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Dawn and I got around to watching Disney’s Encanto this past weekend and it’s been on my mind. A slow burn, honestly, but now I’m as obsessed as anyone else with “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” (and it’s safe to say a lot of folk are obsessed since it recently reached #1 on the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S., a feat not even “Let It Go” accomplished).
I haven’t really had any stock in the Academy Awards in many years but I have friends in the movie industry or industry-adjacent and so it’s not something I can entirely ignore. One of my friends expressed amusement that Disney’s backing for Best Original Song went to a different tune than the one currently ear worming its way through America. Apparently the story there is that Encanto’s premiere came after the deadline for submissions for Oscar consideration, so Disney just had to make a wild guess ahead of time on which one of the compositions would be The One and… well, they guessed wrong. To be fair(?) “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is not the kind of song that focus groups and conventional wisdom would see as an Oscar contender or even a chart topper. It’s not a belting solo or a romantic duet, it’s a quirky ensemble piece that’s heavy on the storytelling to the point you arguably need to have watched the movie to understand it.
So I suppose one take away would be — a lot of people have watched the movie. But another thought that’s interesting is just the factor that should be its weakness, which is the heavy storytelling element. I personally am quite partial to songs that “move” narratively-speaking, especially if they’re bangers (as the kids say), but I have learned over the decades how little my personal tastes matter in the larger picture.
This song works, and there’s a lot of analysis that can be done on why it gels together in such an effective way, including a climactic group repeat of individual stanzas that’s up there with “One Day More” from Les Miserables even though the subject matter is basically family gossip rather than revolution.
But one thing that comes to mind is that I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game which is all about con artistry and why people keep being susceptible to its wiles throughout the centuries, and one thing she brings up is the power of storytelling. Facts, she explains, can be argued and refuted. Stories are slippier things to deny and tend to take root much more easily in our psyches, which is likely why ancient parents first made up something out in the woods that would eat you if you wandered off, just like poor little Og got eaten — rather than just rattling off what big fangs a sabretooth cat has.
Stories can have immense power for good and ill, which is a heady thing to contemplate as a storyteller. But in the meantime, it makes it less surprising to me that a mysterious tale spun about a lost relative could resonate with a mass audience, especially if it’s got a beat you can dance to.