The Bechdel Cast - Lilo and Stitch with Lily Hi'ilani Okimura

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

It's Lilo & Stitch Day on the 'cast with special guest Lily Hi'ilani Okimura! Ohana means family! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter. Follow Lily at @hiililylani on TikTok and @hiilanilily on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast i'm stitch by the way that was me stitch oh okay i knew it was gonna i was like where's where are they going with this one i feel like everyone has not to i guess i'm trying to think of like impressions that middle schoolers liked doing that swept the nation and i feel like i feel

like the stitch impression was a real inflection point for some annoying 12 year olds sure i think they really were like here's my moment to shine i going to find someone I have a crush on and go, hi. And I'll do that for a year. And then surely it'll work. And they'll fall in love with me. Oh, baby. I mean, there's certainly worse middle schooler impressions that have swept the nation. I was in middle school when borat came out i

was just gonna say borat that was that was a pain that was a difficult year and more ways than what i mean it was like hard enough being in the eighth grade and then also everyone's gonna do a borat impression it's too much yeah no thanks i would take stitch at any day yeah stitch is um a king stitch rocks well he really does i kept laughing when i don't know why i was cackling i feel like i am running a fever so that this could factor into any opinion i'm about to share but um every time he rolled up into a ball and rolled away i was cackling it's so funny there's a scene why is that the funniest joke in any movie i've ever seen it's so funny there's a scene where and it's just kind of like a throwaway moment it has nothing to do with anything really

it's just to show that he's a rambunctious little guy he's a little stinker i mean he's kind of like the littlest stinkerest it's true um but there's a scene where he starts blending something in a blender and then the lid flies off and it all shoots into his face and it's i don't know why but the funniest thing i've ever seen i'm like this is comedy genius like we should all just retire because like we're never gonna top this hilarious physical gag and then the minions came along and we're like wow oh my god the art form progresses yet again i think that was more around my time where like a lot of the middle school kids would try to impersonate minions bellow for example wow that actually must have been a nightmare that must have sucked i used to like

them and then i started hating them after like one everyone tried to impersonate them and they also made like 20 more minion movies and i'm like okay this is there's a lot this is too much i can't get enough but i don't want a middle schooler doing an impression at any point in time it will sour i feel like that'll sour you on almost anything being in middle school when someone's doing an impression aggressively yeah um well welcome to the back yeah that was i, our longest tirade before we actually introduced the show. It's a rich text, Caitlin. I know. My name is Jamie Loftus.

My name is Caitlin Durante, and this is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a much larger conversation. But Jamie, what is the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate a much larger conversation. But Jamie, what is the Bechdel test? Tell me, I don't remember. I'll tell you, Caitlin Durante. Here's what it is. It's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel in her comic collection called Dykes to Watch Out For, originally made as a sort of one-off joke in a strip, but has since been kind of used as a media metric that we use. There's a lot of versions of it. The one we use is this.

Our version of the test requires that there be two characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue and i do feel like stitch is male coded that this includes stitch um yes and it has to be an impactful i mean not that this movie has an issue with the bechdel test we're not going to have to really split hairs fortunately but yeah and it should be an impactful sort of exchange yeah that's what it is do you remember now yes thank you so much for the reminder I really need you're so welcome we say it every single week for seven

years but it's like someday it's really gonna like take for both of us yeah one one of these days I can feel it anyway this is our Lilo and Stitch episode and we have highly demanded highly requested yes and we have a highly requested guest as well. It is true. She is an actress. She's about to graduate with an MFA in Hawaiian theater. So I'm not the only master's degree have her in the room. Okay.

Feeling like shit. I would never mention my master's though. So it's fine. That's true. She's an aspiring educator and teacher you've seen her on tiktok it's lily he ilani okimura aloha my kako thank you for having me welcome thank you so much for being here we're excited to have you i'm excited to be on here i wasn't expecting us to get to the minions so quickly but now it just feels like we're old friends yes indeed um so lily tell us about your

relationship your history with lilo and stitch oh well i've been watching this film since i was in diapers i well because it takes place in kawaii in you know kapai aino hawaii it's a very beloved popular film here amongst um not only like native hawaiians but just like you know local residents here as well um yeah i've been watching this film since i was a kid i loved it and i just kind of really appreciate like you know the representation of my culture and my people even though i'm not from kawaii um i remember like there was a lilo and stitch episode because they had a series on disney channel and nani was on oahu and i saw in the background like um leahi or like diamond head and some other landscapes like that i could recognize and i was like oh my that's my home. And it was just really exciting. That's so cool.

Yeah. And just, you know, seeing the hula and hearing Hawaiian language and, yeah, just all of that. It's a very beloved film here. A lot of people love it. I still see, like, kids singing the songs and, you know, dancing the hula and whatnot. I'm actually a hula dancer myself i've been dancing for that long but my kumu hula my hula teacher knows the um hula teacher that was hired to do the songs in the yeah so kumu markeli ho'omalu um he's a known kumu hula

in hawaii but i think right now his halau is in California so um yeah he mostly teaches there but yeah Michael Mujula knows him and it's a small community so awesome that's I loved I'm excited to talk about that later in the episode of just like how the collaboration happened between him and Alan Silvestri it was so interesting yeah oh that's so amazing Jamie what's your uh history with the movie I was uh I mean I was I think I was in like third grade when this movie came out. And so I was like the target audience. And I remember seeing this movie and going like just going apeshit for this movie. I loved it so much.

It was one of my favorites. It felt like I'm trying to remember I think that like at the time what I liked about it more than I mean I was you know eight I liked all Disney movies but same I was not a shrewd media critic at the time I was like teehee peepee poo poo I just remember connecting really strongly with Lilo as a kid because we were supposed to be about the same age and she was just like a weird kid and it was so cool seeing I mean I feel like a lot of you know like young Disney characters are coded as misfits but with Lilo it's like she's like she's got the goods she's got she's got the receipts a friend she knows a fish who

controls the weather like she just like she's got a doll that she was like oh the head's too big so i've pretended like a bug laid eggs in its ears that's so funny i love i yeah i really loved lilo because i was like i feel like sometimes you're told like even with like earlier disney movies you're like this girl i mean i feel like actually you're told, like, even with like earlier Disney movies, you're like, this girl. I mean, I feel like actually Belle is a good example where they're like, she's so weird. She can read. And you're like, well, you know, maybe historically that was weird, but it's not for a contemporary audience. You're like, well, I don't know.

It just seems kind of like a hot regular person. And it's like, I mean, I loved that movie too but it was like there you know she didn't have the goods to back it up she didn't know anyone who controlled the weather um I know I just I loved Lilo so much I loved this movie and then as I because I re-watched this movie I think maybe like once a year you know as I got older I was like oh Nani is such an incredible character and um yeah I'm really excited to, to talk about it. It was definitely, I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts. It was definitely, I think my first meaningful exposure to Hawaiian culture of, of any kind. And I'm excited to talk about how well it holds up,

I guess. But yeah, I'm a, I'm a fan. fan nice uh Caitlin what's your history with this movie I had only seen this movie once before prior to prepping for this episode I know what it came out in 2002 I was in high school and I thought I was too cool for Disney movies I felt I had aged out of Disney animated movies around probably like 97. Titanic came out and I was like, I'm an adult now. Boobs are in my dad's. I wasn't even born then. Oh, brag.

Good. Well, I was a full grown 12 year old adult in 1997 because I had seen the movie Titanic and it was really a coming of age moment for me and so I saw those later Disney movies from the late 90s and early 2000s but I just didn't gravitate toward them the way I did for like the earlier Disney renaissance movies of like the late 80s and earlier 90s. So yeah, I'd only seen Lilo and Stitch once and I remember liking it. But I just I don't know, I never revisited it. But it's another one of those movies that I wish I had because I was like sleeping on it this whole time. This movie is so funny. It's so heartwarming. It's so endearingaring like it's just it's really lovely and yeah i feel like i i missed

out on two decades worth of of you know watching this movie delight if i was not touring right now i would have my stitch t-shirt on um wow which is a hand-me-down from my younger brother who is also a big lilo and stitch fan and we also watched um we also watched the the animated series on the disney channel what a moment where it's like you could just i mean there was a million there was like a bunch of direct-to-video i remember watching stitch lilo and stitch to stitch has a glitch i don't remember one thing that happens in it but it happened that one was sad oh no even the first one the first one was sad too i forgot how sad these films are there were cry moments for sure um yeah and then there's also lilo sorry leroy

and stitch oh i didn't see that one and then there's something called stitch the movie so stitch gets his own spin-off i guess there's also an anime version yes no kidding with it with no lilo yeah they have it take place in okinawa so instead of it lilo i don't know what her name is but yeah it takes place in um okinawa got it the history oh the history of this movie is fascinating there was a recent um youtube video that came out from a youtuber like i don't know what her real name is but her username is modern girls and i think it was in light of the um all the casting announcements for the live action movie which i would also love to talk about

but she sort of did sort of a history of the lilo and stitch franchise and it um i didn't realize because i think i aged out of it somewhere in the middle but as as you go on they slowly phase out lilo to the point by the time you get to lereroy and Stitch, you're just like, I don't know. She slowly kind of moved out of the franchise, which sucks because she's such a good character. It's like how the minions are taking over and those three orphan girls are like barely. I mean, no offense to the three orphan girls, but it's like they're no Lilo. They're trying to do what Lilo's doing but they're not they're not really doing it anyways well shall we get into the recap and go from there let's do it um actually let's take a quick break and then we'll do that recap we'll be right back

hey everybody this is matt rogers and bowen yang we've got some exciting news for you We'll be right back. comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind.

Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi.

Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.

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where an alien scientist dr jamba is on trial for illegal genetic experiments you can really not remember this is how this movie opens the first 10 minutes of this movie i totally blacked out it's fun but you're like it is what i also as just like there's all these little things in these movies or at this movie in particular where it's like oh whoever wrote this movie clearly grew up during the cold war because the alien is russian coded yeah and oh that was german for a second i get those accents mixed up it's kind of vague but it's yeah some eastern european vaguely eastern european yeah yeah i was like wow even in disney alien land uh we're not over the cold war cool there's also that weird did either of you read about um like the 9-11 shift that happened

because of this movie yes yes that was they had to completely change a scene which also makes sense because like even in the um sorry spoiler but like in the film we though even said like there's no big cities there so why would you animate a big city on kawaii like it would make sense on oahu because we have the big cities here but kawaii is a little bit more like smaller town so i'm glad that they like changed it but also i wasn't aware like yeah i think if you were to animate like an airplane flying through buildings especially after 9-11 recently happened i think it's gonna like kind of shock people in the wrong way poor taste but i feel like i remember watching that when i was a kid at one point maybe i had some like special dvd that showed it i don't know

but oh maybe like deleted scene or like yeah the history of 9-11 i mean well we're not gonna get into the history of 9-11 but like 9-11 movie facts are always fascinating to me because it's like the change in lilo and stitch the fact that during the movie the master of disguise they were shooting the turtle turtle scene on 9-11 and then they took a 10-minute break and then resumed shooting the turtle turtle scene um and and the fact that um cartoons are allowed to hijack commercial planes again because that happens in minions to rise of grew they they don't hit anything it's a safe flight but the minions should not be flying the plane no i'm just i'm laughing at how often we've brought up the minions sorry sorry 20 minutes in okay okay so they're at the galactic federation yes yes yes yes um so this dr jumba has created a new species this little six-legged

blue guy who we will come to know as stitch eventually he is fireproof bulletproof he has super strength and the brain of a supercomputer and his only instinct is to destroy everything it touches also this creature is voiced by chris sanders who co-wrote and co-directed the movie along with dean de blois if you're wondering if those are two white guys yes they sure are as with every disney movie about a non-white culture it is inexplicably directed by two white guys last minions reference i promise um i'll allow it the director of minions also does all of the voices of the minions interesting parallel right all right that's That will be the end of my contributions, minion-wise. Yes, yes.

