1. I re-watched Lilo and Stitch the other night (since the abomination of a remake recently came out) and was reminded of just how a good a film that really is. It’s one of those odd, ultra-creative, personal-seeming projects that blends elements that really don’t seem like they would work together, but through skillful handling you hardly even notice. If I told you that this Disney animated feature is half satirical space opera and half kitchen-sink drama, all tied together with Elvis songs, that would sound insane. But I have seen insanity and it works.

This is the kind of film where lines like “I prefer the term ‘Evil Genius’!” co-exist with lines like “I like you better as a sister than as a mom.” It takes a specially bold creative mind to even attempt something like that.

2. Among other things, I noticed this time how much the aquatic imagery features throughout the film, especially with regard to the aliens. You can see it in things like the designs of the alien ships and weapons (the latter of which look like super-soakers and spray a kind of liquid plasma instead of standard lasers). Captain Gantu is a 30-foot shark man, and Jumba has a semi-fish man look about him. The ships are all rounded and kind of fish or boat like. It’s an unusual take, and it helps the alien scenes match the tropical milieu.

I also love how the film really makes use of the Hawaiian setting in a positive way. It isn’t a Pocahontas-style exercise in finger wagging, but more as if the writers were genuinely interested in Hawaiian culture, showing off a part of the archipelago that feels less touristy (though tourists are present) and more every-day.

3. Overall, I would rank it as far and away the best film of the post-Renaissance era, and a strong stand-out among the entire post-Walt animated canon. To be fair, the 2000s weren’t exactly the House of Mouse’s finest hour (though it looks like a golden age compared to the present), but I’d say the closest films from the same period would be The Emperor’s New Groove – which is too much of a light-weight to be really competitive – and Treasure Planet – which is pretty good, but not nearly in the same league. Though, to be fair, I haven’t seen Atlantis (I haven’t seen either Brother Bear or Home on the Range either, but given their reputation I’m not considering them as contenders).

4. In case you were wondering, Disney is currently in its ‘Self-Parasite Era’, in which it attempts to sustain itself by sucking the life out of its own body of work.

The really sad thing is that they seem to be succeeding.

5. I’m obliged to read A Separate Peace by John Knowles as part of the school curriculum. So far (I’m about two-thirds of the way through) it is not good. It is apparently meant to be a coming-of-age story of a teenage boy at a New England prep school under the shadow of World War II, who harbours a secret jealous hatred of his charismatic best friend. That’s a decent enough set-up for a novel, except the characterization is very bad: the first-person narrator is so zoomed in on his own thoughts and emotions that any actual personality fails to emerge. He’s such a mass of “I felt X, but did Y” that it’s impossible to identify an actual person in this sea of mope.

For instance, it is nearly a third of the book before we even learn that he’s a southerner, a fact that, so far as I’ve read, plays no role in his character or interactions with the others whatsoever beyond one or two comments. He has no interests of his own, no clear voice (he really could be any first-person narrator from any self-consciously important novel written from the 1950s onward), no family or background that we’re aware of. We know he’s a good student, but not out of any genuine interest in learning but more a sense of obligation. Why or to whom…that’s a good question. All we really can say about him is that he’s a petty, small-souled narcissist.

All this means his ‘coming of age’ falls flat, because there’s no clear starting point of immaturity to grow from.

6. As I said before, we need a re-evaluation of our ‘Great Books Canon’, at least with regards to American literature. A Separate Peace strikes me as the kind of book that appealed to a very select audience who happened to have influence over academia, and that is its chief qualification as a classic. But even among my (very literate) acquaintance, I’ve hardly found anyone who’s actually read it, or even heard of it, much less found it influential. It seems to me a textbook example of a ‘high school novel’: the kind of book that’s considered important largely because we are told it is important, not for any actual qualities it possesses. As far as coming-of-age war stories, there are about a thousand that do a better job of depicting the loss of innocence and awakening to harsh reality of human nature and the world.

For the record, I wanted to swap it out for All Quiet on the Western Front.

7. Some authors who should be necessary additions to any American classics list:

-H.P. Lovecraft
-Edgard Rice Burroughs
-Ray Chandler
-Ray Bradbury
-Robert Heinlein
-Louis L’Amour
-Flannery O’Connor (though admittedly she’s probably a bit much for high schoolers)
-Possibly Ayn Rand for sheer influence and ideas, though I’d need to actually read her before I decide.