A huge chunk of the mexican population is catholic, you might argue they practice a different brand of the religion, but why wouldn’t any catholic be surprised that the afterlife does not look nothing like they expected and that they can still die in the afterlife? I think a lot of the skeletons in coco would be having existential crisis or something, wondering if their god is real, and if not, who created that afterlife.
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We don’t tend to see a lot of the recent dead.
Maybe they do have existential crises at first, but by the time we meet them, they’ve had decades to get over it. If there’s one thing the dead have, it’s time.
This is a big assumption. I only saw the movie once, but the movie doesn’t really imply any Catholicism. At the very least, everyone we see practice’s day of the dead.
It should also be stated the a lot of Mexican catholism is the result of syncretism with pre-contact religions. Point being, someone would only be surprised if they were expecting fluffy cloud heaven and denied the land of the dead we see.
It’s quite well aligned with Mexican folk Catholicism.
It is, as you said, very different from actual Catholic doctrine you’ll find in the Roman Catechism or whatever. But none of the characters seem to be the type to have studied theology at university or anything like that. And even the sort of person who’s had some exposure to formal doctrine could be expected to still have the folk beliefs half in mind as a result of their general cultural milieu. So short of like actual theologians, the shock probably isn’t that great for anyone.
The bigger question might be if it applies to non-Mexicans also. If Swedish Lutherans or Persian Shi’ites or whatever also end up in the Dia de los Muertos afterlife, you could expect quite a big culture shock. But from what we see in the movie, it may only be for Mexicans.
Mexican Catholicism is melded with traditional Mexican cultures, hence Day of the Dead. The afterlife seen in Coco is representative of Aztec culture, which is still a major part of Mexican culture.