Copyright 2021 Lady in the Blue Box Publishing, Rachel Beth Ahrens, All Rights Reserved. Reader Discretion is Advised. Slight trigger warning in effect. Don't plagiarize, be a nice person. Love ya.
Contains movie spoilers from the Disney movie Encanto. You were warned.
Written between December 29, 2021-December 31, 2021.
It's now nearly 2022, just days before New Year's, and you know what that means. It's nearing the anniversary of when my father passed away.
And it's also just a few months before the Oscar nominations and awards come out and announced live.
They've already announced a FEW Academy Awards just last week as a Christmas present. And it's official. Encanto has been nominated for Best Song this year. Lin-Manuel Miranda might be getting his first Oscar, even though he's been nominated several times over the years for his previous Disney movies, plus his musical Hamilton, which was only released on Disney + alone. He's won NONE. Like Sara Bareilles tragically won absolutely zero awards in her entire lifetime, but nominated for the Tony's and the Grammy Awards too many times to count. Miranda has won all of them, except for the Oscars. He's getting pretty close to the flame for becoming a legendary member of the elite EGOT status, and he currently has only three of them. So far, from 2020-2021, he's basically been behind the scenes with all of his creations, just a guy in the background in making stuff, taking a back seat break from the high status of being a famous actor to doing what he dreamed of most: creating.
We're all cheering him on, and waiting on the sidelines, wondering if he's going to come back with something new pretty soon.
I'm still waiting too damn long to finally see Tick Tick Boom. It's unreal and almost lunacy the wait time for me to see the movie. Plus, the new Spiderman movie has been out for almost three weeks now, and I still haven't seen it yet. My mother is still not interested in seeing it and she feels like she's not interested in superhero movies anymore, which makes me sad. I want to see ALL the movies my dad would have loved to see and is going to miss from here to the distant future, and unfortunately, I've missed several in 2021. I never got to see Dune, which my dad had been rambling over and over about that it's getting so much hype and is going to do so much better than the 1980s version, but none of us ever saw it in theatres. I know that if my father was alive today, he would have dragged us all to get to the movies to see it on the big screen. I miss my dad so much right now, as I'm listening to my depression-inspired playlist I created dedicated to New Year's Eve in 2020. I create a new playlist for each birthday and New Year's every year. The theme I'm listening to for 2021 is my amazing dad, Bob Ahrens, in loving memory.
And the 2022 playlist for this New Year's is called, "2021 is another disaster year, let's hear it for 2022." I'm guessing that this year is just another repeat of 2019, the worst year of my life, which is probably never going to end. Even people having heart attacks are being denied hospitalization because hospitals are too full of people dying of COVID19 on ventilators in intensive care. And there is no room for cancer patients, diabetes patients, people with heart failure or kidney failure, or people who fell down the stairs and broke a bone by complete accident. It reminds me of the horrors of me seeing my father in ICU while saying goodbye to him for the last time, wires and tubes everywhere, and it broke my heart to even think that he never got to say goodbye to me and mom. And my last conversation with him, I said, "Dad, I'm so sorry that I'm a failure and I never got to ask you what moment were you the proudest of me. I failed you, I'm a failure. I'm sorry I didn't get more time with you. I'm sorry I didn't get married and give you grandkids like you wanted. I'm sorry that I'm 32 and I have no income and no future. I'm sorry I've been a burden. I wish you could stay. Not on my favorite holiday, not like this, I can't say goodbye to you like this. Why did God have to murder you? I'm sorry I never got to do the things I should have done so I could move out of the house... I let you down, dad. Please forgive me..."
And I burst into tears right there and couldn't stop angry-sobbing the entire time. And then my mom came back from the bathroom and held me, just before I called my therapist's office to tell her that I needed an emergency appointment because we had been told by the hospital chaplain that today was the day my dad was leaving us, dad was not staying on life support anymore-- time is up, it's over. Dad is going to Heaven.
And then a couple months later after he passed away that December 31 evening, I listened to the Hamilton Broadway soundtrack again.
It changed my LIFE. And my spirit deepened when I heard the very last time I heard the ticking of the clock, where Aaron Burr is raising his pistol at the ensemble singing, "One two three four five six seven eight nine, number ten paces fire-" And suddenly- SILENCE. Dead silence. And Alexander Hamilton, played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is MONOLOGUING, not even rapping- it's spoken verse POETRY!
And Miranda's voice echoes softly, "There is no beat, no melody..."
No beat- no heartbeat- no melody- that signifies that Hamilton's heart is going to end, time's up. He knows he's going to die at the hands of his friend who turned against him.
