I hope it's ok I ask this, but what are your thoughts on the Disney movie Coco?
It’s totally okay to ask! I’d love it if y’all asked me stuff like this more often!
Personally I love the movie but it’s not without its flaws. When Coco first came out it faced backlash because people had said there was already a day of the dead movie, the book of life. (I don’t know why people were so threatened but they were. They didn’t want it to come out because they said we already had a film.) The book of life was a good movie and had a good story but it was seriously flawed. It only had like a handful of Mexican voice actors and the rest were white or Hispanic (but not Mexican. Hispanic is a wide category of people and if you’re going to do a film about a certain group you can’t just cast voice actors because they’re Hispanic.) Coco did an excellent job of casting an all Mexican cast and had payed homage to Mexican heritage in a beautiful way. The songs were well crafted and blended beautifully in English and Spanish, especially remember me. It also had a lot of famous Mexican people, it was nice to see cameos from frida and el santo. But the thing is Coco didn’t let their characters be Mexican. I’ll explain, Disney has a serious problem with erasing color from their films. Like princess and the frog they made tiana and naveen frogs for the majority of the film and took away their identities. Coco had the same problem. Right from the start the story shifts from having very dark looking Mexicans (they were beautiful I was so happy to see that they weren’t white washed) to being skeletons for like the remainder of the film. In a way this is white washing them, you take away their identities and turn them into something else. A trend that is only really done in films where there are POC.
And a lot of people that worked in the film weren’t Mexican or Hispanic and this is a problem. I don’t know how Disney can justify making a film like Coco without having actual input from Mexican artists and musicians. A lot of the composers and animators were white, they just “researched” instead of letting actual Hispanic workers put their inputs in. Disney does this a lot when it comes to POC films. They visit places and just look at it from an outside view instead of taking the time to find first hand accounts and views.
My one other issue is the reason of the story. Like book of life, Coco deals with day of the dead. Yes it’s an important holiday to Mexican heritage but it makes it feel like that’s all our movies can be about. Like companies need a reason for these Hispanic characters to exist. Like they can’t just exist on their own. I would love to see a Hispanic character in a movie or show that is just themselves, where companies don’t try and prove to you that they’re Hispanic/Latinx.
But the movie as a whole was well written, especially Del La Cruz, he was equally charming and terrifying. He felt like a real life villain and I never saw it coming. I loved the storyline and the way the family was portrayed. (At times it was a little offensive and it dipped into being stereotypical but it wasn’t too bad). The film was beautiful and it is one of my favorite films. I really enjoyed seeing it and seeing myself and my family represented in it. And the fact that the women were the whole reason for the story was genius. I loved that they were the true leaders of their families! I hope we see more movies like coco in the future.
