The Coco(nut) Conundrum

The Coco(nut) Conundrum

By Marcos Aguilar

When I was five, the postman would deliver a thin brown package to me every month for a while. In it, an adventure awaited. After a failed attempt at adoption, my foster mother kept in touch with me by mailing me hard cover versions of Disney fairy tale books. My favorite was the Jungle Book – I saw myself in it. Mowgli was alone, hung out with animals, climbed trees and he was brown.

So what’s wrong with a new film by Disney Pixar called “Coco” starring a little brown caricature? Why would the producers reportedly hire a past critic of Disney? How can we know if the film ultimately respects the cultures and peoples it objectifies?

Disney public relations sites readily identify the subject matter as being based on the “Mexican celebration of Dia de los Muertos”. After failing to patent Dia de los Muertos, Pixar creator Lee Unkrich and producer Darla Anderson claim to have been enlightened by a discovery of the rich culture, folklore and folk art surrounding this Mexican tradition. What right do non-Mexicans and corporate marketers have of usurping an entire people’s tradition whether superficially or conceptually? NO RIGHT. Micailhuitl is the name for our traditional honoring of the passing of life from physical to essence. In our ancestral traditions, indigenous Mexicans do not only honor people who have passed away, but all natural life that makes up the great mystery of the world and universe. This is a cultural ceremony that helps teach our children about the natural laws of life as understood by our ancestors by honoring the time these energies accompany us in our daily lives.

The title of the movie also begs critique both because in Spanish, Coco means coconut, which in the U.S., refers to a Mexican who embraces assimilation and the cultural violence this implies (brown on the outside and white on the inside). To add to the confusion, use of the term ‘Coco’ in Mexico to refer to ‘a monster of death referred to in Latin American countries to scare children into going to bed at night’ is rare if used at all. Coco is actually a cultural term imported straight from Portugal and Spain – NOT Mexican. In Mexico, the closest term we have to this is ‘Cucuy’ which some have rooted in the Nahuatl language as a reference to Mictlante-CU-htli. This deeper level cultural conception of and wisdom about death, afterlife and eternal life has nothing to do with Western notions of boogeymen. Even the christianized practices of Mexicans today have nothing to do with the mass commercialization of the tradition we are witnessing in the U.S. Los Dias de los Muertos was not invented by a department store and the ancestors do truly remain among us.

I was first engaged when news was tweeted about over a month ago by Los Angeles Times cartoonist and best seller, Lalo Alcaraz notifying his Twitter followers that he had been hired by Fox to draw for a new show about a Mexico-US bordertown. I was born and raised in just such a bordertown so the post intrigued me. Lalo warned his followers not to think he had gone to the dark side of anti-Mexican Fox News management demanding his followers recognize the corporate divisions between Fox News and Fox TV. Lalo was defensive and openly expressed hostility against anyone who challenged his assertions that working for Fox was a critical success for Lalo and the Mexican community in general. Lalo challenged his followers to boycott his new show while mocking anyone critical of his stance with Fox. I took exception with his defense of Fox and his lambasting of his anti-Fox followers. I challenged Lalo to acknowledge the contradiction but ultimately accepted the fact that Lalo - like many artists and entertainers in LA - worked for the highest bidder and moved on with my life. Why should I expect more from an entertainer?

Then, earlier this week Lalo announced he had been hired in some capacity to consult for Disney Pixar on "Coco". Lalo described it as what he had been working for “25 years” especially after he subjected the company to public rebuke twice throughout his career as with creative spins on the most famous mouse in America. Here the relationship becomes obviously conflicted. Did Lalo critique Disney all along seeking only that Disney hire him in the first place? What qualifies Lalo to advise on the cultural content of the film besides his two mouse drawings? When is the last time Lalo followed the rituals of any of the many specific traditions of what is generically referred to by outsiders as Day of the Dead? Has Lalo followed any cultural protocols at all or advised Pixar to follow any protocols demonstrating the respect for this indigenous Mexican cultural obligation to our ancestors?

