The Lies You Expect To Hear

Captain Gantu (Kevin Michael Richardson) has a great voice. Earth as a “wildlife preserve” is very funny. 

Yeah, it’s too bad that by 2002–wow, I was only 13, but I already would have been so deep in pseudo-Nordic myths and exxxtreme boy power stories, right: like, I’m pretty sure I was done with “Harry Potter”; I was done with being cute, right: I was a soldier; I was a “killer”, lol…. And yeah: even earlier in childhood it’s scary-sad to think the subtle ways I was raised to be, ethnocentric, you know: you shy away from Hawaii, right—there’s so many heroes from Rome and Ireland and all those places, right…. 

Yeah: it’s an extremely simple story, and they definitely EASE you into it, right…. But that time in my life would have been a lot better if I could have seen a brown girl on the cover of something, and watched the movie, you know. 

…. (Wikipedia) Wow, most of the aliens are white except for the cool-deep-voice Captain…. But I’m sure the Hawaiian girl, herself, is…. Up, nope, she’s white…. Wow, nobody caught, that, you know: “voices have color, too”—Graham Greene knew that, and he was an entertainer, not a grey scholar…. Like, according to Wikipedia, NONE of the vanilla critics, it seems, raised the issue of the White Lilo, right…. They only caught flack for the series continuations in the 2020s, and only because it was live action, right…. Like, there was very little, and very grey, stony sorta scholarship on white-washing re: Lilo & Stitch, and only if you look for it, and not much comes up…. Like, somebody Should really do something about the racist conditioning of children, right: like, is it so COMPLICATED, that if your whole sell is a Hawaiian girl, you shouldn’t be handing a lily-white girl the check, for bleaching the last corner of the imagination that wasn’t already white? 

I mean, why is that so ~hard~; there’s SO much given to Anglos on the sly; it never even feigns a hard-take, on anything, right…. Why couldn’t there be some sort of limit, you know: decency? Like, why is it so damn HARD to be kind to brown girls? They are literally just like white girls, only say from, the islands…. And yeah: they come with the baggage of being written out of history. We don’t even just ask them to ignore it: we just write them out, right. 

…. (listens) Yeah, it’s really true: the little red-head’s voice is in the brown girl’s body, right…. OMG…. 

I mean, it’s not (subtly) hard-racism, like LOTR, right, but I mean…. Fuck Chris Sanders, right: is everything he does soft racism?…. Racism: for girls!…. I thought we were past this shit, right…. 

(chuckles) (shakes head) I’m obviously not seeing the world the way it is, when I expect to see it healed already, right. 

…. Crazy superstitious brown girl, (who is actually a ~white~ girl!!), bludgeons the cute Irish chick, literally well within five minutes of being introduced. 

Cool story, bro. (tries to come up with sarcastic comment, fails) Cool story. 

…. (the older sister who actually IS voiced by a Hawaiian) Yup, she is ~actually~ from the islands, by ancestry, just like she’s animated as being, right. 

It’s like, before there were the “Bridgerton”-themed Regency romance movies: there was…. This, right. 

Yeah. 

Someone has to make a parody of this, you know; it’s so…. “But what if a white girl from LA or a white girl from Dallas who can ONLY identify with other white girls and likes LA, and also likes Hawaii, but it is worried about…. Worried about….” (mouths, something or another, right). 

Parody GOLD, just waiting to come into existence, right. 

…. Wow, let’s see: 

—Brown girls are bad nurturers

—Government social workers, or whatever, are aggressive-looking Black men 

—You’ll be wanting to identify with the girl who looks brown, but sounds white, and loves Elvis. 

(like…. wtf?) Does Elvis deserve this kind of treatment? Is this what we see in him? 

…. I can’t quote some of these lines, omg. 

But yeah: it’s certainly a more credible threat, than Thorin dreaming of putting a spear in the chest of Azog the Unlikely, you know…. 

…. Mocking “Voodoo”: like, they can’t be bothered even to look up a term that actually applies to Hawaiian shamanism, right: all epithets are the same; they’re not Italian, even…. Well, I guess we’ll just have to ship her off to get indoctrinated by a nice white church: after all, it’d make them look good! 1 frightened Hawaiian girl (who is…. White?), and 104 white people = a community open to all kinds, right…. As long as you know when to sit down, shut up…. And be normal, right…. I mean: can you imagine being a social worker, of any demographic, right, watching this, and it’s like…. This is what they want me to do? They want me to beat people into line?…. And then they can throw me under the bus, to cover it up! (chuckles) It’s like Nixon shit, right…. 