In the immortal words of Charlotte "Chuck" Charles from the short-lived tragic comedy crime series Pushing Daisies, I have to say to him, "I have so many questions, my mind wanders!"
And my boyfriend Alexander, he has to be the voice of Ned the Piemaker in the same series, telling me at 4 in the morning, "You need to feed it warm milk and a turkey sandwich, let it curl up in a sunny spot and take a nap."
See, this is why Pushing Daisies needs to make a comeback, the writing was SO good. Plus, they had Kristen Chenoweth, one of my favorite Broadway actresses from the hit prequel to Wizard of Oz, based on the Gregory Maguire novel my middle school best friend gave me for my 16th birthday, Wicked. But the sets were expensive, and the series came out immediately after I graduated from high school and I was going to college, was around the same time of the Writers Guild of America writers' strike of 2007-2008, which the show was severely impacted by it. The show only lasted two seasons and was canceled after 2008.
Now getting back on topic here before it runs away from me... on the subject of Encanto...
I finally, finally had the opportunity to see the movie in theatres before it reached streaming on Christmas Eve, which at the same time Christmas weekend, it left the movies. I got to see one of the very last showings of the movie at the theatre in White Marsh. The animation was fluid, vibrant, captivating beyond compare, the plot and characters were entertaining as hell, and it was the first time ever that my mother said, "This is the first time I actually appreciate Lin-Manuel Miranda's music! There's no rapping in this! I love it!"
And I had to remind her, "Mom... Don't you remember Disney's Moana? He wrote 'How Far I'll Go' and 'You're Welcome'. He did write songs for another Disney movie before. He's the new Disney go-to guy right now. He's actually working on a remake of Little Mermaid right now."
She looked at me like she was stunned, but still fully impressed. She said, "Wow! This is really cool! I do love Moana!"
By the way, guys, my mom's favorite Moana song is the one with the giant crab, "Shiny", it's her favorite scene, but I think "How Far I'll Go" is a close second for both of us.
And then a week later, I found out that Lindsay Ellis, one of my favorite video bloggers, is resigning and deleting herself from the internet. And I already kind of know why.
Just so everyone knows, I support transgender and nonbinary rights. Love is love, everyone deserves love, and I have respect for trans rights are human rights.
I'm sad for Lindsay Ellis to be leaving, and I think her decision is granted as a very good reason to do so, but really, all she has to do is apologize and make a change to her videos, and not make the same mistakes again. But there is no reason to be attacking her as a person, attacking her on a social media platform as a form of bullying. It's what they did to many celebrities on the internet for so many reasons, especially the rude and nasty ones who are actually not nice (I found out J.K. Rowling is definitely not a nice person, I find it hard to separate her from her literature she writes, and it's depressing), but they're also attacking the celebrities who ARE nice. Why attack Lin-Manuel Miranda for making a beautiful film based on the very first Broadway musical he ever wrote, In the Heights? That really wasn't necessary, especially after he did apologize on Twitter, which was excellent form on his part. He was eloquent and polite about it, taking the integrity and accountability for the whole thing. And when he did Encanto, he actually got better with this!
This whole "Sorry, not sorry" and the "you have to earn respect" thing? The whole, "I'm sorry, but you're not sorry, apology not accepted, I'm blocking you and telling everybody to delete you from Twitter because you're evil and you won't say it-" -that is the worst thing you can do.
I hate cancel culture. Do you know why?
Because of the GOLDEN RULE. Respect absolutely EVERYBODY as you would yourself and your parents. That's it.
My mom always says, "Be nice to the nice and the not so nice, because they want to be nice too." She's correct, all the time.
Here's some context with this, based on Disney movies.
By the way, this is where Lindsay Ellis went horribly wrong with some aspects of her ongoing series on Disney remakes and sequels in her videos called, "Woke Disney", which started with Beauty and the Beast (#BeastForShe), Aladdin, and Dumbo.
Let's break it down in two separate movies, the movie I just saw in theatres (Encanto), and the movie I saw on my birthday before my dad passed away a year later (Mary Poppins Returns).
Not only is Lindsay Ellis correct about Disney + and the ongoing Disney war since the horrible years of Michael Eisner's reign of terror, but Disney has taken into account that they're trying too hard to cover it all up. They started getting back to basics with making another Mary Poppins movie, and with Encanto, being the 60th animated movie (Tangled, the Rapunzel movie, was number 50, and that was released in 2010, about 11 years ago), which was supposed to get a 2020 release before the dreaded plague had other plans- they had to make a story that was better for audiences and not making it a remake.
