Gender Roles in the film "The Book of Life"

I chose a clip from “The Book of Life” which begins with two young boys playfully competing for the attention of a young girl. The audience sees them acting out their own chosen professions (a musician and a soldier). The friends then gleefully hug and go their own ways. After, the musician boy heads to his family at his mother’s grave. His father says that because it is the “Día de los Muertos”, his mother (and other deceased family members) are right by their side. The aesthetics of these adjoined scenes feature warm colors that is consistent with Latin culture. We see the orange of the flowers used in “Día de los Muertos”.; this warmness is contrasted with the dead loved ones which are all ice blue, signifying their existence in a different reality. Diegetic sounds are a lot of dialogue and music playing. Non-diegetic sound occurs as background music when the kids are play fighting, which enhances the playful tone, and when the boy visits his mom’s grave, contributing to the solemn tone.

             This clip can be easily analyzed through the gender and sexuality schools. The audience is confronted with two typical types of masculinity. The soldier represents a traditional masculinity where the musician has a different, less-masculine type. At first, it seems like the film is absolutely conforming to gender roles as two boys are trying to impress one girl; however, the movie gleefully defies gender roles when the girl tells the boys that she belongs to nobody. Similarly, this film depicts hetero-normative relationships. The boys are expressing their sexuality by trying to “win” the girl. We can see from this that gender and sexuality are very linked, though not simplistic.