When he tries to steal a guitar from De la Cruz’s crypt to take part in his town’s Day of the Dead talent show, a curse is put upon Miguel: his body becomes porous and invisible, and he must cross over to the Land of the Dead. Miguel’s pseudo-duet with De la Cruz is only the beginning of his interactions with the dead, however. Miguel’s performance is an embodied union with a long since dead idol. When Miguel copies De la Cruz’s riff, moving his fingers across his fretboard in reverent imitation, he channels the dead musician through his own body. In such musical exchanges, we are intimate with the departed loved one in such a way that we encounter their bodies once more: music perceived as ephemeral, invisible, and untouchable was nonetheless once produced by the motions of joints and vibrations of vocal chords, which enter into our ears in musical communion. We often desire to be with the dead, and certain technologies make that freakishly possible-at Coachella in 2012, Snoop Dogg performed alongside a holographic Tupac. Just as we’ve witnessed Natalie Cole singing ‘Unforgettable’ with her dead father Nat King Cole through video projection, here Miguel’s eyes glow in the grainy light of his television screen, and gazing reverently at De la Cruz, he breathes, ‘when he played music, he made people fall in love with him’. This episode is an example of what musicologists Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut would call an ‘intermundane duet’. Early in the film, we see him hiding in an attic, playing along with his long-dead idol, Ernesto De la Cruz on a makeshift guitar. Coco’s central tension is that Miguel is himself a closeted musician. The young Mexican protagonist Miguel is born into a family which has banned music for generations after his great-great-grandmother was left by her tearaway musician husband to raise her daughter alone. Queerness, music, sanctity, cinema, childhood.ĭisney’s 2017 film Coco is a children’s film about music and its degeneracy. In this blog post, George approaches Disney’s 2017 film ‘Coco’ as a queer hagiography, exploring the ways in which it both moralises and sexualises music. He is currently undertaking a vocational discernment year, working as a chaplaincy assistant at King’s College, University of London. And to top it all off, Ernesto was famous and revered before the truth tarnished his reputation while still stuck in the Land of the Dead, while Chicharrón is forgotten but remembered fondly by those who still remember him.George Haggett holds a BA in music from St Hugh’s College, Oxford and has recently completed a Master’s degree in musicology at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Ernesto is superficially charming and friendly, but is selfish, traitorous, and murderous when it comes to getting what he wants, while Chicharrón is cranky and rude, but is willing to help Hector regardless of receiving nothing several times while being grateful for the little he does get from him.
Ernesto was Hector's friend in life, while Hector presumably met Chicharrón in death. He is the opposite of Ernesto de la Cruz, Hector's other friend.He’s most likely forgotten due to his cantankerous nature or living in such squalor/poverty that he never had a chance to get an ofrenda for himself.While Héctor finishes the drink he shared with Chicharrón to honor him, Miguel is astonished by Chicharrón's disappearance, but he agrees to use Chicharrón's guitar in the contest to save Héctor from succumbing to the same fate. When Héctor finishes the song, a satisfied Chicharrón embraces his final death and his spirit fades into oblivion, with only his hat left in place.
During the song, Chicharron notes that Héctor is not singing the correct lyrics, to which Hector explains that there are children present (Miguel). Héctor asks for Chicharrón's guitar, but Chicharrón demands Héctor sing Chicharrón's favorite song, " Everyone Knows Juanita", in exchange for the guitar. While there, Héctor and Chicharrón share some banter and a final drink together, as Chicharrón is slowly fading from the Land of the Dead because he has no relatives to remember him in the Land of the Living. He was a friend of Héctor in the Land of the Dead.Īfter agreeing to enter a music contest to meet Ernesto de la Cruz, Héctor takes Miguel Rivera to his friend Chicharrón to get a guitar. “ Like the time you promised to bring back my van? Or my mini-fridge? Or my good napkins? My lasso? My femur?!” ―Chicharrón Ĭhicharrón is a minor character in the 2017 Disney/ Pixar animated feature film Coco.
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