One of the most enduring plot devices of classic Walt Disney animations is the separation of a young hero or heroine from his or her family. Dumbo, Bambi, Pinocchio, and numerous other characters all get estranged from their parents or parental figures, and the anxiety that results from the estrangement motors the stories of the films in which they appear. With this narrative trope, Disney and his storytellers mined a universal childhood fear for maximum emotional impact, and for this reason, the classic Disney features remain powerful experiences decades after they were made.
On his travels, Miguel meets a spirit who promises to take him to de la Cruz. This is Héctor, another musician who lived during de la Cruz’s time. Héctor becomes a surrogate family member for Miguel, providing him with guidance and emotional support. Yet beneath Héctor’s upbeat demeanor lies a sense of dread. He’s afraid that the land of the living is running out of people who remember him, and when there’s no one left, he’ll vanish entirely—a death after death. Héctor’s anxiety taps into a fear of obsolescence, which the Pixar Animation Studios mined so successfully in their Toy Story series. But whereas those earlier films used this anxiety as a source of terror, in Coco it engenders a sense of melancholy. Héctor is conscious of his isolation in the spirit world, and he hopes that Miguel, when he returns to the land of the living, will remind Héctor’s remaining living relatives to memorialize him.
