You found me i guess

One of the main themes of Lilo & Stitch was not destructive colonization or racism.

You can say that about other movies. Other mainstream movies. Black Panther, for example. You can’t say that about Lilo & Stitch.

There is only ONE SCENE where the issue of tourism as a negative thing and racism could be claimed to be the focus, and that scene was deleted.

Even in that scene, you have to look at the focus of the WHOLE MOVIE. The reason you must look at it that way is because Chris Sanders (director of Lilo & Stitch, voice of Stitch) basically started what is now known as Disney’s Story department. He is known for cutting out anything that distracts from or warps what the story is actually about.

It’s why Stitch speaks. It’s why Stitch is a Frankenstein’s Monster and not a gang leader or a mythical creature. It’s why Lilo is an orphan.

So what I’m saying is that deleted scene was to show how annoyed Lilo is by tourists—and why shouldn’t she be, they’re depicted as rude, ignorant, crude, and racist. But it goes deeper than that. It served 2 other purposes: one, Cobra Bubbles is watching, and sees how Lilo is allowed to roam wherever she wants and all the trouble she causes/gets into on her own. This provides more believably motivation for him to take this likeable kid away from her sister without being a villain, himself. Two, most importantly, tourists are people who come for a little while and then leave.

Lilo has issues because her parents were there one day, gone the next. And she’s only ever known life on an island where the economy is driven by people who are there one day, gone the next. When she wants to cause trouble for Nani she puts a picture on the fridge of herself, all alone, and tells Nani to “leave me alone to die.” She asks the wishing Star for “someone who won’t run away.”

What I am getting at is that, even in a deleted scene, the point of the negative light thrown on tourists is there to show you what Lilo needs and feels she doesn’t have: someone to stay, come back, not leave her behind. Tourists come and then they leave; that’s their nature. So she hates them. She says, “if you lived here, you’d understand.” when she sees Cobra watching, but when you look at the WHOLE MOVIE, and consider who Chris Sanders is as a storyteller, then you KNOW that racism and colonization were not the focus of this movie. The focus of this movie was that while other people come and go, family does not leave you behind or forget you.

And that philosophy, even in Hawaiian terms and origins, applies to everyone, not any one people group. Western people might say “‘Blood is thicker than water,” or Africans might quote the proverb, “A family tie is like a tree, it can bend, but it cannot break,” instead of “‘Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” The point is applicable to everybody, and the storytellers did that on purpose, and if you make it about tourism and colonization, then you’re narrowing the focus of the movie down to a small, mean place where it can only apply to a handful.

Happy "El Woowoo" Wednesday!

Happy "El Woowoo" Wednesday!