Okay, so the Grand Councilwoman of the Galactic Federation has Dr. Jumba arrested, and she arranges for the creature to be banished to a desert asteroid far off in outer space. But before this can happen, the creature hijacks a ship, escapes, and crash lands on Earth, specifically Hawaii. The Grand Councilwoman is trying to figure out how to extract the creature from Earth and bring it back to planet Turo. And there are a lot of fun jokes about how humans are weak and fragile and not very smart and how these aliens are using Earth to rebuild the mosquito population. So funny. The Grand Councilwoman sends Dr. Jumba to extract the creature, saying that if he's successful, he can have his freedom back and she also sends along

this guy pleakley uh the resident expert on all things planet earth to accompany dr jumba he's such an icon truly very funny voiced by kevin mcdonald kids in the hall canadian legend yes cut to hawaii where we meet lilo voiced by davy chase a young girl who is late for a dance rehearsal because she was feeding pudge the fish a peanut butter sandwich she has a very active imagination and she's a bit of a misfit among the other girls we then meet lilo's older sister nani who i think is around like 18 19 20 yeah she's supposed to be like late teens early 20s voiced by tia carrera lilo is in a bad mood and has locked nani out of their house right when a social worker named mr bubbles voiced by ving rames doing like a pulp fiction bit question mark yeah like doing his character from pulp he looks more like secret service than a social worker in my head that like had some sort of

meaningful like that came all the way around i guess it does come all the way around, but I'm just like, why? I mean, it's a cartoon for children is the answer. I'm like, why is this man wearing a suit, like a fucking tuxedo to be a social worker? And why does he only, and the least, I mean, it's like, and it's so unrealistic that he as a social worker would only have one case that he's working on social workers are famously overworked but he is seemingly i mean we'll talk about this later but like of how this movie sort of um deals with portraying social work and and the government's attitude towards social work but he's seemingly just like kind of stalking nani waiting for something to go wrong

as opposed to offering any sort of meaningful support um and it's like well clearly you have the time to be helpful but instead you're just sort of maliciously following this 19 year old who is doing everything she can around good use of government funds. Love that. Right. Yeah. So Mr. Bubbles shows up to observe them. Nani is Lilo's guardian after their parents died in a car accident. And she's like Lilo's sole caretaker. Mr. Bubbles is not impressed with Nani's parenting and basically says, you have three days to show me that you're a fit guardian. And then he leaves.

Nani and Lilo argue. Nani is upset with Lilo for misbehaving and making her look bad in front of Mr. Bubbles. Lilo is upset that... No one wants to look bad in front of Ving Rhames. I understand. Lilo is upset that people treat her differently and don't want to be her friend but that night the sisters make up and then something falls out of the sky and lands near their house lilo thinks it's a shooting star so she makes a wish that she will finally make a

friend an angel the best cuts to stitch laughing maniacally right because the thing that fell out of the sky was stitch's spaceship and he's immediately captured and winds up in the pound or like a like a pet adoption place where lilo and nani are there to adopt a dog i because nani connected well because nani overheard lilo really wanting a friend wanting a friend and she's like what better friend i'll get you a dog friend a radioactive dog so stitch makes himself look more like a dog so that lilo will adopt him and lilo loves him and she names him stitch I love that she gives no explanation I'm just like yeah his name is clearly Stitch she was so right to say that I figured it must have been something from maybe like something relating to her parents because

when the like pet adoption lady is like that's not a name nani goes like shut the fuck up like in iceland right so i figured it must have some special significance to lilo based on nani's reaction true also kids just like name random things i've taught kids and i actually did like a little vet school um lesson and they all had like little stuffed dogs and i was like okay pick out whatever names and they came up with the weirdest names ever and of course i'm not gonna be like those are not real names i'm like yeah sure just write it down and they're like how do i spell it i'm like i don't know it's your name you made it up yes Yes. That's the best.

But Stitch is a really good symbolic name of tying the Ohana together. Exactly. Whoa, I didn't even think of that. I was just like, wow, yes, he's so Stitch. Wow. Yeah, that's true. It's so deep. Okay, so Lilo adopts Stitch.

But, oh no, Dr. Jumba and Pleakley have arrived on Earth and are tracking Stitch. They're also trying their best to blend in. It's hilarious. Meanwhile, Lilo and Stitch are hanging out. They're getting to know each other. But Stitch is very badly behaved. He's frustrated that he's stuck on this island. And he keeps trying to find his way back into outer space well because he's using

he's essentially using lilo as a meat shield when they first meet because they can't the aliens can't capture him when he is near lilo because something something mosquitoes but they're i love the early i don't know this movie is just so thoughtful in the way it like shows their relationship building and you see lilo treats stitch though kind of the way that nani treats her and it's just like a lot of good kid stuff yeah and i love i for i didn't remember this from since the last time i watched it maybe two years ago but that scene where she draws a picture of stitch and then it's like very red and she's like your badness level is here we need to work on that it's so high i love that it's so funny oh she's the best um i also like how they set up that lilo and stitch are similar and compatible like there's a reason that that she at least is drawn

to him because he bites whatever captain gone to or I'll bring him up later. But there's this other like alien guy who was responsible for trying to like exile Stitch, but he messes up. But Stitch bites him and then Lilo bites one of her classmates. Myrtle. Yeah. She deserves it. She is bad i liked that they i feel like disney movies now generally and i'm like so dubious about disney reboots i'm like i bet they'll change it for

the reboot but the movie did not bother to um like redeem myrtle by the end of the movie you're like yeah this kid's kind of an asshole and sometimes that's just true well i know why it's because i didn't well i think it's in the stitch as a glitch film it's like we kind of hear i forgot what exactly the occupation her dad works but myrtle and her family are supposed to represent a very like how the family here like you know the how the family that thinks like they can do whatever they want they own the place place. They're very rude. I've had to deal with a few Myrtles in my life growing up and I wanted to scrap them as well. But my parents were like, no, you're going to get in trouble.

But they were lucky. Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan. Fuck Myrtle. Okay. So one day Lilo and Stitch visit Nani at work. She's a server at a luau-style restaurant.

Also, there's a guy named David, voiced by Jason Scott Lee. I love David. I had a crush on David. He's very sweet. He has a crush on Nani. And so does she, because Lilo read her diary, and she said that he had a nice on nani and so does she because lila read her diary and she said that yeah had a nice butt and fancy hair and i love how he does not care about the butt part he was like my hair is fancy it's like he knows he knows that his butt looks fine he just yeah he's

surprised about the hair he stresses about the hair about his hair um so he asks nani out but she's like now's not a good time then nani gets fired because stitch causes a bit of a commotion at the restaurant but only because kevin mcdonald in his mouth yeah it's they're trying to capture him yeah so nani goes to take Stitch back to the kennel. But Lilo is like, dad said that Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind. And Stitch is part of the family now. So we can't abandon him. Yeah, gets left behind or forgotten. So many sequences in this movie were just like, all right, I guess I'm just going to cry for 20 minutes. That's so good.

So then Mr. Bubbles shows up again, knowing that Nani lost her job. He sees Stitch misbehaving. And he's like, the next time I see y'all, you need to have a job and your pet needs to be a model citizen. And then there's a montage where Nani applies to a bunch of jobs

and Lilo teaches Stitch to be like Elvis because she thinks Elvis was a model citizen. But everything goes wrong. Stitch is still misbehaving and Nani still can't find a job. Then David takes them surfing to cheer them up. And it seems like Stitch is starting to learn to be less destructive and better behaved. But while they're surfing, the aliens try to capture Stitch. And Nani thinks that Stitch drags Lilo underwater.

And Mr. Bubbles sees this near drowning. Because he has nothing else to do with his goddamn life. And just so happens to like avoid the aliens yeah he's like it's like open your eyes mr bubbles he's full tuxedo on the beach he stresses me out he's not remotely incognito at any point so because he sees all this catastrophe happening he tells nani that he's going to take lilo away the following morning nani is devastated back home she sings lilo a song to say goodbye aloha oi meanwhile stitch realizes this whole thing was his fault and he feels bad so he leaves in search of a new family but Dr. Jumba finds him in the forest and starts chasing him so Stitch runs back to Lilo and Nani's house meanwhile David

has found Nani a job so she goes to check it out with him and leaves Lilo at home right when Stitch and Dr. Jumba come crashing in and destroy the house. Mr. Bubbles shows up to take Lilo away. But oh no, she and Stitch get captured by that guy, Captain Gontu. They're put into like an evil space tic-tac and they're disappeared. Right, because the Grand Councilwoman sent sent gantu to earth to get the job done because dr jumba and pleakley were so incompetent yeah this movie does sort of assume that we're like interest i guess much like the star wars prequels it's they think that we're interested in like intergalactic politics in a way that i'm like yeah i don't care if captain gantu gets his

job back who the fuck is that i want more nani whatever he's there he is there and he loads lilo and stitch on his spaceship but stitch manages to escape just before gantu blasts off into space with lilo and nani sees this and she goes to jumba and pleakley and tells them to bring lilo back and they're like we can't we're just here for the creature also they call stitch experiment six to six so they're like we're just here for experiment six to six but then stitch convinces them to help and they go on a rescue mission and Stitch saves Lilo by hijacking a fuel truck, driving it into a volcano, which creates a huge explosion that blasts him onto Gontu's ship where Stitch is able to release and rescue lilo look some don't agree with his methods but they but it's he was it is it's very destructive too he was effective yeah so then the grand council woman shows up and is about to take stitch away but she realizes that he's not the monster she thought he was

that he belongs to this family and they all love each other. So she lets him stay on Earth and the movie ends with Lilo, Nani and Stitch all being reunited. And with the help of Jumba, Pleakley, Mr. Bubbles, who are all like in their friend group now, and David. I feel like they really let Jumba off the hook ultimately. Yeah, for sure sure he's there but he looks funny because he's a monster he's nice now or something he and are married yeah and they all rebuild lilo and nani's house together and then we get this like kind of credit sequence where there's a bunch of like photographs of them doing different things, celebrating different holidays, traveling to different places.

Dancing and Mary Monarch, which I'm like, wow. We also just had Mary Monarch recently, like a couple weeks ago. And I'm like, I cannot imagine them allowing an alien on there. But hey, why not? Well, you know know you never know um yeah and so that's how the movie ends with them as if as a happy family so let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss hey everybody this is matt rogers and bowen. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God.

I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?

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Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we're back. Lily, is there anything that you would like to talk about right off the bat? We'll sort of let you lead us and we'll sort of jump in. Yeah.

