Lilo and Stitch and Good and Evil

Traditionally, I think, in most children's storytelling, you gotta have a bad guy, and it helps if you have at least one or two good guys.  I mean, traditional narrative only allows for four basic conflicts:

• (Man vs Man
• Man vs Society
• Man vs Nature
• Man vs Self)

 And the latter three, usually, are a little abstract for kids.  We like hero vs villain -- GI Joe vs Cobra, He-Man vs Skeletor, Red vs The Big Bad Wolf, Jack vs beanstalk (ok, the giant), etc.  Most major cartoon/Disney/Pixar movies have at least one bad guy for your hero to work against.  The latest major offering in the genre, Frozen, was considered pretty unusual because the most important conflict was Elsa vs. Elsa.  Maybe because of the more complicated nature of that conflict, they threw in the devious Hans of the Southern Isle and the comical Duke of Weasel-town ("It's Wesselton! Wesselton!") so there were a few characters you could root against outright.  You always expect, at the end of a Disney movie, for the villain to get his or her comeuppance -- Anna punching Hans in his face and knocking him off a boat fed that appetite quite well.

So Zoe has been on a Lilo and Stitch kick lately, and I hadn't seen that one before the past few weeks.  (I still haven't, strictly, seen it.  Most of my exposure to it has come while I was driving and she watches in the backseat.  I've probably missed an awful lot of visual stuff.)  It's struck me as a very odd Disney movie in a lot of ways, and I figured out why today: There are no bad guys.  More than that, there is arguably no one in the whole movie who does anything actually bad even once.

The closest counter-argument to both of those assertions is Dr. Jumba, the mad scientist whose illegal genetic experimentation creates Stitch, a creature immediately identified as an "abomination."  But as to whether he's bad, I would point out that he sees a little girl in danger toward the end, and doesn't even hesitate to be persuaded to help her out.  His other arguable sins are pretty easily explained away, too -- he lies before the court, but he does that to save his skin; anyone would do that.  He creates an abomination, but the abomination is not exactly Frankenstein's monster; it's a mischievous little cuddly guy.  He tries to shoot and possibly kill the abomination -- but killing an abomination is usually not considered a bad thing, and he was ordered to do by his lawful government regime.

Stitch does some naughty stuff, but is it really stuff that can be considered bad?  He attacks and damages a few people, but generally those people are causing trouble for him in the first place, and his attacks are not debilitating.  He's a baby, he's superpowered, and he's got a posse chasing him down; some collateral damage seems pretty likely.  He breaks some stuff -- but he does not damage Lilo's precious picture of her mom, and he only physically attacks other aliens.

That's a significant point, too, and I'll bring that up to excuse the actions of Captain Gantu and the Grand Councilwoman -- as soon as they found out that the escaped abomination was going to Earth, they asked their expert about the planet, and he described Earthlings as both unintelligent and extremely delicate ("Every time a meteor hits the planet, they start over from scratch").  They choose not to gas the planet because they don't want to hurt an endangered species, and they at no point damage any earth people.  They batter each other, and at a few points discuss their comparatively denser molecules; which Stitch chomps on the skull of one alien or throws another through a wall, it's not actually terribly violent behavior.  Gantu was a little fierce -- but he was never more or less than a cop, following his orders to capture a fugitive.

The ridiculously named Cobra Bubbles, of course -- the CIA agent-turned-social worker -- is the same way.  He's a little gruff and ridiculously intimidating, but his motive is to protect a little girl from a clearly unsafe home.  You can't blame him for that.  You can't blame Nani for the house being unsafe; she's just a big sister trying to carry on after her parents were killed.  You can't blame Lilo for being a godawful kid; she's just a little girl trying to adjust to her whole world being taken away.

Every single character in the entire movie, as far as I can tell, is a person trying his or her best to live up to his or her responsibilities.  No bad guys.  No bad intentions.  And ridiculous amounts of violence and explosions.  And, despite the suspension of disbelief you need for some of the sci-fi and fantasy elements, the characters all ring pretty true.

It's important to remember stories like this when you have violence, explosions, resentment, anger, or fights in your own life.  Even when some sonofabitch is trying to wreck your shit, even when you're tempted to call him your worst enemy, even when you're trying to do the best you can and you're being frustrated at every turn, you have to remember that the bad guys aren't trying to be bad guys.  In their own heads, they are very likely seeing you as a sonofabitch trying to wreck their shit, unable to see you aren't a bad guy.  From their perspectives, with their objectives, they're probably just doing the best they can.

Communicating changes perspectives and objectives, and that, along with the hokey-pokey, is really what it's all about.  When you're surrounded by bad guys, sometimes it's a good idea to try to drop as many barriers to communication as you can, then try to align your objectives... and, you know, sometimes it's a good idea to pull out a baseball bat.  Listen to your conscience; go with what feels right.