…. Yeah, I mean: this is why so many women of color work as maids, practically, you know: assisted living staff…. Group home service coaches…. God, I can’t even IMAGINE what an actual cleaning service (haven’t used one!) or freaking, an English country house in the 21st century would be like, right…. It’s like…. I mean: and then you see them in that situation, people resent it, like: I’m not getting good labor, I’m not associating with a “good population”, right…. 

God, it’s just impossible to imagine what could feed into that, right? 

…. I just can’t get over that voice, and that face…. 

At least Peter Jackson is honest, right: just…. Veiled. 

They’re the same. 

…. Wow, Stitch sounds like, Japanese, even though I know he’s actually voiced by the white director, right…. Is there like a name for that? Yellow peril? Yellow facing? It has to be some kind of pattern, right…. 

…. They even convinced me that their antipathy to the environmentalists/greens is real. 

Now, it’s perfect. 

There are no words. 

…. I’m glad I don’t watch movies all in one go: this is like, trying to eat uncooked tofu, you know…. It’s like, just, white, and, inconsumable, you know…. 

“Let’s experience a different culture!” 

Being a propagandist means never having to say what you really mean, right. 

…. It’s like, I want to love this country: this is where I’m from, right. I’m not going to be working with bloody British or Irish or Italian fairies; I’m going to working with the bloody fairies of the goddamn Jersey Shore…. But it’s like: is it really that hard, to understand that demeaning women of color is wrong? 

(confused look) It’s so complicated; I mean, I didn’t like all that trigonometry stuff: I figure I’ll just stick with what I know, right. 

(elderly man voice-over narrator) “And he almost despaired.” 

…. Yeah: that’s heavy. I mean, obviously, some it is explained by history, in the sense of elections/events in the news. This was 2002, the year before, 15 Saudis and 4 other Arab Muslims had committed a large-scale suicide attack in New York, (most memorably), right: so in a lot of people’s “minds”, the question loomed large: does this implicate the Hawaiian Voodoo community, right? (If there is such a thing, you know.) (It’s like: how do you respond to that? It’s like, the response should be, really: What’s your plan, Doctor?~Right….? I mean, how do you even start…. “But you don’t understand, Dr. Italiano, another man of that, exact, same, height, raped my daughter and killed my wife!” (Dr. Italiano takes off his glasses, like, There are some rough things I go through in my life, listening to this.)). But “How to Train Your Dragon”, from the better part of a decade later, is recognizably similar, if less obviously pernicious: because after all, he likes white people, right; he can afford to portray more of them as good, basically. But it’s fundamentally the same stance towards life, right: “soft” oppression—soft ethnocentrism; soft sexism, you know…. 

It’s like: I’m telling you how I feel, you know. When it’s OBVIOUS: like it’s, “The Propagandist”, right, (“The Propagandist IV: Colonies in Unlikely Places”), you know: it’s pretty ~~easy~~, for me: at least; there’s so much Capricorn on my chart, you know— I want to reconcile with people, and play soft ball, despite my fiery-Aries and weirdo-Aquarius elements, right…. And it’s not like the most militant aspects of it are directly are me, personally, just the overflow and universal/environmental effects: and of course, there’s pride: I don’t like that part of my success in whatever I end up being good at, is a result of…. You know, Chris fucking Sanders, right…. 

But yeah: if the lie isn’t ~~successful~~, right: it can be EASY to watch propaganda from an amused, detached place, and find it entertaining, in its own way, right…. But if they call it, you know, “This Time I’m Being Good: Promise”, and you’re stupid enough to, buy, that, right…. I mean, I feel rattled. I’m gonna have to try and calm down, now…. 

Because that was a lot…. I mean, some of it just history in the sense, of “white supremacy: alive and well in the 21st century”, right…. Like, “you remind me of a white girl: that means you must be ok”, is like: like, the nicest thing, you’ll ever hear, from someone not of your own kind, right….