So obviously I watched this film a lot when I was a kid and I didn't really think about like kind of the deeper messages behind it and the symbolism and all of that. I just thought, oh, Stitch is so funny and oh it takes a place where i live this is so cool um but as i got older and i would re-watch it i really like appreciated seeing kind of the race they clearly did research and um the details that they put in the film of course again this is a film directed by two white men and this was made in like 2002 when we don't really have kind of this awareness of like authenticity and representing you know BIPOC communities and cultures but I would say for its time it did pretty good I mean they I remember um I was sharing these videos on my TikTok a while ago about because like there was like this trend going on tiktok

where people were dancing to the um kalakaua or hemele no lilo song which it is a real um chant but they turned it into like a song in this film so how you would actually chant the oh kalakaua is very different um it's more like kahiko traditional style but anyways um there was like a trend going on where people were like dancing to that song on TikTok, but they were just like doing whatever the hell they wanted to. They weren't dancing to like, you know, actual like lyrics or they were they were just like doing random movements that weren't even hula. Some of them were like Tahitian movements as well. I'm like, that's not what we do. And I was trying to tell people like hula you dance to the

words it's not the movements you know bring the words to life so you can't just like make up whatever movements you want to and call it hula because that's not hula and of course people were saying this is just a movie it's not real and i'm like well it's depicting my culture so it is real and they were like well that's how they danced in the movie and i'm like no they did it and so i pulled up the receipts of um the directors like talking to kumuam markeli umalu and they were like visiting his halau animating how he would play the ipuheke so that like double gourd that yeah they play to like keep the beat and then also like videotaping the hula dancers and they like would draw like

they drew like over like the video or i think they drew it like you know by like looking at it but yeah you know they wanted to like see the actual movements and again if you look at that film and you look at the movements it corresponds to like the words you know kalakaua hei noa his name is kalakaua and then so on and so forth like pua's flowers so you see them doing like this kind of movement where this is supposed to signify flower so i was trying to show people like they did their research like they were trying to depict our culture for a reason it's not random but yeah whatever um yeah i was re-watching it again and just looking at oh they showed this so well and then i was listening

to like i think there was like one part in the film where the hula teacher was speaking hawaiian to the students like the kids and i kind of found like a little kind of a funny translation that they did i think i don't know if there was like hawaiian language experts on the film that kind of doubled and triple checked some of the translations so after um lilo started scrapping myrtle and like you know punching her and he was trying to tell every the kids to calm down and then he tell he tries to tell the kids like stop talking but how he said it was so weird he says which doesn't mean like don't speak it just says like doesn't speak like you would use that for like you know you know like they don't speak if you want to tell someone like

don't speak you can say like my like don't speak or you can say hamao which we mostly say that to children like hamao which means like silence or you can say like which means to calm down so i just thought it was fun i was like this is like a very very literal translation but it's not a command um but the grammar isn't quite there yeah but i was also excited because i'm you know a new hawaiian language speaker no one in my family speaks hawaiian so i'm like the first in my family to learn it especially with my degree we had to learn hawaiian Hawaiian so I was really impressed that I was able to watch this and think wow I can correct them oh Disney but but they did some like you know

the other Hawaiian language was pretty spot on and also appreciated hearing the pigeons speaking so Tia Carrera voicing Nani speaking in a pigeon accent and then um the guys who like ran over stitch and how he ended up in the the animal shelter although i will say that's probably the most forced pigeon i've ever heard but interesting it's okay i think some of them might be but i think that was like a first take or something like well we went here i'm like okay, that's very, very forced, very theatrical. But, but yeah, I loved hearing just like pigeon being spoken in a Disney film, because not so much when I was growing up, but when my parents were growing up, and even like my grandparents, first of all, speaking Hawaiian wasn't allowed. It wasn't until I think like the early 1980s that they started

offering Hawaiian language like in schools and they started they started having like Hawaiian language immersion schools but before then there was a ban so you weren't allowed to teach or speak Hawaiian after the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom and also like if you spoke pidgin which is our creole language so it's like Hawaiian English has some like Japanese Filipino Korean Chinese influences there if you spoke pidgin you were seen as like unintelligent you were seen as illiterate um ridiculous so it was just basically like English only so hearing in like a Disney film like pidgin being spoken and like Hawaiian being spoken even though it was like kind of like little not so much um it was but it was like kind of like little, not so much. It was, but it was like really amazing just hearing that because I don't know,

it's like validating our language and showing that it can be beautiful and that we speak it here. And just because we speak pidgin or speak Hawaiian doesn't mean that we're not smart. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I was also kind of struggling to see because there was a really great oral history of Lilo Institute that came out a couple of years ago. And then there was also a documentary, but it was tragically two hours long.

I did not finish it before we started recording. But I was interested in what the research process was like for the movie i wasn't able to find yeah i also was not able to find specifics on language the most specific information i could find was that tia carrera was really um informative and it was more that like there were not exclusively Davi Chase, it's not her fault, she's a kid, and she was also the girl from The Ring, so good for her. What a wild 2002 for her. She also voiced Chihiro in Spirited Away, which is my favorite in Ghibli film.

Right, yeah. Yeah, in the English dub. But they did not cast a young Hawaiian girl to voice Lilo, which they acknowledge because the oral history was done 20 years later. And they acknowledge it, but they still are sort of like skirting the subject in a way I found a little funky where they were like, well, I agree. There were no child actors in Hawaii. I was like, that's just not true. That's just not true. So you find them.

You find them. Yeah, I think the only I think the only native Hawaiian voice actor in that film is Jason Scott Lee, who voices David. And I'm pretty sure also the voice actor for the hula teacher and some like background characters also. But yeah, Tia Carrera, even though she's born and raised here, she's a local, she speaks pidgin um she is not native hawaiian right technically which is something that we see all the time especially in movies from this era where this movie for example characters who are native hawaiian are for the most part not especially like the main characters like the core group of people who you spend the most time with you get to care for they are for the most part not voiced by native hawaiian actors which is just frustrating for a

number of reasons well and it's like still going on right i mean that's been a and i'm curious on your thoughts on this lily it's like that's a conversation that is going on in a slightly different but not very different way with the live action reboot of this movie where every casting announcement has very understandably sparked another conversation about disney whitewashing and colorism in in their casting well when they casted maya kealoha for lilo of course i was like she's so cute she looks just like liilo and she dances hula she is native Hawaiian and so we were all like really excited for her and you know she's like she's not an actress I say this as an actress myself like anyone can act it's just you know

obviously the more experience you have I think the more confident you are but when it comes to like acting and using your emotions like anyone can do that especially with like children i mean like yeah they have to start somewhere especially like if you're playing a character that you can relate to like culturally wise or whatever then it doesn't feel like acting it's just you you know i would prefer to cast someone who is connected to the character than like an actor right the idea of like an like an eight year looking at an eight year old and being like, she's too green. And you're like, yeah, she's too. She's eight.

What are you talking about? Yeah. Then they released the casting of Nani, which, of course, a lot of us were like, she looks nothing like Nani. But a lot of us thought she was part Native Hawaiian. So we were like at least they casted someone who is native hawaiian um would have been nice if it had someone that looked more like nunny um especially because you know the animators designed her to look like that for a reason um you don't see that kind of like especially in the previous disney films like

a lot of like the brown disney girls you know, had like tiny noses, skinny bodies, very like petite. Very European-centric features still. European-centric, yeah. So Nani is kind of one of the first very indigenous looking characters or they embraced her like curvy features and her indigenous features.

And even though she's not an official Disney princess, a lot of us call her like our first Hawaiian Disney princess she's gorgeous um and helped me a lot with like loving my own features but you know we thought okay would have been nice to have someone who actually looked like her play her but at least she's native Hawaiian and then my friend released those receipts in her TikTok that she isn't Native Hawaiian. And we're like, well, that's an issue. It's like Dougie Kamealoha all over again, just cast a half white, half Asian girl to play a Native Hawaiian character instead of like, I don't know, an actual Native Hawaiian. Because they were able to find Maya Kealoha. So I'm like, why can't you find someone for Nani? You would think. but i know sydney is born and raised in kawaii um and you know she grew up there and i have friends who know her that like went to school

with her and all that it's a very small community here so people know her and i guess like some people thought her family was hawaiian but it would be kind of unfortunate to like know that she lied about being hawaiian to get this role because I also have friends who auditioned for Nani and the casting directors told them specifically they were looking for a Native Hawaiian actress or like a Polynesian Pacific Islander actress so I think it's kind of like there's both parties at fault one the casting directors for not like properly looking at Sydney's background to see if she is native hawaiian but also like sydney going for a role that's for a native hawaiian actress especially again like you look

at doogie kamealoha you look at like other you look at like emma stone and aloha as well where yeah and you look at other films like i know in white lotus like they actually have native hawaiian actors play the men but it just seems like in a lot of films or TV shows, when they have like a Native Hawaiian character who's a female, like they can't find a girl to play her. It's like they want to have like a Asian person with a tan or like, I don't know, just someone who doesn't like isn't Native Hawaiian, which and there's some discussion going on in our community where it's like, well, at least she's from here.

So we should give it that and we should be you know not getting too upset about it but that just still takes opportunities away from actual native hawaiian actors and people yeah and i'm not denying that like sydney can't be culturally hawaiian because she did grow up here i think yes there's like you can be hawaiian like genetically and you can be hawaiian culturally or it can be both like I know a lot of people here who aren't genetically Native Hawaiian but they grew up with Hawaiian culture they speak Hawaiian and all that so I'm not gonna say like you can't be Hawaiian but I think for the sake of just casting this character should have gone to like someone who is Native Hawaiian because again we are very barely represented and my friends who go to auditions and they try to like get roles for them and they never get them there's clearly an issue going on with the um casting um and now on

to david so i actually know both of the actors who were up for david so there was kahio and then now kaipo is playing him i was in in like university classes, like acting classes with them. I did like some acting stuff with them. Yeah, I know at first Kahio was casted for David. And some people also were criticizing that because of colorism. But also his features were not really looking like David's. And then all of, you know, the news of him using the n slur yeah you know back in 2013 but then also um on the spotify playlist which i didn't know those were recent because i don't use spotify

so i'm like i remember when i was looking those up i was trying to look up the playlist and i couldn't find it and i was trying to look up okay what year was this made because for the 2013 one he was like a minor during then which i'm not excusing like minors who say that word are off like horrible but sure you know if he was like saying this now as an adult then i'd be like okay right and i could just speak from like living here like people aren't very aware of a lot of things outside of hawaii it's not really like they don't really care about these things which they should should care. I'm not saying like that's an excuse. But there are people here that don't know a lot about like U.S. history or they don't know about like the very apparent like anti-Black racism.

