Cactus Femmes and Donkey Daydreams: Queer Performance in Disney’s Encanto

Within Encanto , the magical body doubles as the queer body: characters—sometimes dangerous, sometimes miraculous—destabilize the world around them; they simultaneously hold together and rip apart convention in a narrative that is inescapably, explosively queer. Their eventual reclamation and acceptance of their individual powers, in the context of community, allows them body sovereignty and, within Indigenous trajectories of queer sovereignty, cultural preservation in the face of nationalistic violence. I demonstrate how, within Encanto , queerness, as embodied by the protagonists, is not merely an implicit dynamic within families, but a mechanism of cultural survivance.