Episode 92: Lilo and Stitch (And another Part of Family)

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So this episode is going to take on a very different nature than what I had originally intended, but I can’t not do it this way. If that makes sense. Basically, we’re going to have to have what would--in any other context--be considered a fourth wall break, but this is a podcast, so the normal terms don’t always apply.

But to start with a timeline of events. If you haven’t noticed, I missed four posting days. The latter two were due to technical difficulties and the need to replace equipment. But on the first one, I couldn’t get a script on a different topic to work, and I’m pretty happy that I gave up instead of trying to push through it. It was in the best interests of everyone. So yay on that front. 

But then, on the second day I was supposed to post, on the day this was supposed to go live, one of my cats was having stomach problem, meaning he wanted to throw up a hairball but got interrupted by my other cat, which had implications like making it harder to get the first hairball and now vomit out of his system. Hence tummy troubles. 

Now, he’s fine. He was fine after a couple days, but in the moment, this was the sort of very, very worrisome tummy troubles that took up all of my attention when things don’t stop at the point you expect them to stop. And keep in mind, this show goes live on Sundays, and on Sundays, if your pet is sick, that means going to the emergency vet. On the other hand, your local vet is a great person in addition to being great at their profession and can make your somewhat anxious pet feel safe, but no, that person can’t help you right then. And stress just makes tummy problems worse for people and cats, so obviously I didn’t want to go to the emergency vet if that was only going to make things worse somehow.

Rationally, in hindsight, there wasn’t much for me to worry about. Yes, I had to check the vomit, but it wasn’t red. And it was clearly my cat’s breakfast. And then his attempts at lunch that I probably shouldn’t have let him have, but I was hopelessly naive. So we weren’t in stress crying territory yet. However, I was stress crying. 

At some point, though, it doesn’t matter if it’s rational or not. At the thought of loss--be it of my pets or otherwise but especially of my pets--I tend to shut down or otherwise get twisted up somehow. And that led me to wanting to redo this script, even if there was no need to redo it. It just felt right to take a step back and reimagine what it was I was going to post. 

So yeah, this episode might end up being a bit of a mess, but all the episodes on this feed are to some extent, but I mean, Minx is fine now. He’s fine.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to a very tiring Episode 92.

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After the scrapped episode that will forever be nameless, the next topic on my list was Lilo and Stitch, which was an episode topic I’ve been alluding to for a while after a steaming hot take on Twitter about that movie really rubbed me the wrong way with me. And it did so with a lot of people. It  resulted in a pretty thorough and necessary dragging of said poster, but I did not participate in the Twitter discourse. That’s just the sort of thing you hesitate to do when your main Twitter account is also a podcast account. Because it makes things a little weird and makes it very easy for conversations to get derailed a bit.

So I got to sit in myself and just fume about it for a bit. And while, yes, I could have jumped onto this podcast and gone off because this is my podcast and that is technically my right, I elected not to. I thought it was best to create some space between an episode of Lilo and Stitch, that I was already going to do, it was on my list, and that terrible take. Why? I don’t quite remember. But I stand by that conclusion.

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Before we get to the hot take, I need to explain What Lilo and Stitch is on the off-chance you don’t already know. Lilo and Stitch is a 2002 Disney animated movie that told the story of a young girl’s encounter with an extraterrestrial. But Stitch, the aforementioned alien, comes into Lilo’s, the aforementioned young girl’s, life at a not great time. Her parents have recently died, and her sister is doing her absolute best to hold it together so she can keep custody of Lilo, but it’s hard to do that under the best of circumstances. Never mind when one has to cope with the weight of her own grief. And never mind that her grief and Lilo’s can be greatly incompatible at times.

At this point, with their family so damaged, that concept is starting to lose its meaning, though both Lilo and Nani are desperate to hold onto something. And Stitch makes for as good of a raft as any right now. Or maybe not, but the little dude is trying as hard as any alien experiment could be expected to.

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Okay, feel good time over. Time for the really bad take. 

Now, there is a chance I could be misrepresenting or overly simplifying the hottake of this unnamed person. I fully recognize that, and I also recognize that this is not typically a great thing to do. But ultimately, this is still an argument that exists out in the world and beyond this person. So discussing it has some merit, and it fits in with the… Not so great days of kitty vomit.

While the overall conclusion of this hot take was that Lilo and Stitch was a bad movie, part of it was based on the observation that Lilo was a brat. Lilo was a bratty child and a bad character, and people who disagreed with that astute observation only thought as much because they too either are or had been bratty children and liked the validation that the depiction offered them. 

As an example, the poster talked about how Lilo gets into a fight in the early part of the movie because she got to dance practice late and soaking wet after desperately feeding a fish a sandwich because that fish allegedly controls the weather and a well-fed fish means good weather. Unlike the day Lilo’s parents died. Which happened to be a day in which Lilo had not fed that fish. So clearly she saw a pattern that an adult would rationally know wasn’t there, but because that pattern wasn’t rationally there, why would she get so angry when this precious world she had built around herself was suddenly attacked? I mean, it was childish and stupid, as commenter pointed out. Lilo just needed to accept that, and that’s what should have been modeled for the audience.

And one day all of us who like this movie will also come to our senses about how bad that scene really is and how bad Lilo is as a whole. And that movie will go in the trash bin where it belongs, and we’ll all be impressed by the commenter’s amazing foresight.

Which is, like so frustrating on many levels. For one, it misses the entire point of the movie. But also and I’ve said this before: the idea that a child can go through such a traumatic loss with a stiff upper-lip is equal parts destructive and stupid. 

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Look, this is coming from someone who was significantly older when they lost one parent. In many ways, my situation wasn’t as severe as Lilo’s. Not to compare miseries. I don’t think that’s a thing anyone should be doing. Ever. But what I mean to say, in the context of this terrible argument, I clearly should have had everything together, right?

