Pixar's Coco: Modern Racism and Sterile Character Writing

Before I start, yes, this is a videogame blog; bare with me, I'll relate it to videogames soon enough. Before you ask, yes, I am well aware of the high critical score of Coco, the high approval from casual moviegoers, and the high approval from the majority of Central Americans.

In high school, I remember seeing a black motivational poster in some other teacher's classroom about the importance of not backing down when you feel you are alone in thinking something. I think it depicted a yellow, exotic, oceanic fish, but the point is, I'm perpetually shocked by how relevant that poster has been through the years. I never would have guessed I would go on to harbor so many deeply-unpopular opinions, that have frankly made me ashamed of myself. As an example, I found Thor Ragnorak to be so bad that, when I left the theater, the only thing on my mind was how ashamed I was to be a writer if being a writer means I'm a part of the same occupation that produced something that colossally embarrassing. Fortunately, mankind has always had the power of logic and reason, so those with unpopular opinions were able to avoid death by angry mobs. Thank God.

I think Ragnorak and Coco make for an interesting comparison because they are on the opposite ends of storytelling. Ragnorak is about putting consistent characters first and stringing together a random series of events to call a plot for those characters to react to. Coco is storytelling that has everything bend to the iron will of the plot structure, even if that means having 90% of your characters exist solely to be puppets for the plot. Most stories, even most stories in videogames, have both interesting characters, and a well-functioning plot structure. While most games sit in the middle of those two movies, Paper-Soul Theater, for better or worse, is going to be much closer to Ragnorak in terms of structure, and that's what's so terrifying to me. Well, that's not a fair comparison, because our game is character driven much the same way 1984 is, rather than the kind of aimless plot that a comedy sitcom might have. All the same, I am diametrically opposed to Coco's idea of "characters."

Coco does a lot of things right, regarding culture, summarizing ethnic groups, and accurately portraying a spiritual celebration, from what I hear from American Hispanics all across the internet. You don't need me to tell you that it does more right than wrong and that it is a worthwhile experience. It even deserves all the awards it won. It's a pleasant-long-cry from the old-school racist days of 1940s Walt Disney shorts. ...but that's just it, old-school racism, the kind when a race was exploited for money (exoticism, made exclusively for the dominate race), when negative and neutral stereotypes were the only kind, etc.

Modern racism started with pieces of media like Disney's Pocahontas. Pocahontas is a movie made with nothing but endearing respect for native people because of Walt's desire to make something progressive a la To Kill a Mocking Bird. Linsey, a movie critic, and an ex-friend of YouTube's Doug Walker, made a great video lambasting Pocahontas for its bad portrayal of native people, despite having good intentions, softening people's hearts for other races, and universal appeal. The truth is often tough to swallow, and one such truth is that racism is not something that can be whisked away using a magic wand and good intentions. No, racism is something you have to work your ass off to avoid, and to anyone who fights it fiercely, you are a hero who bears a heavy weight on your shoulders. Pocahontas may be an interesting character who stands out among other people of her race within her own movie, but she still exhibits traits that reinforce deeply unrealistic characteristics that skew our understanding of what native people are like. They're just fucking people, Goddamnit; they are nothing more--nothing less--but the movie treats them as if they're magic forest elves worth marveling at for their divisively-distinct foreign majesty.

If Pocahontas treated the main character like a magic forest elf, Coco completely treats Miguel's extended family like antagonistic-members of a dystopian society. There is literally a scene where the family forms a mob and bust Miguel's guitar, as it symbolizes their hate of music/ all occupations that aren't shoe-making. The movie intentionally makes them terrifying so that you root for Miguel who naturally doesn't want to submit to them. The executives/ writers were so afraid of the possibility of the audience disagreeing with Miguel, that they felt the need to turn his family into monsters.

Listen man, I don't need to think every last decision Miguel makes is the logical thing to do in order to want to follow him. Ash Ketchum is a piece of shit person/ Pokemon trainer who caused damage and trouble everywhere he went because he didn't have his life together, during season one of Pokemon, and you know what, I found it easy to root for Ash; his heart was in the right place and he was always working towards a concrete goal. Likewise, Team Rocket is a group of very sympathetic lost souls who do evil things but make it look charming and do it for misguided reasons. Most episodes, they get to say funny things, but their actions have consequences. Sometimes, I just want to give them a hug and beg them to change their ways. Guess what? They work well as antagonists because they oppose the protagonist for reasons that are easy to comprehend (though not agree with). 

Anyway, the consequence is that all the main characters of the movie, with three exceptions total, are dislikable, unrelatable, and weird to anyone who didn't grow up with Hispanics (until the end of the movie where they kinda sorta have character growth and change their ways). One thing Pocahontas did right was open the door for other cultures to understand the minority. This movie is very edgy about displaying Mexican family culture at it's thickest and most divisive, and if you've been paying attention, that should sound an awful lot like the modern racism I described earlier: exaggerating divides to make other human races seem interesting.

For Christ's sake, we're all human beings first and foremost! We need to approach writing characters from this mentality. If you want to add a black guy to your sitcom or your action movie, start be writing him like a person, and then make tiny adjustments for complex racial differences, then see how that character would naturally react to your plot. Don't fucking start by making him a template black person then molding him into something a little less cookie cutter. And you know? I wouldn't be talking about this if media like Coco agreed with my way of writing. You should never reduce characters to just "evil," or just "Mexican grandma."

Second, when you have characters bend to your needs, they lack consistency. Spoiler: Miguel's real great-grandfather goes from cross-dressing in a mad dash to get to Earth (followed by lying constantly to everyone he sees to get his way), to an innocent, soft-spoken, loving father with a good moral compass. Don't tell me he changed in the many years he stayed there because the movie never establishes that fact.

So in closing, I want Paper-Soul Theater's vaguely-Native-American-people to be a series of individuals that stay true to themselves. Yes, they all belong to a nation of people, but they also divide in more ways than can be counted. Some found religion. Some are quite proud of their occupation. Some are shitty people. Some happen to be masculine or feminine. Some are going through trauma. Some are quite social. Some lost a limb during a war. Some are quite intelligent. Some have interest in very specific things. ...But no matter who they are, they will always by dynamic people first and foremost. Even the background characters who have a small role should feel as if protagonists of someone's story briefly passing through. That's real life: no person left two-dimensional. None.