The Great Success of Coco in China: Family Conquers All
Coco has received unexceptional success in China, grossing over 154 million in the first month after release. While it presents unique, engaging Mexican aesthetics and novel music, its appeal may depend on the Chinese audience resonating with this film’s hidden message. Rather than a simple story of a boy chasing his music dream encountering family disapproval, it offers a heritage value that enduring and immutable family bond and support would never vanish.
Coco celebrates the Day of the Dead, a traditional Mexican festival, on November 2. In Mexico, families prey and remember the friends and family members who have died. They start setting up altars up to a week before. The altars include some essential elements. Usually, a cloth places over a table with the members’ portraits and marigolds. The distinctive smell of the flowers is said to guide the spirits back to the land of the living. In the movie, the shining yellow marigold bridge connects the land of the living and the land of death, corresponding to the mythology of marigold petals representing the path to family.
Mexican heritage values that death is the reflection of life. Only death shows the highest meaning of life, which is the opposite side and the supplement of life. This gloomy content presents by bright colors, cheerful singing, and dancing. Specifically, the well-arranged altar in the film and the “Bridge of Marigolds” leading the dead show the audience the firm belief of the Mexican people in the return of the deceased. The value of life and death behind the Day of the Dead reveals that death is not the end of life; forgetting is. Mexicans do not avoid mentioning death and even deal with it with ridicule or contempt. They pay tribute to the dead but regard the memorial as an excellent opportunity to reunite with the deceased, and they look forward to reuniting with their deceased relatives.
The value of death coincides with the recycling of life from Buddhism, in which death is the disappearance of the physical body but not mental relations. In China, during the Qingming Festival, people offered their remembrances to their dead ancestors, relatives, and friends, which is the reverence and reflection on death, the longing and wish for life. Coincidentally, Chinese people often send chrysanthemums, a yellow flower, to the dead while sweeping and doing tribute activities. This similar sense of nostalgia makes the Chinese people connect with Coco in terms of a point of emotional resonation. In traditional Chinese concepts, death is a taboo topic. The fear and sadness that people experience when facing death make them cherish and revere life even more. When people think about life and death, they perceive the beauty of life and analyze the meaning of life. Although Qingming Festival and Day of the Dead have different origins and cultures, they are all festivals to pay homage to the deceased and think about life and death, evoking the Chinese audiences’ apathy.
From the beginning of the movie, the Papel Picado, colorful perforated tissue paper representing the wind, presents the backstory of Miguel’s family. Because the great-great-grandfather left to pursue his music dream, the ban of music in the family came out. Because China has red paper cuts to celebrate the New Year, this remarkable familiarity enables the Chinese audience to engage more from the very beginning. While presenting a robust relationship between the deceased ones and alive family members, Coco also emphasized the kinship of the live members. As a mother without the support of her husband, she started her shoemaking industry, sacrificing her dreams for the benefit of her extended family. After successfully creating the family shoe industry, she prohibited all family members from contacting music. To prevent the recurrence of the tragedy of abandoning her family because of her ideals, Imelda put all her efforts into keeping the harmony of the extended family, becoming an extremist trying to protect the family.
Family prioritizes others appears to be a platitudinous idea, yet it profoundly appeals to the Chinese audience. This feudal patriarchy has deep roots in China. Although young people in China are now very assertive and are no longer obedient to their parents’ teachings, the family tradition of respecting parents and strictly abiding by their ancestors is still an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. Indeed, it is a pedantic and old-fashioned notion, but at least Mexicans are similar to Chinese ancestors in this regard. Because of this cultural resonance, even the crude love of Miguel’s grandmother is empathetic among the Chinese audience.
Cross-cultural success implies the globalization of culture. Coco humbly presents a foreign culture to the world, but more than any other aspect of the film is the idea of family. In other words, a central theme runs through the film — Miguel risks everything for his family. The power of family in Chinese culture is also an inveterate value, which is probably the most cross-cultural human emotion ever shown in the film — the need for self-protection, attention or love, and the need to connect, all of which fulfilled by the family members. China’s strong sense of family is the most significant catalyst of empathy. By tapping into the cross-cultural well of the family, the film resonates with all Chinese audiences, regardless of cultural background and language.
