NOTE: This has been banging around in my head since Coco first came out, but this is still something of a first-draft. There’s more nuance to be discussed and I’ve probably not quite finished making some connections — but if I don’t hit publish tonight, I’ll sit on this for another five years….
There are four “children’s” movies that I love, made in the last decade or so which have also come to represent white culture in the U.S. to me. Every one of the films is set outside of the U.S. and they look at three different cultures (two of the movies look at the same culture).
2012 Brave
2014 Book of Life
2016 Moana
2017 Coco
Brave is earliest of the group and I was quite surprised initially at some of the backlash it got, but understanding that film became core to how I began looking at the three which followed in the next five years. Set in medieval (?) Scotland, the heroine, Merida, just wants to live her own life. This theme runs through all four movies: they all start with children who feel trapped by familial expectations. Merida sees the role of a woman in her society as completely at odds with who she is. The movie uses her wild, untameable hair as a visual cue for conflict of trying to force her spirit into something she quite simply is not. The movie focuses on the friction between Merida and her mother — and yet their love for each other, even when they simply cannot understand one another.
Merida is brave, but she’s also quite willful and has absolutely not learned that her actions have consequences. She can’t think outside of herself. She will go her own way and damn the torpedoes. Which, of course, works out about as well as you’d expect. She causes multiple horrible messes, some personal, some political. But, in the end, in true children’s movie fashion: it all works out well and she learns her lesson. And her mother also learns a lesson — you can only push someone so hard before they either break or rebel. Honest conversation works better than “because I said so.”
Next is Jorge Gutiérrez’s Book of Life. In this tale, we see three young children living under difficult rules or expectations from their parents. María is the most rebellious of the three children and as a result, is sent away to a fancy school. But here, instead of rebelling, María apparently uses her time (off camera) to gain the tools she will need to continue to be the kind of person she is. Joaquín, we learn quickly, had lost his own father but is quickly taken in under the guidance of General Posada. With these double-fathers as war heroes, Joaquín cannot think of any other path. He is a fighter, it is decided for him. Manolo has the heart of a musician, but a family of bull fighters. Like Merida, there is tension between who he knows himself to be — and familial expectations. He is at peace with himself and the world around him when he follows his music, but as a loving and dutiful son, he takes up training as a bullfighter. He is talented, good at fighting the bulls, but he is not happy.
By the end of the movie, father and son have built common ground. Manolo’s father truly sees where his son’s passion is and how he is at his best when he is left to be his authentic self instead of trying to pound him into the mind and soul of a bull fighter. There’s a mutual respect by the end of the movie — for each other and for the choices each has made.
The movie Moana begins with a playful montage of a young girl constantly drawn to the sea and a family forever pulling her back to dry land. As with Manolo in Book of Life, we see Moana trying very hard to accept her place in the family — and the island’s hierarchy. But also like Manolo, she is not at all her authentic self and finds it difficult to be at her best when her best incorporates the sea that she’s forbidden. While Merida ran off like a wild thing, without thought, Moana’s departure is more balanced. She’s tasked by her grandmother to solve the island’s problems by breaking the island’s one rule: she goes beyond the reef. It’s rebellion born of a need to help her people rather than the wild breaking away of Merida. And, by the end of the film, Moana has saved her people — and teaches them to love the ocean beyond the reef as she does.
In the last film, young Miguel wants to be a musician, much like Manolo in Book of Life. His rebellion against his family’s refusal to have anything to do with music begins very quietly — he hoards music in a secret hideaway. He gets to be himself, to do what he loves, without his family knowing. But early in the film, Miguel discovers that this is not a sustainable way to live. He cannot live two lives forever and he cannot see how he can spend the rest of his life making shoes instead of songs. Like Merida, Miguel chooses a complete rebellion without thought for the consequences. Like Merida, he can only see his own self, his own needs, his own misery at the thought of the life set before him.
Both Brave and Coco are stories steeped in the white culture of the United States. The emphasis is on the child’s independence, their need to make themselves happy and a lack of concern for the people around them. There is little sense of responsibility to balance the immediate needs of the id. Both Eleanor, Merida’s mother, and Miguel’s Abuelita are both rigid in their rules and unable to listen to other views.