I mean, it's like taught here, but not to like the biggest extent, especially if you went to public school here. It's awful. I can't go on that tangent. I mean, that's barely taught on the mainland United States as well. Yeah, there is just a lack of awareness here. But nowadays, with, you know, more access to resources and social media and more education, I definitely hear less kids and less people using those kinds of racial slurs or even in general, just saying very insensitive things now, because I remember when I was a kid,

people would say so much insensitive things. And I'm like, don't say that. That's bad. And they're like, Oh, are you like an American or whatever? I'm like, No, you should just care. But But yeah, so they fired him because of those things. And I completely understand that. But my friend Keipel is now playing David and I'm excited for him as well. He's a very good actor. It's kind of funny. I'm like, I read all like the news articles that show him and just seeing a lot of people like thirst after my friend. I'm like, I mean, I don't blame them. He is a very handsome guy. But it's just so funny because they're like, Oh, he's so handsome. He looks so much like David. I'm like, wait till they know how much

of like a goofball he is because david is also a bit of a goof yeah i was like perfect perfect david true but he is he's a major goofball but in all the right ways kaipo if you're hearing this i love you thank you for that insight i mean i i feel like it is, I don't know, like, that's such a good point about just how Native Hawaiian actresses in particular are just like erased and so easily erased, even in 2002 of just like, well, we couldn't find anybody. And I feel like that is almost preying on other people's ignorance where they're like, well, maybe that's true when it's so demonstrably untrue like you yourself are living proof that it is not true yeah and disney has so many resources like they were able to find auli cravalho for moana in 2016 and she didn't do any like films prior to that i think she probably did some theater but she went to come am i at school so of course she knows how to sing, and they're all about, like, the music

and the singing there. But, yeah, they, like, found her, and now she's an established actress, and she's doing other projects, so they have the resources. They just don't want to use it sometimes. Yeah. They just don't want to be bothered. Yeah.

Yeah, just imagine how many talented people there are out there that they can you know it's good for them too business-wise like they can be like we find so many like talented people i'm like just yeah just do it just do that put in the effort um similar to the missteps in casting and like again like tia carrera like she's a great actor you know we're not impugning her talent or anything like that it's just like native characters should be played by native actors similar to that is the conception of this movie and right who it was made by not specific to hawaii at all right they originally wanted to set the movie in Kansas.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't even read that. Yeah. So I'm pulling a lot of this from an oral history of Lilo and Stitch from Vulture. So basically, co-director Chris Sanders had an idea for a story about an alien who lived in the forest among animals. And then a creative director at Disney, Thomas Shoemaker was like, okay, but what if you made it an alien living among people, that's more interesting than an alien living among animals. And also, the forest is just too much green. So we need more color. So Chris Sanders responds to that in this oral history

by saying, quote, I had a map of Hawaii up on my wall. I'd been on vacation there. One day I thought, wait a minute, why couldn't I just set it there? I didn't know anyone at that point who was Hawaiian that I could consult with. So I turned to a roadmap and I just started pulling names. I found Lilo Lane and I found the word Nani on there. And these sounded like names to me. Then I went away to Palm Springs and spent a week holed up in a hotel room, unquote. And then it was there that he, I think, started developing the story and then like created the design of Stitch. He like did sketches and build a model and stuff like created the design of Stitch. He like did sketches and build a model and stuff like that. So basically, he was just like, I've been to Hawaii

on vacation. What if I just pull random names from a map and then I make a movie about it? He got half of that correct. Nani is like a very common name here. I've never met anyone named Lilo. That's a very unique name unique name also i love like reading online where people like say oh lilo means lost or to become lost and she kind of becomes lost well there's another meaning to lilo and it means to like transform or to become something so if i say like that means i became a doctor um so like becoming something so I think that's kind of cool I don't know if they like named her that because of those meanings I think again just I doubt it oh Lilo land yeah Lilo is like a verb so I'm like oh you name your well actually you know in our language like

verbs can be nouns and nouns can be verbs depending on like how you use them but yeah I've never met I know a lot of nunnies but i don't know a lot of lilos i don't think i know anyone named lilo yeah it did seem like a kind of randomly lucky guess yeah the the um the documentary i watched also expanded on the fact that they were looking for up until this decision to set it in hawaii uh was to put it somewhere that there just wasn't a major city. Or like there wasn't a huge commercial airport so that Stitch could sort of not be detected for a while, I guess. But they originally set it in Kansas. But apparently they were like, that's too much like The Wizard of Oz.

Pick another location. And that's how this so it is like, it's so I mean, I'm certainly very happy that they landed on the location that they did. But it was so yeah, just white director randomness, just looking around being like, well, and it's like, those are generally the people making some of the more big, creative decisions in children's media. And like we've talked about a million times on this show, even when, I mean, I guess like this era of Disney is so wildly hit and miss. And it's clear that Disney's priorities are still, based on all of these recent controversies, not in the right place

because they're never the first option is never to hire a native hawaiian director for a project like this which is the clear answer is like a native hawaiian director who is excited about doing this like that is it's the easiest thing in the world and they can they have resources to look for a native hawaiian director like i was actually talking to my husband about this i'm like why don't they um because we have I don't know if you guys have heard of HIF before the Hawaii International Film Festival oh yes yeah I don't know why they can't find directors from there who've like I don't know I think there's an award show for HIF um I sorry I've never watched a lot of it um because always like it's

almost like they definitely could yeah Yeah, they could do that. Or if they wanted to have a more established director that has more experience and all that, that is Pacific Islander. I was even saying, why didn't they get Taika Waititi to direct this? Because he's Pacific Islander. He's Maori. And he is definitely aware of Hawaiian culture and more culturally sensitive. And but I think it would have been nice to have like a Native Hawaiian director or someone who is like Pacific Islander. But spoiler alert, it's directed by a white guy.

Again. And yeah, like director, screenwriter for an animated film. Like, I don't know exactly who all is responsible for like character design, but whoever's like designing characters, like these should be native Hawaiian people. And okay, so Chris Sanders, another quote from him, Dean and I have no business telling a Hawaiian story. You can tell stories like that. But then you find people who do have a business there so we reached out to as many people as we could that lived there and it's like yeah you're right you don't have a business telling a Hawaiian story but you did it anyway why well I guess that's a I I'm interested in your feelings on that Lily because I feel like there's so many like especially because this is like 2002 where there's like Disney is not

hiring native Hawaiian directors to direct any project and so it's like it feels to me as I was researching it it's like the only way that a major Disney movie would take place in Hawaii in this era is if one of these random white guy directors chose that and then tried to allocate research towards it which is absolutely not shouldn't be the praxis or the solution but it feels like for the time that is the most that was being done within the major Hollywood system so I don't even want like I I like obviously the co-directors of this movie. No, they have no business making a Hawaiian movie, but they I don't know. Like, I don't it's such a weird, fraught topic because I do. I was honestly surprised based on other, you know, Disney movies we've covered that they did research at all.

And the bar is on the absolute fucking floor it's beneath the floor the bar's in hell um for this sort of research but i don't know yeah i'm interested in in both your opinions on that because it's i totally agree with what you're saying caitlin and i'm also like i don't know how else a movie like a disney movie would have taken place in hawaii in 2002 yeah i think a lot of it is just it's hollywood it's like a there's a certain network of people so they want people that they know to direct i also think a lot of it is like white savior complex so they think like we don't have the right to tell this hawaiian story but we're gonna try really hard and really like we respect it so much i'm like, if you really respect it,

then you would know that it's not your place and that you don't need to be the center of attention and that you can use your resources to let someone of that culture, of that place tell it. But yeah, I noticed like especially within my studies in Hawaiian theater versus like I grew up with a very western like theater background you know i did a bunch of shakespeare learned tennessee williams all of that and just with my upbringing in western theater it's very much about like i'm the star i want to

be this main character i want the lights on me i want you know i want the attention but then in hawaiian theater it's all about telling the story it's about the characters what is the message you're trying to convey why now why me all that um and a lot of in hawaiian theater we're telling stories about our ancestors or like our our home so it just kind of made me rethink about like why am i an actress why do i perform is it because i want to be the attention? Or is it because I want to help tell meaningful stories to help inspire people? And I think it'd be great if a lot of like, you know, these like Western media companies like Hollywood and Disney focused on that focused on the storytelling and not about ego, fame and the the fortune which they're not the ego but they're

not gonna do that um yeah because a part of that they have to like reflect and think maybe i'm not the best person to tell this story so whoops i'm not gonna get the oscar for this film but i mean it's like you can still be a part of it but just you should have like you You can finance it, sir. Yeah, finance it. Or like, you know, if you want to have like. Because like also I think about in Hawaiian theater, there's not always one director. There's always like multiple directors having like multiple different perspectives. And I don't know why like we need to have like films with just one director in it. I would love to like see more films where they have like it's more of like a collaboration and like a team you don't need to have like yeah the director because again it's about ego it's like i want to win the oscar for best directing not i want me yeah it's like well

what why do you care about an award and not about the movie you're trying to tell telling the best story you can tell right yeah it's like yeah, they absolutely should have advocated for a Native Hawaiian director. And even like you're saying, Lily, even as a co-director, that would have made worlds more sense then. Because I feel like that became the Disney formula that did carry through, if I'm remembering correctly, that carried through to Moana as well. We still have two white co-directors directing an animated movie about Polynesian culture but the sort of safeguard which I'm glad it's there but it can't be the like the only way that native cultures are involved in the portrayal of their own culture is like they're like well we allocated a lot of money and time to research and it's like but but it always has to be inclusion at the top levels or it doesn't sustain like ever yeah

they definitely in moana they definitely did like a lot better um i remember watching like this a lot of document about their creation of it and i do i do appreciate that they actually spent years traveling to i don't know if those months or years but like traveling to the different pacific islands and meeting with the community and learning how to way find or learning how to make tapa making food fishing um performing arts and stuff again two white directors and all that but i actually was really surprised that in their whole team they actually also had like um pacific islanders in there trying to help make decisions although they weren't allowed to make like final decisions and i think there were some parts where they were trying to like push really hard to have these certain things but disney of

course is like no but um whatever and then um for the music i love how they had te vaca in there and of course lin-manuel miranda, which I'm like, okay, that's random because he's not Pacifica at all, but I mean, he makes good music, so why not? It would have been nice in like We Know the Wave, I didn't have to hear his voice. I would have loved to hear

Opetaya's voice in actual Pacifica in there, but that's why I listened to the Hawaiian dub or like the Maori or Indonesian dub of the films because I'm like this sounds nicer you're actually hearing the music in there but yeah I remember that like Moana kind of especially with the casting of like all Pacific Islanders with the exception of like um what's his name um who plays Hei hey it's like that tudyk guy i forgot oh um alan tudyk alan tudyk yeah he's great he's great but that set the standard like moana really set the standard of like okay

when you're gonna make these films that have cultural like depictions you should cast people accordingly so they did that with like coco they did that with like encanto they did not do that with like ryan the last dragon um famously yeah but yeah like you said it's kind of hit or miss it's like you think they're doing really well but then they like flop and then they do really well and then they like flop again i'm like they just need to find the correct formula and just go with it like stop trying to i don't know but and then i was really looking forward to like the live action because i thought oh well i mean this could have been a great opportunity to correct some of the mistakes in the animated film and to cast native hawaiian more native hawaiian actors and

actresses in here but then of course all the casting controversies and then who's directing it and all that i'm like okay no this is this is not it i'm just gonna keep watching the animated film well and it yeah it is frustrating to think that the 2002 version may very well be done more thoughtfully than a 2024 version and but it it goes back to like if there was inclusion, I feel like Disney would not be so consistently flopping on these issues all the fucking time if there was inclusion at the highest levels. But because it's still a bunch of largely mostly white men, but also white women in these positions that they're never going to stop flopping and it's like it's it it drives me absolutely up a wall and it's like you're literally doing worse at the business you want to be in charge of because you're so fucking like eurocentric weirdos yeah they should have done it like turning red for example like having a chinese actress and she has done i think that short. Yes. It's with a dumpling. Oh, my God. That was so cute.

