Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist
Well, we’ve finally got to Coco. Cultural awareness is difficult. We are
presented with it in our day to day lives but generally only at a surface
level. You talk to people with difficult experiences to you all the time, but
actually explaining those experiences is another matter. What I’m saying is I
understand why this film was difficult to write.
Lee Unkrich had been working at Pixar since the beginning as an editor on
Toy Story. He’s had a role in pretty much every Pixar film up to 2020’s Onward.
He made a debut not as a director but as a writer with Toy Story 3, which is a
firm ground. He’s been in the senior creative team for every film since (and
with WALL-E and Up also) but he was the main writer of Coco, an idea he’d been
developing since 2010.
But importantly, he’s not from Mexico, in fact at the time none of the
creative team were. Still, this is Pixar so exhaustive research is a given. The
team made trips to Mexico to absorb its art and culture. And of course, the big
draw. Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead is commonly used in film as
set-dressing. There is an appeal of big crowds and costumes and parades and the
like. It’s a bit cliché and oftentimes annoying, but Coco wants to draw to a
deeper meaning behind it all.
But cultural appropriation is a tricky subject and Disney decided to make this a public debate by attempting to trademark "Día de los Muertos" (Day of the Dead in Spanish) for merchandise. How come no-one in their marketing department could tell that’s a bad idea? I can tell that’s a bad idea. Naturally they backtracked pretty quickly and changed the title to Coco, so let's hope the rest of the film is good.