With Moana’s mother, we get a sense of real communication. There is both understanding and resignation in Moana’s eyes when her mother tells her, “Sometimes, who we wish we were, what we wish we could do, it’s just not meant to be.” While Moana’s father wants to simply lay down a rule, her mother takes time to explain why the rule has come to be in the history of their island. And her grandmother explains both a longer history of her people and their cosmos. When Moana leaves, it’s her grandmother who has sent her on a quest into that cosmos out of respect and responsibility for their people. It’s not just about what Moana wants, it’s about assuming responsibilities in a way she is uniquely suited for because it coincides with her authentic self as a wayfinder.
In Book of Life, the turning point of the movie sees a similar sense of responsibility and assuming of the authentic self. Manolo can only go back and help warn and defend not just his village — but all of his family’s lives in the Land of the Remembered — only by fighting a meta-bull, a bull comprised of all the bulls his family has fought through the years. As the situation looks grim, Manolo turns to his authentic self. He is no killer of bulls for sport. He is a musician, playing from the heart. He puts down the sword and takes up the mantle of the guitarrista and composes an apology song on the spot. He is taking up the responsibilities in a way that he is uniquely suited for.
The stories of Merida and Miguel, on the other hand, are simple stories of the self. They both eventually get their own way because these are children’s movies. They both pay a certain amount of lip service to having learned a lesson about the importance of family, but there’s a kind of quiet defiance at the end of each. A kind of “I told you so” which undercuts the lesson. In Book of Life and Moana, both, you feel the love and cohesion in the families even when they disagree. In Brave and Coco, the family is the antagonist.
Brave and Coco were written by white Americans and it shows. As the early colonists broke off from England as willful children, intent on living their own lives their own way, so Merida and Miguel rebel against their families. There’s no sense of anything larger than Merida or Miguel. (There is more nuance here as there were valid reasons for that war — but this is not a discussion of the American War of Independence.)
But Book of Life, written by a Mexican animator shows far more nuance in Manolo’s turning to his authentic self, to “fighting” with his music. The original screenplay for Moana was written by Taika Waititi and while the movie was taken over by a bunch of white dudes, I suspect that the bones of Moana’s family and the core theme of responsibility came from Taika Waititi.
Regardless, I see this same conflict playing out in American politics today. The “I have to do what is best for my family” defense is most consistently spouted by people who only see a tiny slice of what they want, what they experience. These tend to be the same people who, like Merida, want to run completely free and wild and damn the consequences that might affect people other than themselves. They tend to be the same people who, like Miguel, watch as a friend is hauled off by police for no reason and thrown into an inescapable pit, or watch as police kneel on his neck. And it’s those selfish attitudes which give rise to people like Trump — even if Americans who identify with Merida and Miguel would not have voted for him. It’s the attitude and the atmosphere that this type of mindset creates which makes racism possible. Homophobia, Islamaphobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, classism and general disdain for anything or anyone who is different as if that makes them less than.
Let me be clear: every culture has its problems. This is not fully unique to the United States. But it is a lens into the United States right now. As a country, we have refused to grow up. From the time Anglos arrived on this continent to the rise of Trump, we have played as children with little thought to consequence, social compact or even inevitable consequence. We assume our own experience is a shared experience and anyone without that shared experience is “holding it wrong.” Edge cases don’t matter. Tech that can’t tell brown faces apart doesn’t matter. Having the most toys at the end matters. The ends justifies the means.
And so now we have the divide we have always had writ large while the rest of the world shakes theirs heads. We have those people who have suffered and don’t want someone else to go through what they did.
And we have those folks who seem to want to punish everyone else for the fact that they have suffered. Those folks who want everyone to pull themselves up from their bootstraps as they did — whether or not everyone else got a $50,000 gift from their parents doesn’t seem to be a data point to them. They can’t see the slant of the playing field because the slant is behind them and they refuse to turn back, even for a moment.
They only care that they get their way and damn everyone and everything else.
This is no children’s movie. Most of these Meridas and Miguels will never have the happy ending from the movies. They’ll continue to be selfish and bitter and foment the same all around them as much as they can.
And that. That is white culture in the United States.