But, like, you know, taking someone who is, like, a smaller director and then giving her an opportunity and really depicting the culture, having someone of that culture, also with the same lived experiences, being an immigrant in Canada, Canada, to tell the story and and it shows in the mood like when you watch the movies yeah yeah still one of the biggest crimes of 2022 that turning red didn't get like a huge theater release yeah them putting that right on disney plus i was like i will never forgive ever come on i loved it i watched it so many times, though. I'm like, it was so good. And of course, people hated it because it was about teenage girls and anything about girls is poopy and all that. A movie about periods?

It's not what the movie's about even. It's a metaphor. It was like two minutes talking about pyramids. Pyramids, periods. Sorry, we in Sun Pigeon, we call periods like pyramids i hear my mom call it a lot oh that's fun you get your pyramid that i i was um babysitting a kid during my friend's wedding last year who loved turning

red and i was like hey maya i was alive in 2002. And she was like, oh, disgusting. I was like, all right, cool. Never mind. I will see myself out. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it does take place in 2002. The same year that Lilo and Stitch, I think also takes place as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's all connected. Lily, since you brought up the music in moana i was curious on your thoughts on the music in lilo and stitch because there's also some interesting kind of like behind the scenes things happening there where so alan sylvester was hired to be the composer for this movie you'll never believe it another Another white guy who I'm actually a big fan of. What is he famous for?

For me, I would say he's most famous for the Back to the Future score, but he's got a pretty prolific career. He works with Robert Zemeckis a lot. Got it. But, you know, probably not the right person to compose a film with a lot of Native Hawaiian music in it. No.

Obviously. And it seems like the directors were trying to do some research and people were trying. But when you read this oral history, you come upon a lot of comments from the composer and the directors who were like, oh, I went to a Virgin Megastore looking for music, specifically Hawaiian music. And you could find like two CDs of Hawaiian music. Oh, see, I felt like that quote, I mean, not to excuse any of their behavior or hiring a white guy, but I feel like that was intended to illustrate the fact that Hawaiian music was extremely underrepresented in the mainland U.S. at that time. It was like he was trying to do research and like literally could not because it was so underrepresented. Which is probably why they should have just went to Hawaii and find native Hawaiian musicians.

Right. Which they did. Yeah. I mean, they did for like the Kamehameha Children's Choir. I really liked that they were in there because, again, Kamehameha schools are all about the music and the singing. They always have like a song contest like every year, which if no one knows that i highly recommend it these kids are so talented and you know singing hawaiian music dancing hula just honoring the culture but yeah i find that definitely i mean i liked the music i like the music it's very catchy it's definitely

very elvis presley which i know a lot of people kind of associate Elvis Presley with Hawaii for some reason because of that movie or something, Blue Hawaii and all that. I honestly didn't know that because I hadn't seen, I mean, I haven't seen, I don't know if I've seen any Elvis movies, but I was, because that always felt very random to me. But then when I was researching for this episode, I was like, I don't, I mean, I don't, maybe? Did that feel like a choice that made sense to you? It's a very, it's a very boomer way of thinking of like music because I'm like, not a lot of, I mean, again, Elvis is a very talented guy. We grew up listening to his music. It's very catchy, but you know, he's also racist and, you know, has a very problematic history.

So I would not really associate with them with hawaiian culture i'm surprised they didn't like put israel kamako vivo ole on there brought it is he's the one that sang like somewhere over the rainbow yeah and all that he was the the big guy beautiful singer um my father-in-law actually went to school with him, which is really funny. I'm like, small community here. He was always playing the ukulele, always singing. So rest in peace, Brada is. But we have musicians here. I don't know why they didn't, like, put, like, our music on there. Especially, like, when you come to Hawaii and when you go to, like, Waikiki and other touristy areas.

It's, like, you get some get some of like the Elvis Presley or like Hapa Haule like music um but you also get a lot of Hawaiian musicians in there and I noticed that the tourists really like listening more to like the Hawaiian music um and it would have been a great opportunity to represent Hawaiian musicians and Hawaiian music but I think the only extent was again the Kamehameha school choir I watched behind the scenes of them like singing in the studio and it was really cute I'd mentioned earlier the beginning

song with He Mele No Lilo that's an actual song or a chant in honor of King Kala Kaua but Kumu Markeli Uhomalu like changed the tune and all that and then the music to make it more like i think palatable in big quotes palatable for like an american audience because they don't want to hear like

chanting or whatever but that would have been cool to hear that would have been so cool yeah well the rest of that quote was that so this is um chris sanders talking where he's like, we went to a music store and tried to find Hawaiian CDs. And then he goes on to say, we found out that like that there were so few because the parameters are very clear as to what you can and can't do with this music. We wanted to orchestrate this music. We wanted to take these Hawaiian themes and make them movie scale. And that's a bit of a no-no. And then Alan Silvestri says, we wanted to bring in this more traditional Hawaiian influence to some of the songs.

And we discovered there is a very deep sacred aspect to real traditional Hawaiian music. It's a very cared for tradition from Hawaii. And it's like, so if these are things that you discover after you've decided to set the movie in a certain place and depict a certain culture like that means you're out of your element yeah there's nothing there's nothing wrong with like knowing that you don't know everything and that it's okay to allocate like certain duties or like have other people like help um with it because guarantee there would have been like a lot of kumuhula here or like you know hawaiian music practitioners and women like yeah we'll tell you what songs you can use what you

can't use and all that because they've worked on films before they've worked in tvs like they they know what is like kapu forbidden or noah more free and it's all the more frustrating to to know that that is still actively happening. I don't know much about what the situation is with music composition for the live action, but it's like the problems are still the same. Yeah. And it's really frustrating. And especially to hear in the 20 years later oral history that it's like yeah we i just wish

that it's like i don't know there's like a defensive nature to the way that they're talking and it could it could have just like the sentence can just end it we didn't really have a right to tell this story and maybe even an expression of have you reflected on that how would you do it differently now like that can be instructive but they just sort of were like, it felt more defensive than reflective, which is always sort of like a frustrating thing to come up against. Right. Can we talk about the characters? Yeah. I love them.

Lilo and Nani. I mean, just from a representation standpoint, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, of course, Lily. But I think there's like interesting things happening in this movie where, you know, you have indigenous characters living in the modern world and dealing with everyday issues, which shouldn't be that rare of a thing, but so many movies about Native people are set in the past. And of course, those stories are important too. But I think that contributes to a tendency that I think a lot of non-Native people

have where they just don't really know anything about the lives and experiences of native people or even worse that they are not even really sure that native people exist like in the U.S. especially. Oh yeah they talk about us like we're part of the past and what's even worse is when I hear a lot of non-native Hawaiian people say like, well, you guys are mixed. So you guys are not pure native Hawaiian. So you guys don't count. And I'm like, that's a very colonizer mindset because native Hawaiians never cared about blood quantum or even like phenotypes about what you look like. It's about genealogy and how connected you are with the culture.

Even our alii, our like royal members, didn't care about blood quantum. The next queen of Hawaii would have been Princess Ka'iulani, who is half Hawaiian and half Scottish. And they're not like, you can't be the queen because you're only half. And then we had Prince Kuhio, who created the Hawaiian Homesteads Act, where he wanted to give land to Native Hawaiians. And at first he didn't set a blood quantum because he didn't want to it's just it passes down in your family but of

course the U.S. government was like you need to put a blood quantum so he thought of like the lowest one possible he was like okay uh one and a 32nd then and they said that's too low so they basically forced him to go half Hawaiian so like even then i wouldn't be i'm not qualified to apply for homestead land because i not enough but again like we don't care about blood quantum it's it's a colonizer mindset so i've had conversations with non-hawaiian people who say like well you guys are only mixed so you guys aren't even considered native Hawaiian I'm like ridiculous you don't know our lives and how we connect with our culture culture is more deeper than that if we just start telling people that they can't learn their language or their culture because they don't look a certain way or because their percentage is too low, then you would see a bunch of cultures going extinct

today because people are, people are going to mix, people are going to be mixed in the future, whether people like it or not, but culture gets passed down. It's almost like blaming people for being colonized. Like, it's like, yeah, like my aunt, I didn't choose first of all I mean I didn't choose to be mixed but also I love that I can come from different cultures and that they're all part of me I'm not only this much Hawaiian or I'm not only this much Korean or this much Filipino I am Hawaiian and Korean and Filipino and this and that and whatnot. And that's, that's how we think here. And I mean, I'm married to a Japanese man, and our kids are probably going to be like, more Japanese, but like how I raised them is still going to be Hawaiian. They're still going to live

here. They're still going to be of me. So yeah, it's, it's ridiculous. So yeah, like there should be no punitive aspect to who you are like that's just yeah yeah it's like i'm sorry it's my right arm hawaiian then and i think like my pinky toe is irish or something like it's yeah if you think about it that way it's silly it's like so it's all of you your ancestors live through you fully and you are the representation of your ancestors. So don't say that you're only this much or only this much. You are that much and you're still that. You're still you.

Yeah. Other than that, yeah, representation. I think they're beautifully animated. I love how they look and you know i feel like they really much represent real people who live here i remember one time i was watching lilo and stitch with like my friends in high school and um there was a scene where like when nani is trying to find lilo and then she almost gets run over by cobra bubbles and she was like watch where you go you stupid and then like kicks the car and my friends kind of looked at me they were like you are so like that I'm like what me I don't have anger issues I kind of do um but but I love that it's like how you know yeah we're

very it's kind of a running joke here but like how hawaiian women or like polynesian women are very scary and like hot-headed but like not in like a negative way like but like as in they're powerful don't mess with them sort of way and i am proud to reclaim that my husband knows don't mess with me people know don't mess with me i love and and with nani's character i mean it's so i i i really love how she's written and how she's performed in spite of everything we've talked about so far because it's like she is it's so weird because in moments like there's some moments where you're like oh yeah she's 19 and i feel like that comes through in certain moments where she's doing everything she can to protect Leo Lilo she has to I said Leo oh my god wow not Leroy no not Leroy and Stitch

inferior um but Nani's character I mean Lilo and Nani it's kind of, it's, I don't want to have it be a contest because they're both so wonderful in such different ways. But like Nani, I feel like is one of the more complex Disney characters that we encounter, period. Because we're like watching her navigate, not only her, and I feel like this didn't resonate for me when I was a kid because I was so like, it's the Lilo show, baby. Because you see Lilo actively mourning her parents, who it seems has died fairly recently. Yeah.

