Hate your family? Try watching Pixar's 'Coco' (2024)

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When I talk to people about multigenerational family, hands down the number one objection I hear is this: What if you just don’t get along?

More than economics or careers or location, it seems, people worry that in the end they won’t get along with family if they live nearby. That could be due to political or religious views, personality clashes, or any number of other things. But this does seem to be a widespread concern.

Luckily, however, there’s a wonderful meditation on how family members can make peace1 with one another: Pixar’s 2017 film Coco.

Now, you may be thinking that Coco is just a kids movie. But hear me out because I think it actually offers a fantastic exploration in the necessary give-and-take generations have to negotiate as they reconcile their values. There are other works that explore these same themes — 100 Years of Solitude comes to mind and is one of my favorite books — but if you have a couple of hours and a Disney+ subscription you can go watch Coco right now.

(Needless to say, spoilers ahead.)

Coco is the story of a boy at odds with his family

The main character in Coco is a boy named Miguel who is the fifth generation in a family that makes shoes. They (seemingly) live in a family compound, and generally everyone seems pretty happy.

Everyone, that is, but Miguel. That’s because Miguel loves music, but his long-dead great-great grandma imposed a ban on music after she was abandoned by her musician husband.

The situation comes to a head early on when the family discovers Miguel has been hiding records and taught himself how to play guitar. Miguel’s grandma —the powerful family matriarch — ultimately smashes the guitar and Miguel ends up running away and saying he hates his family.

Miguel soon finds himself magically transported to the Land of the Dead, which is populated by colorful skeletons. He needs the blessing of his skeleton family members to return to the Land of the Living, but they won’t give it unless he agrees to give up music. Miguel refuses and teams up with a gangly skeleton named Hector in an effort to find the musician ancestor who abandoned his great-great grandma.

This plot sounds a bit convoluted typed out here, but trust me it comes together.

And the point in the end is that Miguel learns to appreciate his family while they learn to accept him and his love of music. Ultimately they send him back to the Land of the Living without any restrictions, and the final scene shows Miguel and other family members playing music in the family compound — highlighting how they adapted and accepted him for who he really is. (Really, just go watch it, I can’t do the plot justice here.)

Coco shows that family members have to adapt

Coco seems lighthearted because the family conflict is over music, and no one actually hates music or bans it for five generations.

But music is the defining value of the family in the movie, giving them a single identity that persists across generations. So, it’s also a great metaphor for all of these high-stakes issues that divide real families. You could, for example, create a movie with a nearly identical plot about someone who decides to break from a family’s ancestral religion.

Coco’s thesis, then, is that all members of a family have to adapt and embrace change. Miguel’s family embraces music — the very thing they were united in rejecting — while Miguel himself learns that he doesn’t actually hate his family after all. And though Miguel had initially idolized the life of a traveling musician, it’s significant that the movie doesn’t conclude with him on the road playing gigs. It shows him with his family, which adapted and in doing so remained intact for yet another generation.

This is a complex argument for an animated family movie to make, and I think Coco is under-appreciated for the deftness with which it navigates the topic. It’s basically offering a road map for balancing individuality with a family’s collective interests.

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So what if your family won’t adapt?

I’m very fortunate to have good relationships with my parents and in-laws (though our mutual support network is limited), so take my opinion with a grain of salt. But assuming there’s no actual abuse2 going on, I can’t really think of any long-term benefits of drifting away from family and letting rifts form. Meanwhile, the cost of weak ties between family members can be immense; imagine, for example, if the Kennedy family had disintegrated in the 1920s because half of them thought the Teapot Dome Scandal was fake news. They would have missed out on 100 years of prosperity and influence thanks to something that today almost no one remembers or cares about3.

Most families aren’t the Kennedys. But the point is that maintaining relationships gives people a robust network that can pay off long after any single member of a family is gone. That network also keeps paying off after whatever small-in-the-grand-scheme disagreements have faded away. So, it’s worth trying to make peace.

What I love about Coco is what is says about that process. Both Miguel and his family ultimately have to change, but it’s the earlier generation, the elders, that have to make the biggest compromise. Miguel just has to stop hating his family, but the family has to give up a core feature of its identity. That’s huge, but in making the sacrifice the family learns that hating music wasn’t actually as central to its identity as it seemed. The family’s identity lies in, well, just being a family.

I’m almost done here, but I want to make one final point. Over the years I’ve had many many conversations with people who lament that the older members of their family won’t compromise, won’t let go of their antiquated ideas (who among us doesn’t have a wildly racist grandparent?) and seem uninterested in adapting. To which I say, they are probably not the first generation in your multigenerational family. You are4.

When I think about this in terms of my own family, it’s most relevant regarding my relationship with my kids. I can’t force my parents or in-laws to do anything (again, our relationship is good, but speaking hypothetically), but I can prepare myself for whatever might be the metaphorical “music,” to go back to Coco, that might come up down the road with my own kids. And when that day comes, I hope I remember to make the decision that will allow us to survive as a cohesive unit, like the family in Coco, for generation after generation.

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Bonus: Headlines from this week

Buyers Are Split on Multigenerational Homes

“…buyers are evenly divided when it comes to the desire for a home designed to house the buyer as well as a younger generation and an older generation: 39% would prefer such a home, but 39% would be against it. The remaining 23% are not sure how they feel about a home designed for three generations.”