Coco (2017) dir. Lee Unkrich
You know what I love about this scene?
Miguel is right. The first time I watched it, I expected a later scene where Miguel was proven wrong or shown the error of his ways—one where it’s firmly established that adults might make rules that don’t make sense, but they have their reasons and it’s best to abide by their wishes.
But no. That doesn’t happen. Instead, we see that Imelda’s insistence on the music ban, and her refusal to reconsider, indirectly (or perhaps directly) land Miguel in even greater danger, as he wouldn’t have gone after de la Cruz were it not for Imelda insisting he give up music forever. The happy ending comes not when Miguel agrees to give up music to please his family, but when he defies the ban to save Héctor and restore Mama Coco’s memories.
I can’t tell you how many kid’s movies I’ve seen that would have taken “Family comes first” to mean “The adults’ wishes are paramount even if they’re unreasonable.” It would have been so easy to have Miguel simply go along with what Imelda wanted, but Pixar instead gave us a story where a child’s decision to contest an unfair rule is what eventually restores a broken family.
Even reading about this movie makes me tear up
Tag: pixar
“You… POISONED me..”
just a reminder that houses back then were built with lead, arsenic, and all sorts of chemicals, and he wouldn’t need to carry around poison, he could have just taken plaster shavings or even hair grease -which was laced with arsenic, as was the soap, the medicines, and the makeup, all of which Ernesto would have used- and that’s all it would have taken.
people weren’t dumb back then. they were aware that these things were dangerous. they just thought they were less dangerous if you controlled the dosage (though awareness of danger became acuter later, the more science matured)
so this entire thing would be as easy as Ernesto taking a bar of soap out of his suitcase and flaking it into a shot glass.
that’s how little effort it took to kill Héctor.
Which is so viciously sad.
me watching monsters inc as a kid: how did it take so long for anyone to figure out that human child laughter not only produced energy like screams, but was more effective, and that children aren’t actually dangerous at all?
me watching monsters inc now: monsters incorporated, a multi-billion dollar corporate giant, stood to make extra profits off a scream shortage because low supply with high demand makes it possible to charge a fortune for a necessary commodity and everyone has no choice but to pay the high prices because they can’t go without electricity. Therefore Monsters Inc, as well as any other major powers that may have existed at the start of the era of using scream energy, fabricated the idea that only screams could generate sustainable energy sources in order to create artificial scarcity, because laugh energy was far easier to obtain and far more efficient, and therefore stood to lower the value of energy due to surplus. They also fabricated the idea that human children were toxic, in order to a) make other monsters too afraid to go near them to do research and possibly discover the secret of laugh energy, and b) to make monsters so afraid of going near them that there is a shortage of scarers, making it harder for rival companies to rise up and create competition. Even in the monster world, capitalism is based on lies, greed and cruelty, and even monster companies have no qualms about using and abusing children to maximize profits.



