Joseph Paez

Sociology 101 M-W 1pm -2:25pm

The movies that I watched to write about culture were Crazy Rich Asians and Coco.

Crazy Rich Asians was about an asian girl from New York that is a Economics

Professor at a University and is dating an asian guy that has a family that is very very

wealthy and the family are very well-known people in China, Singapore, and also with

the Chinese people, but it is very difficult for the girl to be adapt to that lifestyle because

she is not rich as the guy’s family , but the people think that she is not enough for the

guy since he comes from a family with money and well she isn’t. Coco is about a kid

that wants to play guitar and sing , but his family forbids him to do so, so he goes into

the “dead” world to get his great grandpa’s blessing to do so. Both movies have different

cultures and carry different meanings since they are not from the same ethnicity so their

cultures are so unique in their own way.

The concept that I noticed in the movie, Crazy Rich Asians, were beliefs. In the movie I

noticed that the guy’s mother wanted someone good for his son so that's why she was

not being accepting towards his son’s girlfriend because she wanted someone that had

money and was from Singapore so that his son would be more closer to the family and

be nearby so that he could help maintain the family’s name. Another concept that I

noticed was symbolic. Throughout the movie I noticed that people were dressed up in a

certain way, especially women. Their dresses were very unique and were designed

nicely with bright colors to represent some sort of positiveness to others. In one part of

the movie I also noticed that the mother of the guy didn’t like that the girl was following
 her passion and wanted a career, which seems good, but the mother wasn’t so happy

or seem bothered about that because she seem more of a family person and it looks

like a type of folkway. Now moving on to the next movie that I saw which was Coco.

Some of the things that caught my attention was the culture in the movie which was that

the boy in the movie loves music , but his family forbids music and it is not allowed at all

since they only are dedicated to making shoes and well that's what his family wants him

to do. His family sees music as a “taboo” because it was what caused its past

generation to separate, especially the boy’s great grandfather when he chose to follow

his dream of pursuing music, but he never came back to his family so that's why they

don’t like music in his present generation. There is also material culture in the movie

almost anytime during the movie like for example, the food that families leave for their

dead family members in their tombs on the day of the dead to celebrate them so that

they can “spend time” with them and also remembering them so that they are not

forgotten. There are also norms which can be for example in the movie when the boy

goes to the land of the dead and his great grandmother gives him her blessing to return

back to the real world , but with the condition that he will not play music at all.

Watching both movies, Crazy Rich Asians and Coco, I found that there was more

cultural influence in the movie Coco because there was a lot of detail on how the

families in the Mexican culture, which is based on, has a lot of values and beliefs on

how they run their whole family. I believe Crazy Rich Asians should have included more

cultural influence a little bit more, but overall it was a cool and entertaining film to look at

and so was the movie Coco.