It was actually Lin-Manuel Miranda's idea in the first place, to introduce the very first Latina Disney Princess to the franchise, years ago when he approached former CEO John Lasseter about it, before Lasseter was forced to step down due to an ongoing scandal. Even better, he had already written some music beforehand, while he was working on a remake of Little Mermaid with his idol, Alan Menken, and also working on Mary Poppins Returns, and before that, winning too many Tony Awards for his performance in Hamilton. It was still in the works after he had successfully finished the music for Moana, and he had other ideas in mind, which he approached to Lasseter in the same room with Dwayne Johnson voicing Maui- the room where it happened. (Sorry, I had to go there.)
While in London, filming the scenes for turning back Big Ben and singing to "Trip a Little Light Fantastic", Miranda's first objective was to approach Mary Poppins Returns director Rob Marshall, whom Miranda knew was the former director of Chicago, a Bob Fosse classic from Broadway's glory days that was revived as a movie starring Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger.
The first thing he did? He asked Rob Marshall, "Tell me everything you know about making a movie."
Marshall immediately caught on, because I believe this was the moment Miranda was called by a producer to be the one to direct a movie about Jonathan Larson, based on his Boho Days performances of a musical monologue, in which the movie of the same name is called, Tick, Tick... Boom. Marshall was more than happy to give him the details. It paid off tremendously, in directing that movie, as well as making another Disney movie that he wrote the music for and helped write the story to be turned into a script.
Now, the specifics- Mary Poppins Returns takes place about 20 years later after the first one that was filmed and released in 1964. It's literally the sequel to the movie, taking place after Mr. Banks has passed away, for we no longer see him on screen, but also, Mr. Banks's son, Michael, is all grown up, and he's a widower.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and quote Lindsay Ellis again- Think of the children.
May I also add- this takes place in the 1930s, the Great Depression era.
But I'm doing it in another way. Michael Banks in the movie doesn't know about the tuppence that he gave to his father, where Mr. Banks told Mr. Dawes to "guard it well" and let it earn more and more enough to pay back the loan. We also don't remember what exactly happened to Michael's wife, for all we know is that she is deceased and she's been gone for an entire year. It's heartbreaking to hear the song "A Conversation", but about an hour into the movie, it's quickly resolved and answered with Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) singing "The Place Where the Lost Things Go", a song which still makes me cry on cue when I'm reminded that my dad is smiling from the stars, for dad always loved science and astronomy.
The lyrics, if you don't know them, the last part of it goes: "Maybe all you're missing lives inside of you. So when you need her touch, and loving gaze- 'Gone, but not forgotten' is the perfect phrase- Smiling from a star that she makes glow, trust she's always there, watching as you grow... find her in the place where the lost things go..."
At that part, when I got off the podium during my dad's funeral the very, very last time I ever sang in public, and I did this a capella, off book, no karaoke music in the background, I did it on-key with perfect pitch as well- I quivered and said, "I miss my universe." And I hugged my boyfriend and broke into angry, heavy sobbing.
Today, it is one year exactly since I lost my dad to stage three colon cancer, complications of heart failure while he was in surgery when they were taking him off the anesthesia. He passed away in his sleep and never woke up, a year ago on December 31st.
Encanto also has a lot to deal with dads and daughters, or even lack thereof, and even uncles. This has to be one daughter in particular, Mirabel, who they say in the movie, has no gift whatsoever.
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE ENCANTO MOVIE. PLEASE STOP READING AND WATCH THE MOVIE ON DISNEY PLUS IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE SO ALREADY! You have been warned.
At the end of the movie, we actually learn that the house HAD to fall apart. This was more or less about a dysfunctional family. And when dysfunctional families fight, it seems that the house is falling apart in some way.
Tio Bruno, the one nobody talks about (ha ha) actually LOVES his family! He was just being pushed out of the family because of the Abuela making everything more and more difficult for everyone. Abuela was so fixated on everything being perfect, for she even wanted Isabela, the "little miss perfect" character to be incredibly perfect all the time and have the perfect husband, but unfortunately, she hated being perfect. She was tired of making flowers bloom, she was hoping to make even crazier things, like a cactus! And Dolores, all she wanted was true love. In a way, that's kind of what happened with the song "I've Got a Dream" in Disney's 50th film Tangled, with the characters at the Snuggly Duckling tavern.
As soon as Mirabel is about to crack, break down, and lose control when Abuela finally tells her off, saying that Mirabel is never going to be good enough, that's when everybody loses their gift and Casita crumbles into ruins, as the candle in Mirabel's hands burns out at long last. Honestly, candles have a very short life, if you notice.
