Approaching Pixar’s Coco during the Trump Era

Abstract

An archaeology of media approach guides this analysis of the film Coco, a 3D animated fiction movie inspired by the Day of the Dead or Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, and released by Pixar Animation Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, in 2017. In particular, I explore the tensions and contradictions within Pixar’s most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand against Donald Trump’s presentation of Mexicans as ‘rapists and drug-trafficking criminals’. I argue that this film, despite its praise by audiences and critics as a ‘pro-Mexico’ film, does ultimately not vindicate Mexico’s ‘good people’. Instead, it promotes an institutionalized nationalist image of Mexico’s heritage and identity, which goes back to the nineteenth century. Considering that Disney has the largest global market share in the film industry, Coco’s director Lee Unkrich’s good intentions to make this film ‘right’ help to disseminate and support the Mexican government in its reconstruction of an imagined sociocultural homogeneity, which marginalizes non-dominant ways of life in a culturally rich and diverse country.

Keywords

• coco
• pixar
• trump
• día de muertos
• media archaeology