Disney digital animated films seem to be increasingly open to a multicultural strategy in which the life experiences of different ethnic and racial communities are addressed. One of the biggest hits with Latinx protagonists is Disney’s Encanto (2021), codirected by Byron Howard, Jared Bush, and Charise Castro Smith. Based on a story about the crisis of a Colombian family with magical powers, the film can be read from the perspective of postmemory, as an allegory about the inheritance of cultural traumas. This video essay analyzes the figure of Alma, the grandmother and matriarch. This representation of the aging woman is halfway between the tradition of Disney’s villainesses and godmothers. Its complexity lies in the embodiment of power dynamics within the family and the generational struggle between the importance of a legacy and the need to overcome the painful past.
Abuela Alma: Exploring Aging Femininity in Disney’s Encanto (2021)
Mercedes Álvarez San Román is a faculty member at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and a researcher at TECMERIN. She received a doctorate from the Université Paris–Sorbonne and from the University of Oviedo. She is author of the book Los personajes femeninos en el cine español de animación contemporáneo (Peter Lang, 2024).
Asier Gil Vázquez holds a PhD in Media Research from the University Carlos III of Madrid. He is a Communication and Media Studies lecturer at the UC3M and a member of the TECMERIN research group. He has recently published the monograph Personajes femeninos de reparto en el cine español: Mujeres excéntricas y de armas tomar (Vía Láctea, 2020), studying age and gender representations in classical Spanish cinema.
Mercedes Álvarez San Román, Asier Gil Vázquez; Abuela Alma: Exploring Aging Femininity in Disney’s Encanto (2021). Feminist Media Histories 1 October 2024; 10 (4): 141–148. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2024.10.4.141
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