Like most people, I watched and loved Coco. I thought it was a great movie with a beautiful story, and a tear or two may have been shed. What I didn’t know was that Disney tried to trademark the holiday name Día de los Muertos.
Back in 2013, Disney was developing a movie that would become Coco and wanted to trademark the phrases Día de los Muertos and Day of the Dead. This was so they could market toys, snacks, apparel, and anything else they could make money off of. Never mind that it’s a traditional holiday that’s literally on the UNESCO list of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Due to the backlash, Disney luckily backed off. But it raises the question: why did the corporation try to do it in the first place? In the end, it boils down to money, but I have to wonder: would they have tried to copyright Christmas? Halloween? Valentine’s Day? Literally any major holiday in the United States?
I’m glad Disney withdrew their trademark application, and I still love the movie, Coco. However, there’s still the fact that they tried to trademark another culture’s holiday.
They also did this before the name of the film was finalized. So, it’s not like they were branding the film’s logo, which could have been the words Día de los Muertos in a stylized font, as we see with a lot of movies. They were just straight up trying to trademark the holiday.
This was 13 years ago, so I’m probably beating a dead horse here. It’s likely that, especially after this, the company hired more people of color at decision-making levels. If someone who actually celebrated Día de los Muertos was consulted, they probably would have said that trying to trademark it is a bad idea. At least, we can hope they would have.
Disney also didn’t issue an apology for this, as far as I can tell. It was more of a half-hearted explanation as to why they tried in the first place. Feel like it wouldn’t have been hard to say “That was misguided on our end, we apologize.”
In the end, I think it goes to show that we need to keep an eye on these major corporations and hold them accountable. They’re not the only company to try to copyright Mexican culture, and they probably won’t be the last.