And that also ties into why she's not fitting in at school at this time because Nani says they don't know what to say. Like, they don't know how to communicate with her. yeah kids can be mean oh my god like they can be mean myrtle alert with myrtle myrtle and her little mean girl minions sorry i brought up minions again but but i mean but nani is also having to deal with this loss but she can't even really she doesn't have time to grapple with that grief because she has to navigate this abrupt switch from sibling to parent and i feel like it's just done so well where their sibling moments are so sibling and then you see like nani almost have to like remind herself of like oh no i have to be a parent now and she's so nurturing like she is so loving and just the sacrifices she has to make

like when i was re-watching it with my husband i pointed out like she has like surfing trophies in the back she was like a professional surfer and she had to give all of that up so she can take care of her sister and it's just yeah just imagine being like a 19 year old you know just kind of living your life like you have a six-year-old sister whatever your parents are taking care of her um but you know you're like at that age where you're more independent and you do things and then all of a sudden now you have to like drop everything and take care of your kid sister because there's no other adult that can take care of them. Which is kind of sad to think about, like, they don't have, like, aunties or uncles that can, like, help or grandparents or anything. Kind of showing, like, how small their family is.

But, yeah, and, like, her just kind of being the only one who understands lilo as well like how we mentioned earlier with like her wanting to name stitch stitch and then when the lady tried to tell her that's not a real name nunny like you know she protects her also like when nunny gets fired from the luo and um lilo was like concerned that it was her fault but then nunny was like oh no the manager is part of the evil vampires and wanted me to join their legion i'm like she does so much for lilo and protects her and which also shows that they're like it's so clear that they're sisters because they both have these like weird little like they're they're goofy they're silly they like they're very creative they have like

a very active imaginations and i was like i knew it i love you oh such a good joke it's like yeah it reminds me of like my relationship with my sisters too like we'll be fighting and we'll be hating each other's guts but then when one of us is in trouble we drop everything to be there for each other so really depicting that you know sister relationship um it's very well and yeah yeah and just also shedding light on a lot of issues that we face in our community with you know over tourism environmental damages um separating indigenous children from their homes the foster care system the whole like again like cobra bubbles approaching as like an american government official um yeah yeah a lot of weird pros it's um i i guess that that's something that

hit weird for me is that cobra bubbles uh i mean i guess it feels very 2002 also but like how Cobra Bubbles and and I guess the Russian scientist alien they get to be a part of the family at the end and I'm like I feel like they haven't really earned it I don't know I don't know if I would want them around but I mean especially Cobra Bubbles who is like this representation not just of the cia it turns out one of the most easily hated organizations on the planet but also the fact that he represents the foster care system and is still treated pretty like more than neutrally like under sympathetically in the end even though he was about to like take her away separate an indigenous family permanently and you i mean not that this is like an accurate way that a social worker would spend their day but the fact that he clearly had time and resources to help them and instead use

the same time and resources to separate them which i know is um something that happens but if you're going to like portray that i feel like it should be with the appropriate amount of criticism but instead they're like and then he just sort of kept coming over and hanging out and you're like i don't know yeah i mean he's i love ving rames but it just was weird. Right. It seemed like he was framed as a villain, not the villain necessarily, but like as an antagonistic force throughout the movie. But he gets that redemption at the end out of nowhere for no reason, which I didn't understand why. Yeah. Like, it would have been nice if he could have acknowledged something like wow none of this was your fault it was literally aliens just coming in and like making it more difficult for you which

i think it's a pretty i was talking about this with my husband a very interesting like um kind of symbolism of just like indigenous issues where we often get blamed for our problems like for poverty homelessness unemployment and all that but not knowing just kind of the deeper issues in society which is like capitalism which is white supremacy you know settler colonialism and when you look at hawaii over half of the homeless population is native hawaiians um and we would often get blamed for it it's like oh well they're just lazy or they just don't try hard enough or they want to spend all their money on drugs or whatever it's like

well no it's because you forced an American style of government an American way of living on an indigenous nation that has been living fine for years prior but yeah but it would have been interesting for i don't know gone to and cobra to be like hey we're sorry for one messing things up but two also jumping to conclusions for things that were entirely out of your reach not your fault um yeah love stitch but it was kind of his fault but yeah he apologized he did yeah yeah but yeah i just think it was interesting how how much is brought up because there are like issues that i've never seen in disney movies or really much kids media in general brought up in this movie and so it's like because it's happening i guess i mean you would want a stronger commentary on it. And I feel like it would completely fit within the formula of what these movies are.

And it would fit within the story and it would sort of serve, I think, everyone better. But I don't know. And I think the movie strikes a nice balance of characters dealing with adversity, dealing with the effects of systemic issues that again, are not at all their fault, particularly related to class and colonialism, but also seeing the main characters experience joy and love and happiness. And just like that, that nice balance of like acknowledging, you know, injustices and systemic issues that BIPOC people often deal with,

but not like skewing so far into that where it becomes like tragedy porn, which a lot of movies go into that territory when it comes to stories about marginalized people so yeah and i and i love the moments where they have joy is always tied back to hawaiian culture like with hula and surfing and singing hawaiian music um yeah just those things that really ground us and connect us as people to our ancestors and just kind of remind us like who we are and where we are and what our purpose is um yeah like when lilo was scared that she might not dance hula after she um punched myrtle like she was like so remorseful like hula is especially knowing that her mom was a hula dancer as well so that's how she connects

to her mother is through hula dancing um yeah in hawaiian culture it's like very matriarchal a lot of the culture is passed down from the mother's side um yeah yeah yeah i i guess going back to the um the sister relationship i mean i don't know i i also think it's like a very it's very rare to see uh sister relationships focused on in kids media especially kids media of this time we joke on the show all the time that ultimately every movie is somehow about fathers and sons it's still basically true i hear that that's what the new mario movie is about somehow which i was like oh my god oh i haven't somehow. Which I was like, oh my god. Oh, I haven't seen it.

But someone was like, it's about fathers and sons. I was like, oh, I guess of course it is. It should just be about plumbers and plumbers. But anyways. But this movie, I think, meaningfully diverts from that. Again, not the original plan of the movie. The original plan of this movie was Stitch and a little boy in Kansas. But early, I think before the setting of the movie was switched, the gender of the child was switched, which again was unusual because I feel like we get with, unless there's examples I'm not thinking of off the top of my head.

You see like teenage girls often and they're almost always white um and if they're not white they're usually heavily sexualized in in the Disney princess kind of space but you don't see just like kids um who are girls very often and I love that Lilo is such she's just like the most kid to ever kid she's such a goofball and she's like so um I don't know she's like such a in some moments she's such an open wound but she's just like so emotionally like I just I just love her so much and I like that they they just feel very authentic to like how old they are and how they relate with each other and their sisterhood drives the story and i feel like that's really rare and beautiful people try to say that frozen was the first film

that depicted like sister relationships i'm like no it's lilo and stitch yeah go back 13 years obviously very biased but like frozen is not doing what lilo and stitch is doing or what lilo and nani are doing rather like it's just not that it's a contest but it is that is true but lilo and stitch the movie did win yes uh i wanted to talk character design in particular there's one scene where it's the scene where lilo comes in after having fed pudge the fish a peanut butter sandwich and so she comes into the rehearsal and there are the four other small girls that she's trying to be friends with and then there are five like teenage or young adult native Hawaiian women who are all seemingly the same exact character design yeah with slightly different skin tone and hair color slash length but I was like

that was pretty lazy right that's there's no body diversity in um in that group of women at all definitely not and i found that to be i was noticing little things like that throughout the movie where oftentimes unless there was an elderly native woman a lot of the native hawaiian characters who are like you know that kind of like 20-ish years old all seem to have almost the same exact it's like they designed nani and then they just sort of like copy paste that copy paste it control v yeah i also want to make a comment on the hula attire that the kaika mahine like the little girls wear i will just say no way would they be able to wear like a small tube top that shows their midriff um that is not i would say like what the older women wear was a little bit more accurate because like it's like covering their midriff but

especially because when you're doing like kahiko traditional style like you don't show um your stomach um but yeah i just thought like okay what girls, little girls are wearing is very kind of a white person's perspective, like touristy, like postcard with the hula girl on there. I'm like, that's not what we wear. Like the tea leaves, the tea leaves skirts were good. And like also like their, their leipo, the headle and like their kind of the bracelets and the anklets. But yeah, the red tube top. I know it's an iconic look for her character but i'm like never seen a child wear something like that probably for the

best yeah yeah but i do agree um but i also kind of noticed like in general like nowadays like i think when disney makes like a lot of different characters they do better at like kind of diversifying the faces but i've just noticed like in older disney films like they would kind of use like the same face model for a lot of things like the um the blue fairy in pinocchio has like the same face as um snow white so yes they actually they like recycled a lot of animation just because it like i mean i get why like animation especially when it was like hand-drawn which this movie is i think that this is like the last major disney movie to be almost completely 2d yeah i'm an animation dork so i'm like and the backgrounds were watercolor watercolor that never happens and it's so beautiful yeah princess and the frog was a few years later and yeah i

think that was like the last one in that kind of traditional. The 2D. And then Tangled came after with the 3D. But yeah, it would have been nice to like see. Because when you go to like a hula, when you go to like a hula school, like there are many different kinds of dancers there. Not all of them are native Hawaiian as well, because anyone can dance hula as long as you just learn it properly. But yeah, you get plenty kind of dancers there not all of them are native hawaiian as well because anyone can dance hula as long as you just learn it properly um but yeah you get plenty kind of dancers there and if you watch

like mary monarch as well you see the performers not all of them look the same like you have very different um looking dancers but even just for native hawaiians in general we come in different shades and appearances um and different facial features especially because, like I said, a lot of us are mixed. So some of us will look more Asian. Some of us will look a little bit more like white. Some of us will look more Hawaiian, whatever. That's kind of the beauty of it being here is just how unique and diverse it is. But yeah, they really said copy paste on the face.