…. You know: it even happens at the library, you know—like a white guy does something that’s a little rude, and technically against the rules, and a Black guy gets visibly irritated by it, and asks him to stop: and the white guy just, I mean the attitude is, you know: I’m white, you’re not really here for me, epithet. It’s all me. And if you put it in print in a certain way, it’s like, the Black guy was more rude, from a certain interpretation, but the white guy was like: the calm, clinical contempt of like: I’m white. You’re not here for me, blackie. This is all me. ~And although I did not tell that guy, most of what I thought about him: I let him know that I was NOT on his side: and then I walked away. 

You don’t tell strangers what you really think of them, right: but you don’t have to…. Support them, and be on their team, right. 

~Although the ironic thing is, back when I didn’t say normal, supportive small talk things to strangers, the other 499/500 times, right, it just would have been like: fold, and support White America, you know. 

…. But yeah: when I said “uncooked tofu”, my mind was on how literally unchewable it is without some kind of taste treatment, right: it would be like if mud was technically safe to eat, right. (Although you’d never know, after something’s been done to it. Some soy and tofu products even taste like dessert, often while being relatively nutritious.) But yeah…. It’s a curious intersection, how tofu would also be like the literally crazy-white thing, white in appearance, that “most people in this country”, (wink) would reject out of hand as being foreign, weird, and not normal, right. 

But for Hawaiians…. I don’t know, I’m sure they’re ok with it. We’re not literally under orders to shoot them, so…. I mean, yeah: the world is just so different, for us Anglos, you know. We’re just so special…. 

It’s difficult to appreciate, really. You have to really, look a certain way, to appreciate it, fully. 

We are literally, that special, no. 

…. I hate to talk about “art” or whatever, right, but: we are all part of something bigger than ourselves—it’s not the white race or colonialism or religious oppression, right…. But people look at you and see something when they look at you, (the ‘relative’), and  they see and/or form an opinion of, what you came into this world to be (something ‘less relative’, right). And if you come and you go and it was enough to tell people—not even the worst lies, right: but the lies they expected to hear, you know—then, in so far as it lies with you, people consider what you came to provide: and they don’t even think it can be done, because they have a counter example. So much of this is unconscious: it’s easy to get abstract about ‘the way you treat people’, but to such a large extent, the human world is a social world, and so little of what we give people, has to do with the conscious stated, or even explicitly owned, dogma, you know. The ‘logic’…. But yeah: live your life, so that people think that what was yours to do, is at least, ~possible~, right. That matters, sometimes more than the literal and practical material effects of our actions: although I consider these more important than people sometimes assume, who dream of heavenly realms, right. 

Just to rob someone of a possibility, as far as it lies with you—and the opposite of that—that is so much greater…. Certainly there are things no law observes, and no paymaster rewards, right: no one in the system, right. 

Quite to the contrary, right. 

…. Although I will say: when I feel now a feeling of “racism”—usually a feeling of inappropriate compromise, you know; helping the racists clean up their image, so that they can go on crushing people, with a song in their heart—there’s less of a feeling of “guilt”, you know: like I just feel “stupid”, you know…. not doing what I set out to do, not acting smart. I don’t have the same sense that I have been (or should be! Omg!) sacrificing myself, right…. It’s more a matter of waste. Wasting my life-energy. 

And then I can kinda come back, to the question of managing risk, if you follow. 

…. Ok, and I’m back—hopefully this time it’s only the lies I expect to hear…. Yup, brown people with an Elvis fetish; I remember that…. 

…. And Hawaiian culture can be entertaining: only not as much…. And the magical brown girl with a white voice, yup. 