NO. Lalo did not contextualize his role as a cultural worker seeking to ensure respect and mass education through mass media (as unlikely as that may be).  Instead, Lalo chose to make the announcement of his role with Disney Pixar  (and before that with Fox TV) as a challenge to anyone in the Mexican community, any of his thousands of fans daring us all to call him a sell out.

So I did.

Insults followed whiny personal testimonies by Lalo about how hard he has worked and how he wished Disney had hired him long before throughout his entire career. So was it all a sham? Was the Lalo I had become a fan of simply a shell of his former critical self? Of course, I don’t expect him to be a raging radical banging his fist on his editor’s desk at the very mainstream Los Angeles Times – but to jump into the role of one man PR machine for FOX and now Disney and to threaten banishment to anyone who so much as thinks of tweeting a question about it is insane. It is a picture book image of the classic vendido with a new twist – now the upholders of culture and dignity are the real fakes because we just don’t get with the times. We always wanted to be a Disney caricature – DON’T YOU GET IT?

Lalo’s post on Twitter provoked me when he quipped:

@ LalaAlcaraz "HEY, don't make a Dia de Los Muertos movie, it's disrespectful!" says the person who buys plastic sugar skulls at Michael's and has a Virgen de Guadalupe tramp stamp (8-18-2015)

I drew sharp insults from Lalo and some of his fans – he even blocked me from his Twitter feed (a new one for me). I even received an accusation that I had somehow insulted the memory of our dead in Mexico by pointing out the obvious, Disney’s only film on Mexicans commercializes ceremonies for our dead at a time when we as Mexicans are living through a modern holocaust of missing or dead, including the forty-three student teachers disappeared by Mexican soldiers almost one year ago.

@AztecSeer on Twitter: Disney's only film on Mexico is called #Coco(nut) - how fitting that it commercializes death #betterthanfiction

It's interesting to see how principles can be bent when convenient to approve subservience over subversiveness. In my informed opinion, it is impossible for anyone employed by Disney as a PR front to be subversive through a Disney cartoon.

Lalo retorted:

"I am so glad that you bring your perspective here, finally almost to my face. I wish you could have told me something when I volunteered to speak at Semillas del Pueblo, or when I promoted your schools plight on my radio show, but I guess I'll have to settle for this. I've been trying to get my work into Hollywood for 25 years, that's no secret. It;s finally happening, and you can denounce me all you want, I'm used to irrational hate and pettiness. I'm just a Chicano artist trying to take it to the next level, you don't have to like it. In fact, please don't look at anything I do, you might faint. I want you to stay strong and keep teaching the youth how you see best. Don't think about me, cuz I sure don't think about you."

I replied:

“Lalo Alcaraz​ I'll go back on your show to address this whenever you want. There are millions more just like me. As I recall when you volunteered we were facing real hate from a DISNEY-owned corporate strategy to spread anti-Mexican violence in our community FOR PROFIT. Perhaps now that Hollywood is the priority volunteering with the chusma may become beneath you. You wouldn't be the first. Your sharp wit and amazing art is historic. Will you be a player or get played?”

Lalo then turned into a bully and unleashed his over ten thousand followers on me.

Holding my intellectual ground I challenged,

“I didn't draw the calavera just the connections. Why make light of a Mexican holocaust with a Disney movie? At the current rate almost half a million Mexicans may have been murdered or disappeared by the time the DisneyPixarAlcaraz DDLM movie hits the screen. Would Disney have created a cartoon about Jewish death rites during the Holocaust? Probably, right since he reportedly affiliated with pro-Nazis before WWII. So now WE are facing a(nother) holocaust of our own as Mexicans - let's not help profiteers disrespect our Muert@s or our ways any more. Wanting to "get into Hollywood for 25 years" is no excuse.”

Noting also that Lalo reposted an earlier cartoon he drew depicting Mexico in the mouth of  huge calavera I wrote:

Just in time for Disney to incorporate it into their new #DDLM flick!

Lalo and a couple of his friends didn’t like that.

Trying to silence critique is blatantly anti-Chicano. That Lalo sees his role as the mass appeaser by targeting rebuke against anyone who questions his employers, the film or his role is insulting. Instead of assuming the role of interlocutor (even if non-community based), an opportunity to make history is traded in for a couple of credits and dollars.

