even made a replica of the guitar used by his hero, Ernesto de la Cruz, all by himself. This guitar eventually gets broken by his grandmother, Abuelita, when he tells her that Ernesto de la Cruz is his graet-great-grandfather after seeing that the man on the picture with Imelda is holding the very same guitar. After this debacle Miguel ends up in the Land of the Dead where he meets Héctor. In the end he finds out that his hero Ernesto and his great-great-grandfather, Héctor, were friends and played music together. When Héctor wanted to go back home to take care of his family, his wife Imelda en his daughter Coco, Ernesto killed him, and stole his guitar and his songbook. I still think it was very mean of Abuelita to outright smash his guitar. Luckily after being convinced by her son, Enrique, she allows Miguel to play a song for her mother Coco. Coco regains some of her lucidity which causes Abuelita to reconcile with Miguel and allowing him to carve a path of his own. 

The story of Encanto is one concerning a family that has magical powers. Everybody in the family is born with special gifts like strength, healing abilities and much more. Mirabel unfortunately does not have a special gift to the disappointment of Alma, Mirabel's grandmother. She does notice that the house, Casita, is starting to show some cracks since everybody is actually suffering under the pressure to perform and do good for the village. Alma thought that Mirabel not being granted a gift meant that her family was no longer worthy of miracles as she had prayed for when marauders killed her husband. This left her blind to the suffering of her granddaughters who were trying to be nothing but perfect. In the end Alma does realize how she had wronged her family after having quite the argument with Mirabel in which she says that Mirabel is just jealous because she did not receive a gift. She realizes that she should be grateful she has a family and that they have been safe for decades.

All of these stories are beautiful portrayals of intergenerational trauma with happy endings, and I honestly love them and I can find myself in all of them (I know I'm not the only one). In real-life these protagonists might've ended up having to break all contact with their families if all parties hadn't been so understanding. Besides that, other family members would be doubting their life choices because they now realize they could've done it differently. For instance, all of Miguel's family being forced to become shoemakers, Pepa realizing that it's okay that sometimes it isn't all sunshine and rainbows, like on her wedding day when she was so stressed she caused a hurricane, or Mei's aunts discovering you can control the red panda inside. It's also surprising to me how in two of these films the parents take a backseat role in the story which quite disappointing since they also play a role in the lives of the protagonist. Why didn't Miguel's father, Enrique, let Miguel discover what he'd want to do when he's older instead of agreeing that he too should be part of the family business? Why didn't Mirabel's mother, Julieta, do more when Mirabel expressed her emotions on how much she and her sisters were suffering under Alma's pressure? On the surface everything seems hunky-dory, but it's more complex. If these parents had been more aware of the way their parents were dealing with their own issues, then maybe they could've protected their own children from it.

Thank you, and take care.