Ohana Means... uh…Crap!: How Disney’s Live Action Lilo & Stitch Became an Ad for Child Protective Services
Part love letter, part eulogy, mostly facepalm
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Once upon a time in 2002, a blue alien with anger issues crash-landed in Hawaii and helped an Elvis loving little girl cope with her grief, loneliness, and the threat of being taken away by a stiff social worker. Lilo & Stitch, I know you remember it; it was a big hit! The central message it gave us was “Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind.”
It was sweet, heartfelt, and hilarious. It was also hand-drawn.
Those were the days!
Now it’s been given the live-action treatment like RoboCop or the Daleks, and it’s here to exterminate, CPS style!
The Original: Surfboards, Spam, and Sadness (The Healthy Kind)
Back in the day, Lilo & Stitch was a fever dream of Elvis soundtracks, hula dancing, and a found family storyline that somehow balanced child neglect, intergalactic bounty hunters, and sincere love. Lilo was a grieving, bug-collecting little girl, and her older sister Nani was the exhausted, job-juggling somewhat immature older sister who was doing her best to hold everything together after their parent’s sudden death.
Their lives were messy and real, about what you’d expect if an 18 year old was suddenly left in charge forever.
It also made Disney a boatload of cash. And so yeah, a remake was just a matter of time.
The 2025 Remake: The Call Is Coming From Inside the DCF Office
In this new version, Lilo isn’t simply at risk of being taken away—she is taken away. Sorry, not sorry to spoil the ending. Nani bounces to go be a marine biologist and Lilo is left with neighbors, fire dancing David and his 70 year old grandmother Tutu.
Apparently women in STEM > women in family.
Just what every traumatized kid needs after the sudden death of her parents, another abandonment. Disney should make that into a ride at its parks!
Ohana means what again?
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, watching Disney’s self-destruction has inspired more popcorn sales than its movies, as it has become a Critical Social Justice propaganda delivery device from the female driven MCU to Mickey’s rainbow makeover.
While the vast majority of Americans are supportive of all sorts of life-styles and cultures, Disney embraced the hard bigoted edge of progressive ideology, prioritizing race and gender identity over merit, in ways that specifically sidelined white and male talent under the banner of DEI.
Disney’s new hires went on to create a raft of content to ‘represent’ skin colors and sex choices as though that’s a substitute for values like courage, integrity, or resilience.
This is a problem because Disney’s audience is children—eager to please and even more easily influenced by what they see. It’s true in the past, the company had issues, older films like Peter Pan and Dumbo included portrayals that look uncomfortably racist in hind-sight. Now it’s making up for that by being differently bigoted.
Back to Lilo and Stitch. The original had been everything good about cultural trends moving away from our legacy of our causally bigotted past. It told a story from the perspective of native Hawaiians, that was also human, relatable and focused on people coming together despite differences. The American melting pot even embraced a six legged alien with bad manners, a hair trigger temper, and the combat skills of a ninja.
Most to the point, the original movie also grappled with the themes of sacrifice and responsibility essential to successful adulthood and a functional culture. This was distilled into the line, “Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind.”
The new remake, with Nani ditching her sister to get an education, while likely a harsh truth in today’s world, it is a terrible message for kids, not true to our human past, and a psycologically damaging situation best avoided all round, in real life and movies.
While it is true that in centuries gone by, there were orphans and some of them survived. Anyone with the last name Esposito, had an orphan ancestor, for example. The vast majority of children were taken in by family or they died.
Our own George Washington was raised by his older half brother when their father died, and genealogical searching back as little as three generations often turns up early deaths of parents with children raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings. This is how humanity survived for millions of years. Not CPS.
So, way to go Disney. With the pro-let the state take care of hard problems so you don’t ever have to compromise messaging. It will be interesting to see what fruit that bears in 20 years.
In Conclusion: Ohana Means… Well, Actually, Let’s Circle Back on That in another 20 years
Stories are how cultures remember themselves. Stories for children in particular, teach the values of society. Maybe we don’t know what we value anymore. Disney has been beating us upside our heads to celebrate marginalized groups to the point of hostility. Accepting others despite our differences is an important value, but as a value it can’t stand alone.
It’s common sense to me, that a culture that fails to teach their youngsters how to work hard, compromise, apologize, sacrifice, embrace responsibility, and meet challenges with resilience might have big problems down the road.
Likewise a society that teaches the young to cast aside responsibility, serve yourself and ignore the needs of your own family is playing with fire.
Lilo & Stitch deserved better. You deserved better. And somewhere out there, a CGI Stitch is probably gnawing on the last remaining piece of Disney’s soul.
Housekeeping
This week I didn’t get my Monday post out until Tuesday. I spent the last two weeks traveling to North Carolina. Once for fun and the second time to search for family records. Despite my best efforts to get ahead, I was unable to push through that last Monday piece before I left.
A big part of that was due to my car, which, alas, is no longer with us. I took it in to repair a known problem, and engine issues were discovered that would cost more than the value of the car to repair.
Not being an expert on cars, I made the decision to cut my losses and I’ve now taken on my daughter's old beater. She was already in process of replacing it, so it worked out.
Like a lot of decisions that we must base on the advice of experts that have some skin in the game, it’s hard not to wonder if the story I got told the whole tale. I’ll probably never know, but on the upside, I did discover the website RepairPal that gives you estimates for all kinds of repair problems from a more objective point of view.
I am happy to report that according to RepairPal, the quoted work would have been as expensive as they said anywhere else, and with the other lingering issues that also needed to be fixed at some point, I am well served to be shed of my old vehicle, though I do miss how much fun it was to drive.
When I reach a point where I can buy a nearly new car again, I will be looking for something Toyota or Honda flavored, that's for sure.
In other news, Brood XIV is fading to silence, its mission accomplished. The fallen litter the forest floor, their struggle over.
Poppet and I did see a box turtle sunning itself. Perhaps it was gearing up to enjoy a once in 17 year feast! I hear cicadas have a lot of protein. For myself, I will take a pass.
I was blessed by three members of Brood XIV during their swarm. Two must have been males, and they made a sound like a scream when they landed on me then quickly departed. One was quiet, only staying for a short ride, then flittering off to find its own kind.
If I’m lucky I’ll be here to witness one more go round a decade and a half from now.
On the Bookshelf
Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t read any of my bookshelf books. Everyone is good with that, correct?
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus