Opinion on “Coco”

Like most anyone, it's hard to imagine a Disney film I don't like. Maybe there might be some I am indifferent about, but one that I hate and refuse to watch again? How about the film about a woman who started a generations-long cult based on forgetting the existence of one man and something you used to love all because she never bothered to gather more information and even forced anyone in her life to take on her business as a genuine interest and blindly dislike everything she dislikes all under the guise of family? What could that film possibly be? Oh yea, "Coco"!

At first, I used to think that I just didn't like it because I watched it too many times because of my sister, but I soon noticed there were more things about it that really didn't like about it at all. First of all, let's put ourselves in Miguel's shoes for a paragraph or two. You're the black sheep of your family because you love something everyone else in your family hates and, as a result, you have to have to juggle between the person you are and the person you prefer. By some mystical force that came from stealing from the dead on Día de los Muertos, you deceased relative (a woman who is too stubborn to see that erasing someone from family history is a bad idea) takes advantage of the circumstances if your near-death experience to force you to be someone everyone in your family prefers. Since your family is stubborn and, as a result, not helpful, you had to learn the hard way that you idolized the wrong person and that your family hated the wrong person for years all because one of them would prefer hearing the one side of the story that is convenient enough for her.

Although Miguel is the only example we can see in the movie and the experiences might have been different for the other Riveras, it's fair to say that a form of oppression still exists within the film's world. From what I can guess, this is the kind of family that shoves their shoe making business down your throat constantly as you grow up as a way of saying that you have no other choice for your future. As we have also seen, even if a Rivera dares to choose a desire that either includes music or doesn't include joining the family business, you're given the ultimatum of deciding your own fate or being worth remembering all in the name of family. I've heard stories of manipulation and oppression within family that keeps people from turning to them for help or consider escaping and something tells me that if the movie didn't have a PG rating, the oppression would've been a lot more recognizable.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Coco had to hide the memorabilia of her father just so her mother wouldn't try destroying or throwing it away. When Coco was a child and her father, Hector, was away to perform with Ernesto, she received letters from her father as well as poetry and protected them to keep the memory of him. Unlike her mother, she occasionally hummed and kept a desire of dancing. However, an incident where she got hurt while dancing made the pride she felt in her love for her father as well as her musical desire come to an end. According to the book Coco: A Story About Music, Shoes, and Family, a combination of the worried expressions from her daughters and her past including her mother constantly expressing hatred for music caused her to finally give in to the anti-music principles that would last for generations to come. Dear reader, how would you feel if you were forced into a situation where you're not supposed to even mentioned the relative so dear to your heart and, if there was ever a time where you possible reveal a memory of him, you might not be taken seriously?

Now let's see what Hector went through. The charisma of his "best friend" caused him to leave home with said "best friend" to play for the world. Hector became homesick after performing for months and died before he could return. He initially thought he died of food poisoning and was made fun of in the afterlife because of it. After years of witnessing others fade away from being forgotten, trying to visit his family to no avail, and his wife being too prideful due to grieving the wrong way to hear his side of the story, he felt a mixture of negative emotions after finding out the truth: his "best friend" not only disrespected his want to go home to his family, but killed him inconspicuously in order to steal his songs for fame. I've joked many times that, if not for the anti-music principles in the Rivera family, I'd almost think Hector's wife and "best friend" were both in on him eventually being forgotten for the sake of an emotional affair.

In conclusion, I understand that Pixar wanted to promote the ideas of family and dreams, but I don't see "Coco" as the best film to use as an example to go by and there's actually more to it than just watching it too much.