Lilo & Stitch and the Complexities of Family
If there’s one thing people remember from 2003’s Lilo & Stitch it’s this iconic line: “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind.” Thinking about it now, it seems like a rather cheesy line that stresses the importance of family without acknowledging the trials and tribulations that come with it. It wasn’t until I rewatched the movie that I realized just how wrong I was. In actuality the movie goes deep into the nuances of family and how difficult it can be to maintain one. Despite these difficulties, however, we’re reminded of the love and bonds of our families. The Lilo & Stitch franchise encapsulates the very broad concept of family and takes the reality of it to interesting places.
The backstory to the movie is that Lilo lost her parents in a car crash as a kid. Since then she’s been raised by her big sister Nani who has to act as a parental figure and as a sister. Nani felt the need to drop everything in her life that didn’t contribute to the wellbeing of Lilo. She cuts off her entire social life and dedicates her life to working and taking care of Lilo. Along with responsibility, Nani inherited all of the stress and guilt of her parents. Lilo, on the other hand, is ostracized from her classmates and peers because of how “weird” she is. She’s bullied by Myrtle, a ginger white girl, and her friends (as someone who is adamantly against colonization and tourism, Lilo could have no better nemesis than Myrtle). Her entire day is spent being a loner and doing her own thing because anything else reminds her of the family and comfort she’s lost. Not only have they lost their parents they also lack any sense of extended family. No friends, cousins, or even neighbors to help them deal with their problems. Even their house is isolated on the top of a hill away from anyone who could possibly relate to them. It’s a self destructive attitude and practice, but it’s the reality of people who face life changing trauma.
Then Stitch crash lands onto Earth and David enters Nani’s life. It’s no coincidence that these two characters started gaining prominence around the same time in the movie. It’s at this point that both Lilo and Nani open themselves up to new relationship and it’s certainly not easy. Stitch is an evil alien created by a mad scientist and David is trying to break Nani’s guard down. This signals a point in Lilo and Nani’s lives at which they’re beginning to heal from their trauma and accept new people into their lives.
Stitch’s introduction to the family is quite complex, despite Lilo specifically choosing him. She picks him thinking that he’s a weird looking dog, but ends up adopting an alien killing machine. Despite not knowing what Stitch really is she loves and supports him anyway, as people do when they’re exposed to a new kind of person. People have a way of surprising you, and sometimes those surprises are negative. Regardless new experiences are something that shape who we are. Lilo took that new experience despite still reeling from the loss of her parents, and she became better for it. She learned to open her heart to new people instead of continuing to push people away. Nani took a similar route except she finally accepted David’s advances towards her. She knew who and what David was and actively took the opportunity to allow him into her life. Neither of these were outright forceful, or else they wouldn’t be genuine. Both Lilo and Nani had multiple opportunities to close themselves off from the new figures in their lives, but chose not to. It’s not the right choice or the wrong choice; they’re just choices. The important thing that this movie stresses is that it is a choice. We don’t have to keep making the same choices or accept our lives for how they are. There will be choices made available to us and we will have the opportunity to make a decision that impacts our lives.
The rest of the movie introduced Cobra Bubbles, Jumba, and Pleakley to the family. Cobra, unlike Jumba and Pleakley acted more like a cousin than an immediate family member, but he was now a part of their lives. The rest of the franchise expands on this sense of a growing family. Throughout multiple times in the franchise they had the opportunity to control who was in the family. Instead of reverting to their previous behavior, however, the characters embrace the idea of a fluid definition of family. Stitch! introduces the concept of the other 625 of Jumba’s experiments whom Lilo aptly dubs “cousins”. Over the course of Lilo & Stitch: The Series Lilo, Stitch, and the rest of family find a “one true place” for each of the cousins and expand their family with each episode. It’s a significant advance from where Lilo, Stitch, and Nani started in the beginning of the franchise, but they didn’t do it with ease. With every step they took towards this destination they met opposition both externally and internally
When Stitch and Lilo first met Nani opposed the idea of adopting him. On a surface level it was because Stitch is very clearly not a dog, rather a blue alien killing machine. This hesitation towards letting Stitch into the family is representative of her distrusting nature towards letting people in. Family is somewhat sacred to many of us, especially after losing important members of said family. When something encroaches upon the territory of family, the first reaction is to get defensive. That sense of family isn’t exclusive to genetic family, however, as shown through the added members of the family. Over time the family opens up and learns to be welcoming of new additions. Often times these new additions to the family aren’t purposeful or planned, they’re people or aliens that just show up in their lives. It takes the idea of “you can’t choose your family” one step further by integrating extended family into their lives. Not being able to choose our family doesn’t always need to have a negative connotation. Even with the family that we claim to “choose”, there’s never one specific moment at which you select someone to add to your family aside from weddings and adoption. The people we add to our families are people that show up in our lives and we grow attached to. Sometimes it feels like fate, luck, or the randomness of the universe, but it’s almost always out of our control.
This theme of protection and dedication to a family is incredibly important throughout the franchise, especially in Lilo & Stitch 2. I like to think of this movie as the one that tackles abusive family members, specifically those that have substance abuse problems or mental illness. Stitch, at his core isn’t as violent as his programming suggests. He actively fights against his violent and harmful tendencies and did so successfully for a very long time. In this sequel however those tendencies start coming in bursts and the family tries everything they can to help Stitch overcome them. Those bursts of violence become more frequent and more toxic to the point that Lilo, his best friend, gives up on him completely. The abusive nature of family is a hard thing to tackle. Most of the time there’s nothing we want more than to love them to the point of healing them. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Love won’t stop abuse; the only thing that can stop abuse is the abuser recognizing their actions and working to stop those actions. As much as we want to be there for a family member going through a difficult time, we often have to take a step back and worry about our own safety. The difficulty of this is incredibly well done in Lilo & Stitch 2 especially if the viewer has kept up with the entire franchise. Stitch does eventually work to fix himself but it’s undercut by a deus ex machina that doesn’t fully tackle the reality of abuse.
It’s incredibly interesting how much the Lilo & Stitch franchise delves into the inner workings of family. They portray family in a realistic way, never confining it to specific limitations. Family doesn’t has a set definition and there’s no one way to be a family. It can expand, shrink, and stay constant without any explanation because family is fluid. While other children’s movies and series try to put a definitive label on family and teach on specific message, Lilo & Stitch embraces the diverse and unexpected nature of family. There are many nuances and complexities to humanity and that’s not going to stop just because we have a community of people to rely on. It’s rare to get a children’s movie that even attempts to address these topics, and even more rare that they get it this right.