Afterwards, Mirabel runs away and Abuela finds her, they finally have a heart-to-heart at the same river in which Abuela lost her husband, Pedro, who died during the time where Colombia was going through the Thousand Days' War (Guerra de los Mil Dias, according to Wikipedia), which lasted from 1899 to 1902, if we're going by history here. It was basically a civil war between the two parties of Colombian government at the time, between conservative and liberal parties, and the people who got caught in the middle of the battles were killed as they tried to find salvation in running to rural Colombia. The war eventually got worse and started moving throughout Venezuela and Ecuador. The setting of the movie takes place in rural Colombia during the early 1900s, I think, since the camera they use to take the family photos in the beginning and end is one of those old time tintype cameras that were used in the late-Victorian early-Edwardian era. I actually have experienced taking a tintype photograph at Key City Steampunk Festival in Gettysburg, and that is the exact same camera that they used in the film.
When Mirabel and Abuela return to the crumbled ruins of their Casita, they decide to rebuild the house, brick by brick, with some help from the other people in their village. Even though they no longer have their superpowers, their gifts completely stripped, they decide to help each other as a family, family being the most important thing to help each other no matter what. They all get their gifts back when Mirabel is given a doorknob to open the door of Casita, and the magic returns.
But here's the question of the takeaway- what the hell is Mirabel's gift??? Is she actually getting her gift now that she's reopened and rebuilt Casita? What actually is it?
Here's my theory- Ready???
MIRABEL'S GIFT IS THE FREAKING HOUSE.
She IS the MAGIC of Casita!
Remember when Mirabel was seeing visions that Casita was having issues that there were cracks in the walls? Maybe because Abuela telling Mirabel that she's never going to be good enough was rubbing off on her, and Mirabel was causing the cracks in the walls of the house, causing Casita to fall. The ruining of the house had to happen. The flame of the candle burning out had to happen. Because Abuela was instilling so much fear into Mirabel for having no gift and having no powers of her own, Mirabel was destined to find Tio Bruno and figure out what was causing her this much grief, so she could get through it on her own, and eventually show her Abuela and the rest of her family that nobody, nobody is allowed to be left out, at all. With family, to quote Lilo and Stitch, nobody gets left behind, or forgotten. Ohana means family.
And if Mirabel's superpower is giving magical powers to the house of Madrigal, the Casita, she is actually the strongest and most powerful than all of the members of Familia Madrigal.
Mirabel is Casa Madrigal. That is her gift. Prove me wrong.
The proof is in the song "Dos Oruguitas", in which the finale of the song, the last part sung in Spanish, is where they mention "mariposas" while a huge colony of gold butterflies surround and fly around Abuela and Mirabel. It's really a song about caterpillars that never really grew up, but even in adversity, they do become butterflies.
Mariposa - Spanish translation - butterfly.
Mirabel Madrigal is my new Disney hero. She's the butterfly, the mariposa, in adversity. Nuff said.
I looked over at my boyfriend sitting next to me as we watched that part, the part with the song "Dos Oruguitas" to the end of the movie, and I could have sworn he was tearing up. But he looked at me and said, "I'm fine." And he just held me even tighter. Until finally, we kissed. Like two oruguitas.
Disney is not as cold hearted as they may seem. Their movies and shows are focus group tested by families, and they are geared at kids, true. They are the largest conglomerate in the world, as they have Disney theme parks everywhere and their movies are translated into hundreds of languages every year to be released in countries around the world. Yes, they are still at war with Sony to get the rights to Spiderman. And I really don't want them to downgrade Deadpool to a PG-13 rating, I'm fine with the R-rated versions just fine, because that's how it should be, and it is very close to the comic book as it is.
But what is Encanto really about? The importance of why nobody should ever be left out, about representation, and how with family, no one should ever be left behind.
And Mary Poppins Returns? Remember that episode of Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi and Bill Potts with the emoji robots? The episode is where the Doctor mentions that robots, the Varty, don't know what grief is, and the only way they could understand was kill everyone. It's only human to grieve. It's not all about losing your house and all your stuff, it's dealing with grief. The death of a loved one brings it back full circle that love is superior to life.
The Doctor Who episode I'm referring to? It's also the name of a Katy Perry song.
It's what my dad used to say when I was younger and I was upset.
Rachel...
"SMILE!"
Happy New Year. Happy birthday, World.
In loving memory of Robert Thomas Ahrens, "Bobby". My dad. Love you forever.
Good night. Sleep well.
Love you all.
-The Lady in the Blue Box
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