Lalo's adamant defense of his employers and his new role became hyper-defensive from the get go. So now anything Fox and Disney do is fine? Have they paid off all the right folks? Copyrighted the right culture? Patented the right lap dogs? Political and cultural critique headed off by an advanced guard of apologists - no, defenders - of a base corporate commodification of millenarian culture that belongs to millions collectively will not hide the truths of Disney's white racist underbelly. Who Disney is in Orange County and what Disney represents, over and over, about corporate-American-culture-turned-into-consumerism is about the manufacture of consent to exploit what ought to be sacrosanct.

Disney is not just my childhood book publisher, in 2006, one of its subsidiary businesses targeted the Mexican community in Los Angeles with real hate speech. The target then became our school and I. In 2006, Disney-owned KABC-AM made a business of pandering to white fear, turning ideology into profit. Back in 1996 when the Walt Disney Company/ABC Inc. bought KABC AM 790, the station was doing pretty bad. Ratings were down and the station was in the red. In 2001 Disney/ABC brought in John Davidson, then president of ABC Radio Network, which included Radio Disney, to turn a new page. Davidson, an older good-ole-boys type of guy, decided to develop, “a core audience” and a line up that advertisers would buy in to. Enter Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly’s talk shows. According to Erik Braverman, former program director for KABC, “If you try a little bit of everything for everybody it doesn’t work. By adding Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly we are confident that we have a common thread to tie the station together.” That common thread is called HATE RADIO. By lining up bigots, and advertisers who support their culture war against America, KABC planned to turn the station around and make a quick buck. Excuse me -- make that $2.7 billion in a shell game in which the media giant Disney “sold” ABC Radio to Citadel Broadcasting Corporation in a merger deal we even now can't figure out. At the time, Disney owned 52% of Citadel, meaning it still profited from KABC hate radio format (Source of quotes: LA Business Journal, 4-14-03 article by D.Satzman). 

Neither Disney nor KABC ever apologized for their attacks against our community, but they did start pumping token grants into other arts-based eastside non-profits who gladly accepted the bribes. So you see, when some of us think of “haters” we remember the real haters who threatened our children’s lives.

Transforming Mexico’s current state of U.S. fueled violence and respecting the hundreds of thousands of missing or murdered men, women and children who have succumbed to this violence is not child’s play. This just simply is not the time to be making light of our dead in Mexico. The Disney-Pixar machine is not equipped to handle the matter ethically and respectfully – neither unfortunately, is Lalo. As a parent, educator and lifelong practitioner of my family’s sacred cultural traditions I simply can’t support a corporate take over of our culture.

I’d rather my children hear our school’s elder-in-residence Tata Cuaxtle at Semillas del Pueblo retell the story my grandmother told me about the afterlife any day. Bottom line is, millions of Mexicans don't want our next generation getting miseducated about their culture by Disney. Let's call on Disney Pixar to leave our dead alone, and if they kill this project, I for one have space on my altar for a picture of Miguel to represent the tens of thousands of murdered or missing Mexican youth we mourn today.

In "The Skeleton at the Feast The Day of the Dead in Mexico" Arsacio Vanegas Arroyo, famed inheritor of the Jose Guadalupe Posada's engravings wrote, "We are being infiltrated by North American values: our roots are being attacked by business interests, and our heritage is being undermined by advertising and television. American-style stores, such as Woolworth and Sanborns are promoting Halloween in an effort to increase sales, and many Mexicans are being seduced. This process starts with the well-off, who prefer North American and European culture to their own. But the effect spreads." Sadly, sell-out "Chicanos" can now also be added to this cast of characters willing to pirate our culture to climb a peg on the ladder of Hollywood.

Why silence the debate Lalo? Stopping Disney from patenting Dia de los Muertos was not Lalo’s accomplishment to claim – it required mass outrage.

http://io9.com/why-disney-pixar-hired-one-of-its-biggest-critics-to-wo-1725149333?utm_expid=66866090-43.E9Bjfd6NTuSlXJewu2e_Ig.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

For a reference on how to respect indigenous knowledge please see: http://www.nativescience.org/html/guildlines_cultural.htm

This is a working draft.