…. Anyway, I can’t remember exactly how I expected this to be: children’s comedy (keep the word princess out of it; lol…. Actually there are probably some children’s comedy movies with zero girls, right), or children’s (action!) adventure, right…. I did think it was going to have some adventure in it, and it does, although it’s mostly over within the first ten minutes or whatever…. They don’t really make children’s dramas, right: children in a real drama means it’s just an adult movie with a cast below a certain age, right: not “children’s”: but comedy can be of the more “pure” or more adventure varieties, right. All stories have setting and themes: although in more “pure” comedies, it tends to be very much setting and culture-group commentary, than more abstract themes. (In this movie: constantly dragging Hawaii through the mud, right. I’m not going to make too many more notes about that, unless it’s a real Goebbels’ goblins’ grand tour, you know.) But adventure leans more on plot, and “children’s comedy” more on character as revealed by the subtle. Neither is inherently good or bad. But it does seem like this movie dropped in significant “adventure” elements: the rabid male alien-dog, or whatever, basically—without having a serious plot attached, right. I don’t mean “drama” by serious—but like, there is a war in “How To Train Your Dragon”, right: it’s a no-holds barred adventure…. Here, there is no plot, really: no strong, organized plot, really. Just…. “We want to kill your baby dog!” And then later: “okay: we let the baby dog live.” It’s like a distracted comedy, right: the “action adventure” elements drain rather than add energy to the interpersonal volleys (and cultural commentary: although…. Well, anyway). It’s like a comedy that doesn’t believe in itself, right. It’s like: the movie is bleaching the brown girl: but since that doesn’t matter—girls. never. matter—you know…. Throw in lasers. It doesn’t matter that there’s no leprechaun gold or dragon, that you’d need a laser. Just…. Make It. Up. (hangs up 90s phone with slam). 

Right?…. 

…. Up, we learned a Hawaiian word: Ohana means family…. It is funny, how family literally is, something you use against your family, right: the concept against the individuals, and you can just throw that in their face, and the non-family stigma is just so overwhelming, that they just have to take it, right. 

Although obviously individualist culture…. It’s probably what gave us a white girl with brown skin, to begin with, right. In the context of our society, it very often acts as a bleaching agent. 

(shrugs) So, there’s that, right…. 

…. So yeah: typical stuff…. Don’t give the crazy brown girl time off for her kid; her kid isn’t worth it; I have my own kid. This is America. Tell her to get a job…. But don’t hire her: I don’t like epithets: I don’t want them around…. We should hire, Elvis, reincarnated…. (puts on Hawaiian pop song) But you know, one thing I like about the epithets, (dancing), is: they’re happy. (song ends; finishes drink) But in the end: you have to punish them. (slams drink down) Life is about shame, not pleasure. Man makes his way through this world: by shame…. 

(Goebbels’ goblin’s executive summary, right.) 

~But if you want to make your own Happy American Family: you know, we expect that of you, of course…. You know, kinda. 

What I expected. (nods) 

…. And back to ‘adventure’…. Although it is still essentially a comedy, since it’s such a Lost Baby Adventure, you know: and gratuitously poorly thought-out, right…. I mean, realism can be overrated—it can be the imperialism of the scientists, right—but to call this implausible, doesn’t even begin to cover it, right…. It’s just delusion territory, you know. It’s like, “feed the kids slop; they won’t know the difference” territory, right…. 

…. Ok, it’s over: wow, that was garbage, lol…. Just: wow…. 

But I mean: today the group home staff didn’t bother to tell us to be sure to shower by X time: and then lo and behold: Hi name is so-and-so, I’ll be listening to masc-y talk radio while I spend an indeterminate long time in your bathroom, repairing the caulking…. It’s like: wow, bonus: learned a new word; malus: had to wait until I got to the library to meditate…. Also, haha…. People are very paranoid about grooming—and I get concern, if not paranoia; I actually read Esquire and fashion books from time to time; I recently discovered CVS sells grooming products and not just candy, nutritions bars, (medicine), books, and magazines, lol….—but yeah, people can also  be very inconsiderate about grooming needs, right…. 

But yeah: weird day, weird movie; that part was kinda nice…. And eventually they tired of making Hawaii the butt of jokes, right; and we learned, well, not counting aloha, we learned, “ohana”: “means family”, and, mahalo, can be used to mean, thank you, among other meanings…. And there was a very slight dip into Hawaiian pop, even though standard 50s oldies, certainly, and even standard film-classical, arguably, were more important…. 

But yeah: (comic Russian accent) Feed child slop. They no notice, difference. (vigorous nodding)…. 

~It’s…. patriotic, right? (cynical little laugh) 

…. (end) And yeah: I hate to interpret my own work for you, like you were all still “babes”, as the charming preachers have it, but…. Yeah: there’s “the lie you expect to hear”, ~knowing that it’s a lie~, and “the lie you expect to hear”, ~believing it~, right.