Abstract
This article situates the Pixar computer animation Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, 2017) within a recent selection of afterlife fictions and questions why such narratives might appeal to our contemporary moment. The author’s response is structured around the idea of utopia. In Coco, he identifies several conceptions of utopic space and ideals. The afterlife fiction places characters and viewers in a reflexive location which affords them the opportunity to examine their lives as lived (rather than in death). Transplanting Richard Dyer’s work on classic Hollywood musicals as entertainment utopia to a contemporary animated musical, the article proposes that such a film can be seen as adhering to a kind of ‘new cinematic sincerity’. Coco’s particular depiction of The Day of the Dead fiesta and the Land of the Dead has its roots in the Mexican writer Octavio Paz’s poetic and romantic treatise The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). A comparison between these two texts suggests that willing encounters with death can be connected to an openness to transitional states of being. Through close readings of key musical sequences in Coco, the author demonstrates how the properties of the musical are combined with animation aesthetics (baby schemata, virtual camera) to lead viewers into their own utopian space of heightened emotions and transition.
Highlights
This article situates the Pixar computer animation Coco
Given Coco’s status as an animated film, I posit that: (1) this provides a space further removed from reality where we are granted the critical distance to better contemplate reality; and (2) certain aesthetic properties inherent to animation, combined with the film’s music, deploy a form of ‘emotional hot-wiring’ which can bypass the viewer’s intellectual faculties, leading to an immediate affective encounter between film and sentiment
Before conducting select close-readings of moments in Coco where these might occur, I will situate the film in the context of a recent glut of (Western) afterlife fictions
Summary
In the tradition of Disney Pixar (and other Hollywood animation studios), as well as Studio Ghibli, Studio Chizu and Studio Ponoc, Uhrig conceives of ‘baby schemata’ This describes round-faced, huge-eyed, usually young protagonists in films from the aforementioned studios. Setting Coco in the Land of the Dead, especially during the Day of the Dead fiesta, does more than situate the narrative in the category of afterlife utopia; it parades its intention to symbolize certain aspects of Mexican culture. Celebrities such as De la Cruz and Frida Kahlo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) continue their artistic and commercial ventures even beyond the grave Paz expounds on this idea, ‘but the Mexican fiesta is not merely a return to an original state of formless and normless liberty: the Mexican is not seeking to return, but to escape from himself, to exceed himself’ The sense of phantom/meta-stable subjectivity activates a similar space of rebirth and delivers us into a state of contemplation
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