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Lilo and Stitch: An Analysis of Religious and Moral Themes
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Lilo
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Lilo is entirely unlike any other Disney heroine. For one thing her age, which is unspecified but most likely somewhere in
the seven or eight year range, is markedly younger than most girls in Disney movies. Disney seems to normally set lead female
roles at the age of 16, occasionally going higher in cases such as Esmerelda in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". The
few girls who have been notably younger, Penny in "The Rescuers" and Miss Flaversham in "The Great Mouse Detective"
for example, have been portrayed entirely as cute, endearing, innocent little girls. Lilo is not like this. Within five minutes
of her first appearance in the film she flails out and attacks another little girl in an all-out fist-swinging, teeth-biting
fight. While still an adorable child, the writers have given Lilo an incredibly anti-social personality
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Lilo doesn't fit in with the rest of the kids her age. Her peers consider her ideas, such as her weekly sandwich tribute
to a supposedly weather-controlling fish named Pudge, crazy. Her doll is a homemade monstrosity who suffers from disturbing
medical problems. She practices voodoo with pickle jars and decorated spoons. And, perhaps most interestingly for the purposes
of revealing character depth, she takes pictures of overweight people, a hobby that has no relevance to the plot and simply
adds to the rounding out of Lilo as a real personality.
All of these characteristics call into question the traditional portrayal of the female child that Disney usually adheres
to. Disney is often either praised or condemned for creating female characters that are generally domestic in attitudes while
still possessing strong independent streaks. Lilo's departure from this mould is something to be considered. She dwells in
an environment which has departed from stable domesticity, and as a result, instead of following in the footsteps of other
Disney heroines who attempt to restore their domestic life, she constantly strives to make things worse. Her strong personality
is primarily rebellious, lashing out at a world that does not understand her. This aspect of realism seems abnormal for a
Disney children's film, as is the fact that the film reveals the fate of Lilo's deceased parents, something which Disney glosses
over in any feature films in which one or both parents are missing from the story.
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