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When announcing his run as the Republican presidential candidate on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump kicked off his campaign by disparaging Mexican immigrants, declaring the population to be "drug dealers, criminals, and rapists."1 Trump's abhorrent rhetoric and his mission to build a wall across the southern border has led to considerable tension, animosity, and aggression towards Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and the Latina/o/x population living in the United States. This focus has pervaded political and social spheres, bringing up questions and debates about the damaging and violent representations of Mexicans and by extension Latin Americans in popular culture, particularly those constructed in Hollywood. During its premiere in 2017, Pixar's Coco garnered considerable attention on both sides of the border for celebrating Mexican culture in a way that did not fall back on negative stereotypes or exoticization, but rather showcased a kaleidoscopic tapestry of mexicanidad (Mexicanness)-the cultural identity of the Mexican people-that quickly became regarded as an effective and powerful political statement.
Coco is set during Mexico's Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday that celebrates the memory of the dead, taking place November 1 and ending November 2. During this time, people remember their departed loved ones, creating ofrendas (offerings or altars) adorned with cempasúchil (Mexican marigolds), calacas (skeleton figures), photographs of the deceased, sugar skulls, and pan de muerto (Day of the Dead bread).2 People create elaborate ofrendas in their homes and at the gravesites of those departed, staying awake throughout the night, either in prayer or meditation, or celebrating with other family members, believing that the souls of the departed come back to visit their living relatives during these days. Recently, the practices and iconography of Día de Muertos has swept through the United States with growing popularity, and Hollywood has jumped on the bandwagon to provide their own cinematic representation of the holiday, such as can be seen in Frida (2000, dir. Julie Tamor), The Book of Life (2014, dir. Jorge Gutiérrez), and Spectre (2015, dir. Sam Mendes). Coco, however, stands apart from these films.
Coco paints a vibrant and at times humorous interpretation of mexicanidad, brimming with fantastic references to Mexican popular culture, popular colloquialisms, and amusing cameos ofsurrealist painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), whose paintings have been the subject of...