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Why was Miguel prepared to (try to) give up music?


I adore this movie and find it mostly excellent.
But there's a point where Miguel is prepared to (try to) never play music again, so he can return to his family.
Which irks me more than it probably should, but I must vent a bit about it.
Sure, it is clear that "la familia" is important in Mexico and that Miguel was meant to learn a lesson about that.
Obviously, it is a big no-no in that culture to call the family ofrenda stupid and say that you don't want your family.
And I get that finding out that De la Cruz was a villain made Miguel think that his family was right after all.
That would have been a real shock to him because he still thought that De la Cruz was his ancestor.
And despite how they had just treated Miguel awfully, his family did love him even if they didn't understand him.
So I won't say that they didn't deserve to get him back or that he shouldn't have returned to them.
But I don't get why Miguel would (try to) give up music even after he found out that Hector was his ancestor.
Also, it is like the writers forgot that the family had hurt Miguel (even if they had not meant to do it).
So if they had never had to accept him for who he was, what would they have learned from all this mess?
Miguel was never in the wrong here (except for in that scene when he pushed Dante away).
But I get the feeling that the story portrays him as the one, who has to make amends before anyone else does.
Or am I crazy here?
Fortunately, Imelda was eventually able to see her mistakes and bless Miguel without any conditions.
So he could rejog Coco's memory with music and save Hector and make things right at last.
However, I don't like that moment when he was willing to return to the living and be unhappy without music.
And seriously, I don't believe that Miguel could have kept that promise his whole life anyway.
What pray tell would have happened when (not if, but when) he had to start to play music again?

But when I think about this moment and how much it irks me, I ask myself questions like this one:
How is that a worse moment to me than when Mirabel in "Encanto" risked her life to try to save the candle?
It is not like she had anything to gain from that personally since she had no magic gift.
But still, she did that for her family without thinking about her own safety.
I think I know the difference between this and Miguel thinking about giving up music though.
It is that as foolhardy as she may have been, Mirabel was proving that her future job is to protect the family.
(And yeah, I believe that the theory that she's their next leader is correct.)
So it was all only what we could expect from her and not out of character in the least.
But also, Mirabel's parents did what they could to support her and never were angry with her.
She had gotten help on her quest from Dolores, Luisa, Antonio and Bruno before she risked her life for them.
But as for Miguel, not only was it clear that he was a musical prodigy and never was meant to give up music.
He had also had to spend most of the story feeling that nobody in his family supported him.
And it makes me wonder why he would have to sacrifice anything for them before they accepted him.
How would that be fair?
Not to mention that it goes against what Miguel had told Imelda earlier in the story.
I love that scene where he said that she tried to take what made him happy from him and didn't support him.
And it looked like Imelda started to doubt that she was right to put conditions on Miguel's life already then.
But it was like the writers later forgot about that scene...

Now, you might say that this rant is unnecessary since Imelda relented and let Miguel be a musician after all.
But I guess that we all have a movie, that you happen to love except for one detail that you see as a problem.
And yeah, this is such a situation to me.
It is probably only a problem to me since I'm from Sweden and will never get how important family is in Mexico.
But I can't see how Miguel making such a sacrifice and denying his individuality would have been a good thing.
It is clearly presented within the story as honorable and heart-warming that he's prepared to do that.
But I can only think "how is you being unhappy to please your toxic great-great-grandmother a good thing?"
And he couldn't have saved Hector without music either, so I don't get why he even had to think about it.
Not to mention that his family would have remained dysfunctional if nobody had been allowed to change things.
But what I like is that Miguel at least insisted that Imelda would help Hector before he promised her anything.
He had every right to demand to get something from her in return.
It is clear too that unlike the rest of the family, Miguel dared to be a bit cheeky with Imelda.
That is very refreshing to see and proves that he hadn't become afraid of her like the others were.
But I'm really glad that Miguel didn't have to make any stupid sacrifice...

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