Lilo & Stitch: Deep Thoughts About Animation, Found Family in Film, and...American Imperialism

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

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Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.

In addition to dazzling her with its old-school hand-drawn animation and delighting her with its sweet and funny story, the 2002 Disney film Lilo & Stitch introduced Tracie to indigenous Hawaiʻian culture. The writing and directing team of Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois traveled to Hawaiʻi for extensive artistic and cultural research and sought the input of native Hawaiʻians, including voice actor and friend of the show Tia Carrere, to write this story. The result is a touching tale of found family that echoes the colonialist history of Hawaiʻi.

Give Pudge his peanut butter sandwich and take a listen!

Mentioned in this episode:

The oral history of the film in Vulture: https://www.vulture.com/article/oral-history-of-lilo-and-stitch-a-hand-drawn-miracle.html

Iolani Palace: https://www.iolanipalace.org/

The blog Tracie wrote after her first visit has been unpublished. Check back and we’ll republish it when we find it.

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We're having a party, please come! A Zoom happy hour, Tue, 11/18, 7:30 ET / 6:30 CT. (THERE WILL BE PRESENTS!) So get ready to pour your favorite beverage, overthink some Thanksgiving-themed pop culture, laugh, and feel a little bit smarter.

It’s free, but please register at guygirlsmedia.com/happyhour, so we can share the zoom info with you! (Also, who doesn’t like knowing who’s coming to their party?)

We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

فصول

1. Introduction to Lilo and Stitch (00:00:00)

2. Hawaiian Culture and Authentic Representation (00:09:37)

3. The Animation Style and Production Story (00:18:12)

4. Family Trauma and Government Intervention (00:30:30)

5. Imperialism and Cultural Commentary (00:36:21)

6. Gender Representation and Legacy (00:43:11)