Prototipos mexicanos y el conflicto migratorio en el filme Coco, de Walt Disney

In the present paper, we propose to analyze a filmic text that, supposedly, was created for a children’s audience, it is the recent Walt Disney’s work Coco (2017), by directors Lee Ulrich and Adrian Molina. We will be guided by sociosemiotic notions and the critical analysis of discourse in order to study certain semantic marks related to the migratory phenomenon that is recorded along the border between Mexico and the United States. These semantic marks, due to their constant presence in other texts and situations, are assumed to be prototypical. According to the above, far from “paying tribute” to Mexican culture, Coco stigmatizes certain practices of that culture. The “media machine” with which Disney supports this product allows the “naturalization” of such prototypical vision.