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

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy 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The blog Tracie wrote after her first visit has been unpublished.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/

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

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find.

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Kapitel

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

2. Hawaiian Culture and Authentic Representation (00:10:00)

3. The Animation Style and Production Story (00:18:35)

4. Family Trauma and Government Intervention (00:30:40)

5. Imperialism and Cultural Commentary (00:36:31)

6. Gender Representation and Legacy (00:43:21)