About

Miguel's Guitar (alternatively known as 'Miguel's Banjo' or 'Miguel's Ukelele') refers to an animated GIF of Miguel, one of the protagonists in the 2000 American animated film The Road to El Dorado, playing his guitar (more accurately, his lute,) fervently in one of the opening scenes. The GIF has been parodied and remixed 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 DreamWorks 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 lute-strumming GIF has seen massive spread online, appearing in multiple GIF-themed websites like WeKnowGifs.com^[2] and GifSoup,^[3] uploaded by different users before appearing in much larger-scale communities such as "Reddit^[4] and Tumblr^[5]. On DeviantART, a search for the phrase 'Miguel's Guitar' yields almost 500 results, with an additional volume of derivatives based on the original GIF that are tagged under 'Miguel plays guitar.'^[1]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References