Disney Pixar's New Film "Coco" and Bieganski

Disney / Pixar has a new movie, "Coco," and it is going to be huge. It will be considered for an Academy Award for best picture. It will rake in huge sums. 

Yesterday, Adrian Molina, the writer and director of "Coco" was on WNYC's Leonard Lopate radio show. 

Molina, in virtually every sentence, said something like, "Our goal was to create a Mexican movie. We hired only Mexican or Latino actors. We strove to honor indigenous Mexican traditions. We had to interview six hundred children to find a worthy Mexican child. All the music is inflected with Mexican sounds. We had to be sure to use Spanish, because Spanish is more beautiful than English..."

And on and on and on and on.

"Coco" is a nationalist project.

In recent days, the world has been discussing Poland's recent Independence Day march. The world recoils from POLISH nationalism, insisting that it is an evil threat to world peace.

"Coco," a MEXICAN nationalist product, will be hailed and feted.

BTW, the nonsense about needing Mexicans to play the characters in an animated film. Benjamin Bratt, as his last name implies, is of Northern European, largely German ancestry. His mother is from Peru.

Peru is over four thousand miles from Mexico. That's greater than the distance from New York to London. That's TWICE THE DISTANCE from New York City to Mexico City.

There is no cultural similarity between the Incas and the Aztecs. The one thing they have in common -- both the Inca Empire and the Aztec Empire were defeated by tiny numbers of Europeans fighting with local, Native American Indian troops who were eager to see oppressive Native American empires fall.

I'm not protesting "Coco"'s nationalism. I'm not protesting the hiring of Mexican or Hispanic actors. I'm merely mentioning the painful and destructive double standards that elevates one ethnicity, Mexicans, and denigrates another, Poles. This is the dynamic I describe in my book "Bieganski: the Brute Polak Stereotype." 

You can hear the Leonard Lopate show interview with "Coco" creator Adrian Molina here: http://www.wnyc.org/story/coco

Site says that "whites" should not review "Coco." Only Hispanics should review "Coco." http://remezcla.com/lists/film/latino-film-critics-review-pixar-coco/