It's like egregious. And I'm yeah i i can't i know what you're saying it's like yeah they do that on like a lot of animated movies where it's like i think this movie was fairly low budget um for how compared to yeah it is and they made it entirely in florida which can't have been fun florida oh boy yeah they they didn't even like they outsourced that i saw like a lot of internal this was like the part of uh the oral history that like isn't super relevant to our show but i was like interested in it where they're like yeah we think the only reason this movie is good is because we didn't have to make it in california so kind of no one was paying attention and like we were sort of left to our own we were like marooned in Orlando which sounds miserable but I guess it I guess it sort of worked out again you're like why were we not in Hawaii but

they were in fact in Orlando yeah whoops but yeah. Just going back to the character design a little bit. I do appreciate that Nani and Lilo and particularly Nani because she has, you know, she's an adult that she's not designed like so many of the other Disney female characters of the past. We touched on this a little bit already. But, you know know you have so many Disney princesses like Jasmine and Ariel and you know so many others who were just like designed to be unrealistically thin oh yeah like their waist is the same size as their neck their neck it yeah um and like you mentioned Jamie like so often hyper sexualized so So Nani was not designed that way. And that was like a deliberate effort on the part of,

I guess, to give the direct, the co-director, Chris Sanders, a little bit of credit. Yeah. This is a quote from Pam Coates, who was,

who's the senior vice president of creative development at Disney. She says, quote, I remember Chris Sanders when he was drawing Nani, senior vice president of creative development at disney she says quote i remember chris sanders when he was drawing nani he asked our production supervisor to pose for him can you pose because i want to draw your legs on nani which also is maybe a weird request but i don't but anyway um she said chris just went there as opposed to having too weird for animation but it depends on who's doing it yeah yeah and yeah it depends on i guess the tone that you're asking with yeah i've worked in animation and

sometimes you're like no not for you but then sometimes you're like yeah sure yeah yeah so she goes on to say chris just went there as opposed to having to have conversations about hey can you make a woman look like real women so it seems like chris sanders just instinctively was just like i'm gonna like design a character who looks like a human and not like a barbie doll kind of thing yeah and i love like her i love her big calves because that is a very common trait among pacific islander women as well we're not skinny um and a lot of my um native hawaiian friends and just pacific islander friends in general we talk about like how when we saw nunny we like we're like oh my gosh she's so beautiful she looks like us like we actually felt beautiful because you know growing up we we were

insecure about how we looked especially me I went to like a predominantly like white school especially like um East Asian school as well and all the girls there were tiny and skinny and short and I was like this tall curvier brown Hawaiian girl and I always felt like I was ugly and why couldn't I look like them so just having that representation which they also did the same with Moana as well I really appreciate how they animated her to be actually proportioned and not have like a tiny neck and tiny waist and like I don't know wrists that look like they can like snap off any moment um yeah and just depicting like how they look like and it makes sense because nani is a surfer you know she's not she's gonna be strong

you know if you've seen the women surfers here in hawaii like they're they're strong you know they're muscular yeah yeah it's like and the bar is still on the floor for for stuff like that but i really like it it does it makes a huge difference and um i'm very glad that they just drew it's so wild to still to be like and they drew people to look like people but it's still just barely done um it's like when a movie feels like a movie yes and that and then also the way that nani is uh dressed i felt was more intentional than other uh than other women in disney movies where we do i mean we see her i think the most like the quote unquote the skip like the the most sort of like revealing outfit she's in is when she's working at the resort which makes sense yeah red does that resort that caters to mostly white yeah vacation they're very

sexualized they're even like the dancers again like i said like they were wearing like the tiny little coconut bras or tiny little sarongs for their outfits which i'm like first of all coconut bras are not from Hawaii that is not Hawaiian but they still put them in that anyways um but yeah I really liked how she's dressed you know in like shorts and a t-shirt and like boots like she's active and knowing how hot it gets here it's like yeah I don't expect her to wear like long sleeve you know anything because no one does I mean I'm wearing it now but it's cold in my house um but like yeah i'm wearing shorts though but yeah it's very common but

yeah like you said like with the exception of the um the luau uniform like everything else she wears is like pretty it's it's nice seeing that you're not like focused on her midriff or like her i don't know clavicles or something like the other characters like princess jasmine you have to remember she's like supposed to be 15 in that film which though yeah we still have not gotten justice for princess jasmine and and that but also the fact that she is like she dresses in a way that um is like logical and makes sense and that her body not constantly being fixated on doesn't preclude her from a romantic storyline because I feel like that's another thing that if there is a in in really and in live action or animation if uh like usually a woman's

body is not if the sexiness of a woman's body is not had like your eye isn't constantly drawn to it that's not a character that's going to have a romantic interest or a romantic plot line but nani i i like i i think that again it's like we and we can talk about the relationship as well we should but like the i i appreciated that where it's like she is quote unquote a normal girl and that like she dresses in a way that makes sense. She has a job. She has a lot of shit going on in her life. And I mean, I think that there were maybe more interesting lines to fill out Nani's story outside of just kind of going straight to love interest. Like you're saying, lily she has her

surfing career she is also actively warning her parents i think it would have made a lot of sense to give nani a friend and someone to talk to and confide in but david also sort of fills that role it seems like um i don't know let's talk about that relationship because i'm like biased because i love david but you know let's talk about yeah i appreciated how that unfolds for the most part where he is like first and foremost a friend and yes he does have a crush on nani but but they talk on the phone at night it's cute yeah they like he's supportive he seems to respect her boundaries when he says like hey what are you doing later and she's like now's not a good time i have a lot on my plate and he doesn't try to push it it doesn't seem like he holds it against her that

she can't date him right now if anything he tries to help her like he's you know he finds a job for her and he like you know helps her with taking care of lilo as well because that's you know like her priority is taking care of her sister and it takes a village to raise a kid so i think him just also like acting like kind of like another adult and guardian figure in her life is really helping Nani and yeah and he's doing this because he genuinely like cares cares for her yeah he does make that little it seems to be a joke where after he's found her a job he says something like you can just date me and we'll call it even and it's not the best joke and if someone said that to me I would probably feel uncomfortable if especially if I didn't want to date them but he's never like predatory which is like wow the bar is so low for um men's behavior but

it's a good thing she likes his butt and fancy hair and he does know that so it felt more teasy but still you're yeah not not the best line but in general i loved their relationship and i liked that he i mean i'm always pro like let's give her like a female friend let's give her a best friend to like bounce shit off of especially because it's like not only are you going through a lot you're also 19 and that's such a critical friend time but but anyway i mean i i like that david like you're saying caitlin like he is a really good friend to her and then it's like we're seeing it turn into something more and then they go on a million vacations at the end of the movie and you're like woo that's so nice

here's my i think you could if if you wanted to read it that because it didn't even occur to me that they got together on my first viewing because you maybe i was like biased i was like woohoo i love that they're together now you only really see it in the like still images there maybe i'd like stop the movie too soon and like as soon as the credits started i think in the other films in the series they kind of establish their relationship more okay right that makes sense yeah because I was like oh I guess they do get together because at first I had written in my notes like oh you know he's like kind of presented as this possible love interest but it never culminates which is like you know something that I appreciate seeing as far as uh because i mean in most things where

that's set up it's definitely gonna culminate in like a hetero love story um you need to have the kiss at the end as the carriage rolls away exactly which doesn't happen in this movie and again the only indication that they got together but also maybe they just go on a bunch of friendly vacations i don't know it's not the most clear but but um they're making out on vacation and you know it fine lilo get out of the room yeah i appreciate yeah and lilo's like i read the diary i know um at the very least i appreciated that their relationship whether it be platonic or romantic or some combination of the two that it doesn't like overpower the story the way that like a lot of hetero love interest

narratives will like especially for disney movies like that's the core focus of the story yeah yeah i i mean and that's because we've been we've been betrayed by so many movies in the past that are about one thing for most of the movie and then in the last 20 minutes all of a sudden is about a relationship that you barely care about and this what is the little mermaid yes and it's like in this one at least the movie knows it's about lilo and nani and lilo and stitch and it stays there which yeah i was perfectly happy with and i love lilo and stitch i love stitch i love how we talked about this a little earlier but how stitch it's so like i it's just so i didn't recognize this when i was a kid i was just like he he blue dog funny but um but how by knowing stitch lilo is able to like see herself in a different

way and like she's able to interact with stitch the way nani interacts with her and she's frustrated with stitch in the same way that nani's frustrated with her but can come to him with a lot of empathy is this how i act like right and and that she always i don't know i'm just like best kid ever where even when stitch is like tearing apart that weird like i did a picasso joke where she's like that's from my blue period and i'm like what is this joke that's funny i love that when she immediately puts the lei on stitch he like calms down and just kind of i'm like that is such a cool cultural tidbit to put in there like lays do have like that calming factor on them and you give lay to people for like a reason it's like typically when you make it or you like buy it that's been handmade and you give it

to someone that you care about and you want to give them that aloha so i kind of liked that it's like typically when you make it or you like buy it that's been handmade and you give it to someone that you care about and you want to give them that aloha so i kind of liked that it's like this rampaging like alien that's destroying everything he puts on a fresh flower lei and then he's just so calm i'm like dang the power of the lei my kumu was right they're so like they're so good together. And I love, we were referencing this earlier, but so much of how Stitch learns to appreciate Lilo is through her sharing her culture with him. I just love their relationship.

It's very sweet. And that he does, unlike most characters uh throughout movies and also history um he does apologize when he realizes that he has um messed with the family and wants to make it right i like that he and nani even get a moment together it's very sweet okay she like whacks i love i know you can't talk and then he says one word and then she freaks out it's so great she was like we had a weird relationship i still don't know how to feel about you but you rescued my sister so i guess we're okay just just don't but it's kind of cute because i remember

also in the um kind of the ending sequence of the movie when you know they're adjusting to their new life in the new house which by the way that new house is beautiful is definitely worth like two million dollars in our standards i'm like how did how does she afford that hopefully the aliens help pay for it but um right the property taxes alone yeah he's like doing the laundry and then he puts on i think like a bikini top and just starts like going around as a superman and she's looking down at him like what are you doing i'm like she's like i have another damn child i have to take care of it's great lilo and stitch are the best best friends one best friends in all of movies. One of my favorite jokes in the movie is when Nani is saying, oh, that thing's creepy. I won't be able to sleep knowing it's loose in the house.

And then Lilo says, you're loose in the house all the time and I sleep just fine. That's great. Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about? This is a very goofy observation, but I was thinking about movies that, because there are not a lot of movies that feature adoption or the foster care system, and this is the worst comparison of all time, but because we just covered it on the show,

there are parallels between Lilo and Stitch and Megan. It's just true. It's just true it's just true um but stitch is fortunately um he he's rehabilitated he doesn't go full megan i'm pretty sure he doesn't kill anyone is megan that movie about that robot girl that like the robot dance thing and she is yes yes the tiktok robot girl stitch and megan have basically the exact opposite arc where like yeah megan starts off like creepy but not super threatening but then she gets scarier and scarier and more murdery as she goes whereas stitch starts out very destructive and then becomes less and

less so by the end yes uh i could talk about lulu and stitch's friendship and how beautiful it is forever i love the scene where stitch shows i don't know there's like the idea of showing yourself to someone and like trusting them enough to show yourself and stitches like here's my alien stuff and all my extra arms and she's like what and then later she's like i love you it's just because all she wants is to be accepted and that's what stitch wants and she doesn't care that he's an alien she just cared that he like lied to her about it it just shows like just how accepting she is and she doesn't care um i want to talk about the um aloha scene where nani is singing that to lilo um i yes every single time i rewatch this film i know that scene

is about to come up i know what's gonna happen and i still cry every time i'm like an emotional little ball of just like sadness and all that like right as like stitch is walking up the stairs and the ducks are coming out i was like oh god here comes the waterworks and then she has to like tell her sister that um i can't take care of you anymore and you're probably gonna be taken away to like a family whether it be on this island or who knows she might have to go to like a different island because you know foster kids get moved around so much and just her singing like aloha oi to her like just the symbolism because first that song was written by um queen lily okalani she was a composer she's composed many songs especially when she was um under house arrest um after the overthrow of the huayne kingdom she was writing

songs in the basement of the iolani palace she first wrote aloha oi as a song for her like lover and stuff um and just dedicated to him and moments where they would be together riding horses in the country and all that. But then the song gets recontextualized during the overthrow and the forced American annexation, assimilation, and then later statehood. It gets recontextualized for Lilyly okolani saying farewell to her kingdom and then in this movie it gets recontextualized of her saying that farewell to you all the whole way like farewell to you um until we meet again and god it's just so sad and it just makes me

think i think lilo knows kind of what's going on on because that's how they communicate is through their culture. And I just loved that touch they put there because that is kind of the purpose. That is the purpose of our hula. That's the purpose of our music is to like its communications, oral traditions and storytelling. We have Olalono'eau, like Hawaiian proverbs. That's how a lot of us, like we communicate with each other. She doesn't straight up tell her like, you're being taken away from me. It's, she just sings that to her.

