For this week I’m going to be analyzing Luisa Madrigal. I’m honestly not the biggest fan of her, but there is so much lying beneath the surface of her character that I love to discuss with my friends. In the film, Luisa’s power is her strength. She helps wrangle in the donkeys and pushes houses back into the place they should be when they are leaning. Luisa is such an amazing character.
I found out after watching the movie that Disney Studios did not originally want Luisa to be depicted with big muscles because they did not want her to look masculine. I also discovered that Disney’s animators and the writers of Encanto expected for Isabela to be every little girls’ favorite. They got the opposite reaction than what they were expecting, and in fact, most little girls resonate the most with Luisa in the film.
Luisa has a musical number in the film called Surface Pressure in which she discusses the trials of being the “strong one” in the family. She tells Mirabel all that she’s had to go through and how she has a lot of pressure put on her being one of the oldest cousins and the strongest in the family. It is clear that since Luisa is physically strong, the family expected her to be mentally and emotionally strong.
When the family is going through the rift in their powers, and Luisa is having trouble being able to lift things and objects are starting to feel heavy to her, she feels as though she is worthless. She feels not good enough while going through the power rift, meanwhile the rest of the family was solely concerned with the power of the magic. This goes to show that Luisa had a lot of emotional and mental pressure on her to remain strong even in the face of doubt. Being the strong one, she felt that she had no one to turn to but herself as she did not want to be a disappointment.
During her musical number, she says “Give it to your sister, your sister’s older/Give her all the heavy things you can’t shoulder/Watch as she fumbles and bends but never breaks/No mistakes/Just pressure like a drip, drip, drip that’ll never stop” alluding to the fact that Abuela as well as the rest of the family puts an immense amount of pressure on her and she sometimes she feels as though she is not strong enough. Throughout the entire movie, Luisa’s resolve starts to crack and we get a small peek at her mental and emotional turmoil. The most important example of her resolve cracking is during her musical number.
At the end of the movie, while the family and the town are working to rebuild Casita, Luisa reveals to her sisters that she is strong, but sometimes she cries. They have to assure her that there is nothing wrong with that, alluding to the fact that Luisa had been hiding her emotions for years in fear of disappointment.
Luisa is arguably one of the most important characters in Encanto. She shows children that even the strongest of people cry, have bad days, and endure big emotions. She proves time and time again that it is okay to crack under the pressure and ask for help.
These posts are always so interesting. Again, as someone who has only heard of the films really through Tik Tok, it is so interesting that animators did not want to taint the idea of what a girl “should” look like, even in 2022. Luisa seems like one of the most realistic Disney Characters.
Great analysis! Too often people who are physically strong are perceived to be strong in every other way. Luisa demonstrates that notion is false. It’s great to have a strong female character that can be relatable to a whole new group of young girls out there. Disney did a great job with her character.
Strong people, both mentally and physically, are generally great role models for young people. Disney did a great job on making her character especially for the fact that she is not portrayed as infallible. Your analysis, as always, was great.