Coco: A Film warms the Heart of Chinese Audiences

“Coco” is an animation film created by Pixar Animation Studio in 2017 telling the story of an ambitious boy chasing his music dream. The setting of the film is the day of death on November 1 in Mexico’s traditional festival for people to remember and mourn their family members or friends who have died on this day. Although Coco was produced by an American company, the value Coco represented is still the Mexican culture by constructing the scene with the bright colors used in Mexico domestically and the central meaning of the festival. The only difference between the cultures is the language they speak. In Mexico, the most common language is Spanish but when the market to release the film was in America, Pixar Animation Studio changed the language of the film into English to meet the major requirements of the film market. Pixar Animation Studio has reached the balance in the production process of fitting the film into the market while maintaining and preserving the culture and theme of the film. Hence, Coco has achieved great success in the film industry with the high box office throughout the world especially in China with a box office record of $189,226,296 in 57 weeks. And as a result, Coco became one of the most best-selling animations in China Pixar has ever produced. Some people may argue that the success of Coco is because of its fantastic scene-making techniques and its family-based target audience. The benefit of the audience being a family is that parents will need to accompany the children to watch the film, therefore, increasing the selling of tickets. By contrast, I suggest that the film has translated well across borders because it contains the ideas of the relationship between family and the culture of honoring ancestors that are similar to what Chinese people believed in.

The original meaning and interpretation of the film is the power of dream shown by the main character Miguel as a child chasing his dream of music even when his family members disagree and are unsupportive with him in the story. Establishing the educational function of preserving the love and passion of the child audience. However, besides the theme of the dream, the deepest and inner themes created by the film are death and family relationships. The depth of the inner theme has expanded the consumer target from only the child to mainly the teenagers and adults in China due to the child not being cognitive enough to find out the inner theme. This idea is supported by the data that “The majority of the audience was the 80s and 90s, and the 20–29 age group accounted for 70.91%”. The attitude toward death and the close family relationship creates a resonance with the Chinese audience. In Chinese culture, we have a festival called the Qing-ming festival which is similar to the day of death in Mexico both to mourn loved ones who have died. In both of our cultures, we believe that death isn’t the end of life. Instead, loved ones who died were using another way to accompany the family. They will pray for the family fortune and the health of the child. The festival was created mainly because of the idea of inheritance in Chinese culture. Inheritance was not only shown by the pass on the last name of the family but with the commemoration of the contribution of the ancestry. And because as time goes, offspring may forget their ancestry, so the festival was created to notice us not to forget our ancestry.​​ This value is represented in the film Coco also in the scene when Miguel was talking to his grandma and also his family members in a room full of black and white photos and candles. Family members gather together in the room to “talk” to their ancestry like they have never left the family. This scene has touched many Chinese audiences because in China, we also “talk” to our ancestors in the Qing-ming festival about our recent life, how we are doing in our studies and career. By having this action, we feel like they are never being left apart from the big family. Our culture was echoed by a classical line in the film that “The real death is that no one in the world remembers you.” The love and the relationship between loved ones will never end unless we forget them. Even though they no longer physically exist in our life, their warm smile in the photo and their love are still encouraging us to pursue our better lives. Along the same lines, the close family relationship shown by the film is similar to Chinese culture also. Unlike the family relationship in western culture stating the idea of independence, the family relationship in both Mexican and Chinese cultures is family should stay together. When teenagers turn to be an adult, parents will mostly stop taking care of their children to practice their independent living skills in the western culture. But when teenagers turn to be adults in both Mexico and China, they are still living in the same house with their family members and in our culture, a family with more generations living together is a symbolization of luck and happiness. Therefore, when Miguel was playing the song “Remember me” in the scene for his grandma with all his family members together in the room, we can feel the power of the family and the love in the scene. Warms the hearts of the audience when making them miss the time all the family members gather together.

Furthermore, coco would not be successful if it was released earlier than 2017 because people didn’t have strong feelings of death and family before. With the development of technology in recent years, the whole world has entered the era of information. More and more people start working far away from home making the feeling of homesick and the connection between family closer and tighter. People value spending time with the family more than before. The film Coco can not only recall the happy memories between families but also creates memories when the whole family watches the film together. And the reason why Coco is continually popular about the globalization of culture is that family is a forever topic that all the consumers can accept. Also, for Coco, different ages of consumers will have different feelings, for example, a child will feel fun and interesting at the age of 8 watching the film but when he grows up to 15, he may be touched and warm when realizing the depth of the theme. The production of the film was prospective while being conventional makes the film become a timeless classic in the animation industry.

In conclusion, Coco has translated well across borders from North America to Asia because the culture of death and family are similar in both Mexico and China which therefore connects and resonates with the audience in these two places. Coco has encouraged and warmed thousands of audiences in China with its story of a boy having the power from his family to overcome challenges and in the end achieving his dream.