And I think that just clearly tells the message. And I was surprised that Stitch knew it too. I was like, oh, has he been reading the Queen's book? Does he know the melee? He does have the brain of a supercomputer. He is a super, super yeah he probably does um he loves it yeah but it's just every time i watch that scene i cry and i'm like i know it's coming up but why do i keep crying i'm that's the beauty of cinema i also i i read that that um or

maybe it was in the documentary but that was um allegedly that was Tia Carrera's idea to put that song there. Because she and her grandmother used to sing it together. And that that place in a way that you're like, oh, it's a Disney movie. Of course, they were going to do that. They were going to put some like, weird original song in there. And then when Tia Carrera read the script, this like came out years later, she was like, well, I think this would actually fit much better. And this is a song I would sing with my grandmother. And then when she was in the recording booth, she called her grandma to make sure she was getting the words right. And it was just like a family moment. So that was very sweet.

I'm glad that they let her do that. I'm surprised they weren't like, now we are the Disney overlords. We choose what goes on. You can't.'t no but good choice on them because i can't imagine any other song put in there and it's a and she does a beautiful job she's an amazing singer and yeah definitely the last thing i wanted to touch on real quick kind of back to the conversation about bodies was related to Lilo's photography collection because she seems to take pictures of white people who are in Hawaii on vacation as if to say like these outsiders are coming to my home like treating my home as a like tourist spot probably not respecting the culture or the land because there are so many accounts of that happening unfortunately so that's all very valid but there is this like fat shamey element to it because it seems like all the people she takes photos of are fat. It's not directly said in the movie,

but the implication feels like it's shaming these people for various things, including their bodies and their size. But other than that, there weren't any like, well, I guess there's one other, I felt kind of ageist tropes being used with a character who only shows up in a really quick scene. Mrs. Hasegawa. Oh, Mrs. Hasegawa. Because she's an old woman who is portrayed as being like oblivious.

She doesn't really understand what's going on around her. Who, by the way, is voiced by Amy Hill, who we talked about recently on the 51st Dates episode because she plays Sue. She's also been cast in the live-action remake. Oh, yeah. I think she's playing Tutu or something. Yes, who is the grandmother of David, according to Scholarly Journal Wikipedia.

So they kind of have new characters in there yeah i can understand um the criticism of mrs hasegawa's um depiction i will say though like i know a lot of mrs hasegawa's and a lot of people here know like we all have that one like old grandma or auntie in her family that you have to kind of yell at them because they can't hear what you're saying and so i mean from again from my perspective just born and raised here growing up here i saw it as like oh that's funny because we we all know that one auntie who's like that and it's kind of like more endearing but i can also see um the criticism of just like her kind of

being like the butt of the joke because sure you know because you know who knows she's you know these even though they can't hear very well you know they have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge in them um and yeah i do feel bad because i always laughed at her scene she's like what i can't talk i'm waiting for the application oh that's my that's my ad in the newspaper it's like yes that's why I'm here it is funny but yeah yeah I it's open to interpretation perhaps yeah but um but does this this is kind of this I love that this is a no-bra. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Yeah. Yes. Like for,

I think the better, I mean, I guess the, the, the main passes are between Nani and, and Lilo, but there's plenty of conversations between, I mean,

even they don't have to be positive interactions. It passes between Myrtle and Lilo. It passes, um, between, I'm trying to think of other combinations that there might be I guess Nani and that beautiful lifeguard when she was trying to get the job yes yes yes yeah they don't uh they would they would have been good friends I think they do have interactions in

like the series or so I have to re-watch the series but I haven't watched it in forever, but I loved it. It was like an after-school staple. The only other main character who's not a man in the story is the person in charge of space. Oh, the Grand Councilwoman. Yeah. also just wanted to shout out every i see this on twitter every so often just images of pleakley disguised on earth because normal they're like disguised as a like hetero tourist married couple and um pleakley you know uses he him pronouns but is dressed in drag for those scenes and icon he goes viral pretty often being uh you know being praised as an icon and i just wanted to um shout out and agree with that yeah he knows that he's a baddie he's gonna rock that outfit he's like gone to you're not or not what's his name again not gone to um oh god

look at me mixing up the names but i'm like he's like jamba you are not wearing that dress it looks better on me you wear the mustache you wear the um old dad hat you're gonna be that i'm going to be the star and it seems i'm like i'm like wow i think that they're kind of together by the end of the movie although jumba must pay for his crimes um but yes but also i i just i love when characters are in um are in drag or just like not wearing gender non-conforming clothing and it's not like super like what is happening like that's just a part of the story and that's i think why it holds up yeah the other characters like don't care at all they're just like okay they're they're there they're like you do you exactly pleakley i love it and pleakley is gonna do pleakley whether you like it or not yeah okay so our nipple scale where we rate the movie on a scale of zero

to five nipples based on examining the film through an intersectional feminist lens. I will give this four nipples. I'm taking a little bit off for mostly just like the kind of behind the scenes things, like the kind of missteps in casting, the insistence of all of these white men who are like yeah i acknowledge that this is not my story to tell but i'm gonna do it anyway yeah and the fact that those same i mean i'm pretty sure that like all these guys are still alive kicking and working and like if you did feel genuine like it was wrong of me to take that project on or even take that project on solo without being more inclusive, then you would think that would be the sort of person you would want to speak out against another white guy directing the newly lowest ditch. Like demonstrate it with your actions and not just like trying to sound good in an interview.

I hate that shit. Okay. People are so bad at holding themselves accountable they're liars anyways so yeah i mean there was just and it does seem like the filmmakers did a fair amount of research and wanted to be careful about representing the people and the culture authentically and And it seems by and large, they were successful. You know, Lily, you pointed out some things that did not feel authentic or that felt a bit cartoonish or exaggerated or just incorrect in general. So it's complicated. I mean,

they put in some effort, but not enough, because if they actually put in the right amount of effort, they would have relinquished creative control and hired Native Hawaiian directors, screenwriters, composers. Costume designers. Exactly. But otherwise, like the movie is lovely. It's featuring characters who i love their relationship i love that they are just like such fully fleshed out distinct characters the movie examines you know them dealing with issues that a lot of native Hawaiian people and marginalized people in general deal with. While also, again, like showing the joy and the love,

not just kind of, you know, negative struggling aspects of their life, but also like the positive, loving parts of their lives as well. And so, yeah, I'll give it four nipples. I will give two to Llo and two to nani simple as that i'll i'll meet you at four nipples i agree with everything you're saying um yeah i think that this movie made uh many mistakes that i i don't mean to sound like a dismissal by saying like it is extremely of its time and the fact that this movie is doing above average in terms of research for being of its time speaks poorly of that time.

And I think that it is extremely frustrating that, I mean necessary, but still frustrating that these conversations are so similar to what they were in 2002. And that the same poor decision-making that's like, I mean, just institutionally white supremacist-driven decision-making is still taking place at the same company even though the company seems like

they have a supposedly vested interest in not fucking up to the extent that they seem to constantly fuck up. It's almost like it's disingenuous yeah i would love for the new lilo and stitch live action movie to be good i guess we'll see what happens um yeah i guess we'll just leave it at that but uh originally low and stitch it's it certainly has its issues i'm very i'm so glad you were here, Lily. We're huge fans of your work, and we've learned so much from you. And I highly recommend all of our listeners check out your work as well, because it's

also very funny. I really enjoy it. Thank you. I was happy to hear that your viewers wanted me on this podcast. I was like, oh, wow, that's so cool. People know me me number one suggestion truly and we're crusty and we're not on tiktok very much and so we're like oh great and then we found your work and we're like well like you're just amazing always on tiktok I don't know how I'm

getting my master's with the amount of time I spent on it no I had to like I had to like put my phone down and just be like, nope, got to do my thesis. You can, you'll have, you'll have the rest of your life after you graduate to scroll on TikTok. It's just, that's the beauty of it. Can confirm. But, but yeah, I mean, I, but, but I'll give it four because there are things that this movie does that still really, I think, resonate the focus on sisterhood, prioritizing. We didn't really talk about this, but prioritizing like a young girl, like figuring out how she sees herself. And I love that she the two relationships are with a sister and then a friend.

I just love them. Both of whom are very supportive in the way that Lilo wants to express herself. Exactly. You're like, this is a beautiful family. Okay. So I'm not crying and I'm going to give two nipples to Lilo because she's just the MVP. And then I'll give one to Nani and one to Stitch. Nice. Lily, how about you? I agree with you guys. I give four chichis to Lilo and Stitch as well. And yeah, I'll give one to Lilo, one to Nani, one to Mrs. Hasegawa. And give one to David because we all need a David.

We all need that supportive friend. We need that fancy hair. Maybe we all have that supportive of a friend with good butt and good hair. What a beautiful thing. Jamie, I'm right here. Oh, sorry. Caitlin is that

friend for me. That's why I'm going to tell you on the show I'm in love with you. I keep forgetting that they get together at the end. Anyway. It's fine. So who knows, Jamie? Anything could happen.

Never say never. Well, Lily, thank you so much for joining us. This has been an absolute treat. Come back anytime for any movie you'd like to discuss. Yeah. Bring us more movies. Yeah. Yeah.

And where can people follow you online? Check out your work um you guys can find me on tiktok at heelilylunny so that's h-i-i-l-i-l-y-l-a-n-i so it's like a combination of my hawaiian name heelilylunny and my english name lily so heelilylunny my friend crystal came up with that so i just kind of went along with it I think it's cute um I'm also on Instagram at heelanilili because I don't know why I didn't name it that um but yeah um I'm very active on those two social media accounts yeah so you can find me on there and also if you want to see some of my acting work, look up the University of Hawaii at Manoa Hawaiian Theater Program. There's a couple of YouTube videos of some Hawaiian theater shows that I did.

One of them is called Heleo Aloha, H-E-L-E-O Aloha. And then there's Ho'olina, so H-O-O-K-I-N-A-O-I-L-I-N-A. Yes, I can spell. So yeah, where you can see some of my acting work. And you can also watch theater made by Native Hawaiians, for Native Hawaiians, also in our language. Yeah. Amazing.

And we'll link that stuff as well on our social media and stuff so that people can easily find it. And yeah, you can find us on Instagram and Twitter at Bechtelcast. I almost said my own name. Oops. At Bechtelcast. And you can subscribe to our

Patreon at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast where you get two bonus episodes every single month plus access to the back catalog of over 100 bonus episodes this month is may so we have done back to the future and office space because those were my birthday month picks and that's why i had megan on the brain because we did megan and life size in april with uh dolls that are doing too much month is what i'm calling it in my mind life size is so good yes and you can get our merch over at tpublic.com slash slash the Bechtel cast. And with that, let's get in the space. Tic-tac and,

uh, and, and something, something blast off. Got a blast. That's Jimmy Neutron. Wow. Amazing.

Dismount. Thank you. I'm sick. Bye. Bye. Aloha. Hey everybody. This is Matt Rogers. I'm sick. Bye. Bye. Aloha. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers.

And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

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