Besides drawing and animating in AAU I also end up writting a lot of essays, most of them are made for my LA classes but they are always related to things I like. Here I'm sharing with you an essay I wrote about The Book of Life, a movie I find very fun to study.
Day of the
Dead: From a Mesoamerican tradition to the big screen
The Day of the
Dead has been celebrated by many Mexicans around the world and proclaimed as the country’s national symbol. Sadly this is a celebration whose
origins and mythology is unknown to most of those who support it. The basics
of its purpose are there, it’s a holiday made to remember your dead relatives
with a touch of festiveness through the use of vibrant colors present in
painted skulls, flowers and sweets.
But how was it
originated? Is there a reason to do this? The Mayans and Aztecs have specific
stories made for it, some of which Reel FX’s latest animated film The Book of Life (2014) tries to borrow.
The Book of Life sets its premise in the Day of the Dead. Its mythology states that the
holiday is celebrated in order to keep your loved ones alive. In the movie it’s explained that as long as
the dead are remembered by the people who live on Earth they will stay in the “Land
of the Remembered” and if there is nobody alive to remember them they will go to
the “Land of the Forgotten”. In a way both areas feel like representations of
heaven and hell, by having the Land of the Forgotten being the place where
souls are practically set to die.
Whenever the people who died have been good or bad doesn't affect where they will go which is the closest
idea to what the Aztecs believed. Unlike the movie they didn’t have a clear
division of the afterlife that represented hell or heaven though. The Aztecs
believed that the dead could take 4 paths according to the death they had:
The Tlalocan
(paradise governed by the god of rain) where people who died in storms, while
drowned or sacrificed to the god went to. The Omeyocán (paradise governed by
the god of war) where people who died in combat went to including also women
who died while giving birth, a nice detail of their part in my opinion. The
Mictlán (paradise governed by Mr. and Ms. Death) where people who died of
natural death went to. And finally the Chichihuacuauhco, where the kids who
died went to.
There were
different dates celebrated in honor of these deaths and paths, the celebrations were so
important that they could last around 2 months and were always carried through ritual dances and gifts for the dead.
Of all of these afterlifes
that existed for the Aztecs it is presumed that the one this movie borrowed has
been the Mictlán since it’s governed by 2 engaged gods, Mictecacíhuatl
(female) and Mictlantecuhtli (male), those who are also seen in The Book of Life governing the Land of
the Forgotten and the Land of the Remembered this time known as La Muerte and Xibalba.
But if those
characters are really based on those gods why do they have radically different
looks and names? It mostly has to do with the producers of the movie trying to
make them more recognizable to the public. After all even though this movie is directed by a
Mexican (Jorge Gutierrez), it’s made by a studio from Texas and is mostly
marketed to US audiences.
We still got
strong Mexican influences though, in the case of La Muerte, she is clearly a
representation of La Catrina, known as a new image given to the female version of
the Death done by cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada in 1913. She is a recent
addition to the Mexican culture separated from the Aztect’s mythology but she
is well recognized now in Mexico and used in all kinds of visuals of the Death
for the holiday. It’s kind of ironic considering the cartoonist drew her as a
parody of poor Mexicans pretending to be Europeans by spending money on
expensive clothes (hence the hat or the dress that have no relation to Mexican
culture).
Xibalba on the
other hand is completely made up from scratch, starting with his name which has
been borrowed from the name of the Mayan’s hell, I assume this might have been done
just because it’s easier to pronounce for everybody.
He was designed to
look like the evil god or to be associated with the depressing Land of the
Forgotten which is the place he governs in the movie. In the descriptions the
director gives for this character he says he set him out to be “made of tar and
everything icky in the world” and that his design was mostly done as a love
letter to his producer’s films (Guillermo Del Toro).
It’s easy to
understand all the changes made here and how the pieces are put together to make
a condensed version of the history of the holiday. The only piece of the puzzle
that has had some people scratching their heads has been a third god that was
added to the film, the Candle Maker.
In the movie they
explain he is the caretaker of the candles of life that set each person’s time
and life on Earth. But in the Aztec mythology related to the dead there are no
records of this character or any other god with this purpose. This is where I
believe the need to alter the story to please the audiences comes into play the
most. He is clearly just a representation of God, a way to make Christians who
watch this movie accept the concept of what they consider a pagan holiday.
Having him
represented by the image of a bearded white guy and the fact he is closely
related to taking care of the lives of people says it all. The director of the
movie didn’t reveal much about why he was created in the behind the scenes
footage but for many of us it felt that he didn’t belong in the story or the
mythology. Still I don’t feel he is that bad if you consider he can draw an
interesting angle into the inclusion of Christianity into the holiday, which
contrary to the popular belief of some people, didn’t originate from All Saints
Day; the Spanish mixed it with the Aztecs traditions when they arrived in order
to convert more natives into Christianity. From there a specific Day of the
Dead was set on November 1st and 2nd where you had many
families visiting graveyards created outside the cities due to all the
illnesses Mexico started facing with the colonization.
Overall I’m glad
this movie got made even if it screws around with the origins or backstory of
the holiday. You can tell the people behind the project did their research and
mixed everything together in a way it will make the audiences of the US more
interested in the Day of the Dead and the real stories behind it. It certainly
did it for me since I’m not even Mexican yet I loved putting a lot of research
into this.
Bibliography
(2014). In J. R. Gutierrez, Art of the Book of
Life (pp. 21-31). Milwaukie: Dark Horse Books.
Dia de los Muertos. (n.d.). Retrieved from Yaia.com:
http://diadelosmuertos.yaia.com/historia.html
Figueroa, P. C. (n.d.). El Día de Muertos en México. Retrieved from Mexico-Tenoch:
http://www.mexico-tenoch.com/tradicionesmexicanas/Diademuertosenmexico.htm
Been looking for somethong like this forever.
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