But I didn’t. And I’m sure if you listened to enough episodes on this feed, you know that I didn’t handle it well and that this dysfunction has shown itself in any number of ways. Part of it, though it is a part I don’t often talk about, is that I too latched onto irrational patterns with such a devotion that defending this behavior was certainly worth a fistfight or two. Because it felt like it was a matter of life or death. And when my dad was alive, maybe, it literally was.

Now, undoubtedly, there’s a lot for a professional to unpack in my brain as a sort of case-study. Like how my Sunday school teacher told me when I was about 6 and my dad had his second heart attack in my lifetime but the first one I knew about, that if I was a good kid my dad wouldn’t die. And--like--yeah, if you take the Christian theology and dilute it to an if-this-then-that model, that tends to be the conclusion you end up with, this was nothing ground-breaking and when you’re talking to a child, making things that simple is the time-honored tradition. It doesn’t make it right to do. It’s just what people tend to do when you panic because this was a tiny child facing an emotional reckoning that can shake up even the most steadfast adults. 

And that sucks, I get it. But it wasn’t like they kicked the can of that emotional reckoning down the street; instead they kicked it right in my face.

But even that’s not the point. The point is that--for the longest time--I put the burden of my father’s health--or lack thereof--onto my shoulders. I felt as if my behavior and all my choices were high stakes. That these were the facts that were going to determine whether my father lived or died. That I was in control despite being an incredibly small child. A small, helpless child. Those weren’t great odds, am I right?

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And okay, yes, it wasn’t just that one moment. This wasn’t the result of one Sunday school teacher panicking, though that sort of thing can--in fact--cause a lot of damage. I just need to be realistic and honest with you about what really went down, so I’m going to discuss the other issue at play here, and that’s a child’s mind. Specifically my mind, but I’m sure you knew that. Basically, a child’s mind that doesn’t understand all the short-cuts children’s television and the like take when showing how the world is. They show it as defaulting to good with some deviations of badness, and those deviations are outliers that can be dealt with or corrected. And then it’s happily ever after, right?

Well, as an adult listening to this--or I really hope you are an adult listening to this--you know that’s inaccurate. You know that isn’t how things usually work. There are problems ingrained in our reality. Like how heart disease or the like will strike at parents regardless of how well their children behave. Perfectly relevant example. Pretty logical and rational, relevant example. 

But not to a child. To a child that’s the sort of worst case scenario. Also impossible. It’s a lot of different things. But above all, the illusion of being in control is a very alluring and appealing lie because it is a schema that gives you power and a sense of control.

There was a part of me that wanted to believe that I could control my father’s fate because at least then, he had a chance of living. Forget about reason. There were other things to consider. Like my security. Like the foundation of my life. Like my family.

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When my cat got sick, I found myself falling into much the same patterns that I developed when I was young. Cleaning frantically and recleaning because my previous attempts weren’t good enough comes to mind. Eating extra healthy like my parents always told me to do. Those sorts of things. The sorts of things children think good children do. The things they were always told to do. And keep in mind, I am now a woman in my twenties. Those sorts of things might be reasonable to do in a reasonable and non-obsessive way. By all means, I should do them. But not in the way I was doing them in that moment. 

It was a barter in some ways. I was trying to make a deal with the universe at large to keep my cat alive. And you know, it might not have worked before. But maybe now it would.

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Ultimately, what Lilo and Stitch showed, even though it wasn’t the main thesis of the movie and--in fact--the thesis works against this, is that trauma changes not just your life but how you relate to your life. 

For Lilo, she is struggling to assert a sense of autonomy if not outright power when she clearly doesn’t have any. And that leads to a lot of conflicts in her life. Obviously. That is actually the crux of the movie. And to not understand that children or even some adults don’t respond to trauma or potential trauma productively is to miss literally the entire point.

In reality, the best response to trauma, to managing hurt and heartache, is to rely on your social network or what might be left of it in order to guide you through it. You cannot manage things alone because the human mind bends towards irrationality. It bends towards simple narratives that promise the biggest payouts, even if it is a bit on the irrational side. 

But other people have the ability to challenge and shape the narrative because they change the stakes a bit by their very presence alone.. Suddenly you don’t have to fear your destruction in the same way. You have them to help you and guide you through the storm. Those connections keep you anchored in the present and not in your terrible patterns. 

That’s your family. All of it. Every piece making the structure so sturdy that the collapse of a few won’t outright devastate you.

As of right now, I’m stuck at home with my two cats only. And I do feel more isolated, just like I did when I was younger and my dad was sick. So inevitably I was going to revert to some patterns. So of course I was going to fall into old habits when they weren’t even all that appropriate. My cat is fine. He was always going to be fine. No one was concerned but me because he was obviously fine. 

But I’ve come to think of human development not so much as a linear course of action but more like an onion with layers upon layers being added onto it. I’ve come to think that the hurts and habits we learn when we are younger are the sorts of things that will inevitably be carried with us, and rather than disheveling ourselves of them, we just renegotiate the terms of our connection. 

We don’t give them that much power over us. We don’t let them talk over and dictate our behaviors in the same way. Until we do. Until we need some help to get us through to the other side. But that’s a void that can be filled by our family. Maybe the one we chose and maybe the one we fell into. 

But I guess some of us still want to pretend that everything is okay all the time. But I’ll refrain from issuing judgment on that. 

The point is that we need families--not only the biological ones. I’m using that term in the more community-grounded sense, not merely grounded it in biology.  But we need our families to help us through our struggles and our less than ideal reaction to them.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. Thanks for listening! Find more information about our shows at miscellanymedia.online or follow us on Twitter @miscellanymedia for updates on current and future projects.

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