About
Miguel’s Guitar (alternatively known as ’Miguel’s Banjo’ or ’Miguel’s Ukelele’) refers to the popular gif of Miguel, one of the protagonists in the animated DreamWorks film The Road to El Dorado, playing his guitar (more accurately, his lute,) fervently in one of the first scenes of the movie. The gif has been parodied and deviated upon multiple times, often with other fictional characters furiously strumming their own stringed instruments with a hunched pose and/or a serious facial expression.
Origin
The specific scene in the 2000 movie The Road to El Dorado where Miguel performs his iconic strumming happens when the duo, Tulio and Miguel, attempt to gamble for the legendary map that leads to El Dorado, the city of gold. Miguel plays the lute to add dramatic, if not untimely, flair. The gambling eventually turns sour and chaos ensues.
Spread
Miguel’s strumming has seen massive spread online, appearing in multiple gif sites like WeKnowGifs.com[2] and GifSoup[3] uploaded by different users before appearing in much larger social websites such as Reddit[4] and Tumblr. Albeit less than 500 results are received when the phrase ’Miguel’s Guitar’ is searched on Deviantart, the results yield a considerable amount of deviations based on the gif, or simply Miguel with his guitar[1].
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Deviantart – Search Results for Miguel’s Guitar
[2]We Know Gifs – miguel playing guitar gif Archive
[3]Gif Soup – Miguel Guitar
[4]Reddit – Banned List