Denis Diderot believed that every work of art must talk about some great rule of the life and that moralizing should be its function. Apparently contemporary animators share this perspective too.
As the famous Russian publicist Alexander Nevzorov says, “Own idiotism should cause a person some troubles”, which is fine so long as that person is the sole victim of his own idiotism. But when certain ideas such as those propagated by ‘Coco’, a 2017 Walt Disney and Pixar cartoon, become inseminated in the circles of young audience, then the idiotism of the moralizing artists becomes the problem of many.
‘Coco’ tells a story of a Mexican boy who is coming from a slightly crazy family. Few generations ago the grand-grandma of the boy was abandoned by her husband who chose the life of a musician over family. Since then music is a forbidden subject and musicians are certainly persona non grata in that family. Except that it happens that this little boy is a born musician who has to hide his love and talent for guitar playing from his crazy family. In the first part of the cartoon this tension between the blind tradition maintained by the family and the despair of the little boy fighting for his love for music is clearly divided between the evil (the family) and the good (the boy) protagonists. Eventually the boy runs away from the family to pursue his dream but is followed by them to be returned into the cage of the family and to be reframed and educated as all the other past and present members of the family to become a devoted shoemaker. But the kid is a musician, not a shoemaker!
So far, so good. Everything is correct. The family is a collective image of the evil and the kid is the noble hero who fights for his freedom. Except that in the middle of this overly postmodernist story the classical narrative of a fight of a hero and a villain suddenly turns upside down. The kid gets deceived by his music idol who turned out to be an even worse villain than the family. This personage is presented as an embodiment of music, the kid’s music idol stands for his overall quest for music, so he transfers his disappointment with one person to his overall vocation of a musician. I find this an absolutely incorrect and even dishonest discourse, as failing in one particular case doesn’t render the whole quest of the boy wrong. It was a pure accident that the music idol turned out to be a villain and is absolutely not the fault of the boy. Yet the family is there to save the kid from the mean musician and to remind him by the way that “We told you! Music will never bring anything good to you! But the family will always love you”. And here a most ugly and dishonest yet subtle manipulation happens, a sort of a gaslighting practiced not only by the family towards the kid but from the animators towards their young audience. This gaslighting manipulation is even more efficient and hence even more disgusting since the notion of ‘love’ is brought in. The purely accidental failure of the kid in the fight for his freedom against the dogmatism of the family suddenly appears to be a mistake that ended up with a failure, whereas the family is the generous, big-hearted and positive protagonist…Except that they still want to take the kid back into the cage of the family and make a shoemaker out of him. The kid who is betrayed and emotionally unstable succumbs to the manipulations of the family and is ready to return with them and quit music.
This is a very complex situation which even for many adults in real life situations would be confusing. I think that very few would notice that the family in fact stayed the villain that they were. They simply took the advantage of the boy’s difficult situation to prove him wrong and to take him under their control. Yet I truly hope that this is a postmodern cartoon not only in its aesthetics, but also in its philosophy. I want to believe that the moral of this story is an inverted, postmodern caricature on classical, modern, positivist truths. Pity that the young audience to whom this cartoon is mainly addressed will perceive the message and the moral of the story directly, whereas its true (hopefully) postmodernist irony will remain unnoticed.