New Lessons are in Session: Revisiting My Childhood Media
By Turi Sioson
Media has always been a mirror to me. As a kid, I made the characters of TV shows, movies, and books into my best friends and my personality; their fictional lives were the basis for some of my earliest transformations and stories. I was shaped into a lover of nature, people, and life in ways I suspect the creators intended. But combined with pandemic-prompted reflection, my move into the liminal space between childhood and full-fledged adulthood has been marked by doubt, hesitation, and a sense that something is missing.
I rewatched Bolt in the middle of my first finals week at a new university, imposter syndrome and difficult classes making me feel as though I'd lost the part of me that was creative and free. I kicked off the summer with Lilo and Stitch to remind me of play; I stayed up until three in the morning to remember how to chase my dreams with Kiki’s Delivery Service. The media that showed me the building blocks of adolescence is teaching me now, at 20 years old, lessons that are all the more relevant to this time of change.
Though it’s been growing increasingly common for Gen Z to recognize and act upon their desire to move away from the confines of a 9-to-5 lifestyle, I was late to the game. It wasn’t until I was halfway through college last year that I realized that lifestyle was not something I wanted. I longed to feel free; to have the space to be myself. Bolt and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron began to show me how.
I watched Bolt one night to cheer myself up and feel something other than the crushing weight of college. Ironically, I think it made me feel worse—I was sobbing my eyes out halfway through the movie. As Bolt travels through the country with Mittens and Rhino, he is given lessons on how to be a regular dog again, rather than the Hollywood superdog he has played for years. His face lights up—snout upturned to the wind and rain—his tail wags, and the lightning bolt gradually washes off his fur, erasing the persona that left him disconnected from reality. Though I was working my way through a job, school, and pursuing professional opportunities (what everyone calls “reality”), I felt as though I was being untrue to myself. At a time when I was just beginning to question my belonging to an academic and corporate space, Bolt opened my eyes to what it was that I really wanted: freedom to be myself, even if that meant outside the traditional 9-5.
And while Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron certainly showed me this freedom as well, what I connected with on a much deeper level was Spirit’s desire for a simple life: open space, freedom from exploitation, and a community. He finds this at least partially with the Lakota and a young man’s horse, Rain. He is given a relatively large, open space with someone he loves, but he still feels stuck somewhere that does not satisfy his longing for freedom to explore, which is alluded to as the eagle he used to run with flies past and leaves him away from his homeland.
Being corralled into multiple exploitative yet loving—and even somewhat nurturing—spaces: my service industry job with some of my best friends as coworkers; my flawed and demanding university with peers and professors that encourage and inspire me, I found myself learning from Spirit’s struggle to leave for a life that will better fit and benefit him. Though I am relatively happy in the spaces I am in, Spirit reminds me that sometimes I must leave something good to attain something better.
But lifestyle and environment are only part of the struggle. I've always had big dreams, and making these dreams a reality has, in the last few years, been met with doubt that leaves me feeling defeated at the start line. But if any of my childhood media could show me how to navigate through this, it's Kiki’s Delivery Service and Kung Fu Panda.
As a wide-eyed little girl who grew up on Studio Ghibli heroines, Kiki’s Delivery Service was always how I saw my girlhood: the desire for new adventures, places, and friends. I watched and rewatched the film with glistening eyes, swearing that one day, I would be like Kiki: independent as she easily finds her way through new environments. But it wasn’t until recently that I began to truly see Kiki as me: scared, confused, but wanting desperately to chase her dreams. She takes off from her hometown to begin her witches’ training without even the slightest idea of what her skill is; she is disheartened by the cold welcome of her new city, but sticks it out because she wants to make her dream work.
Though I'm now older than her, Kiki’s youth and inexperience forces the same doubt upon her, making her stumble before she can stand (as is sung in the English dub song, “Soaring”). Instead of giving up, Kiki uses what she knows—flying—to do something, advancing her reputation, friendships, and confidence, even when she makes mistakes, reminding me that I simply need to take a leap to succeed.
But what about my quirks? My unconventional poetry that doesn’t ever seem to fit into the journals that I keep submitting to? How do I keep my differences from stopping my momentum to fulfill my dreams? In a completely silly confidence boost, Kung Fu Panda silenced these questions for me. The film is so much a favorite of mine that I rewatch it nearly every year, but it wasn’t until I came across a TikTok referencing a line from Master Oogway to Po that a new message was suddenly unlocked: “Quit, don’t quit. Noodles, don’t noodles. You are too concerned with what was, and what will be. There’s a saying: ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift — that is why it is called a ‘present.’”
Po is a panda; he is a noodle maker, and romanticizes kung fu to the point of embarrassment. He is easily hurt by the words of others, and he is not driven by the same things that the Furious Five or their masters are. He does not have the typical size, shape, or mentality of someone who practices kung fu. And because of all of this, he initially fails at learning the martial art, hitting a nerve with the young artist that I am, as I remembered the countless times I felt incapable of doing what I have always wanted to do, simply because of my differences. While as a kid I learned that Po used his uniqueness to his advantage in fulfilling his dream, Master Oogway’s words have taught me something new. I spend so much time questioning and worrying about my differences that I forget how to simply experience my journey and, more importantly, my life. I’m almost ashamed to say it, but an animated turtle has taught me more in the last year than any real person has in my whole life.
But maybe that is rivaled by what an animated teenager had to teach me. Since entering the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, I constantly had to remind myself of the basic ingredients to a happy everyday life—things that I knew intuitively as a child, but quickly lost as I became more acquainted with the world as capitalistic, complicated, and confusing. The days of spending my afternoons and evenings watching and then reading Little Bear had gone; the simple pleasure of play and gentleness was no longer a part of my everyday life. Lilo and Stitch took on the label of my favorite movie with an active disconnect from my inner child that it protected. Unlike when I was playful and imaginative, I lost sight of the simplicity of joy until I was desperate to heal my inner child through the media that nurtured it before.
Lilo and Stitch has an everlasting effect on me, especially with how I’ve always seen myself in Lilo. As a weird, outcast, brown little girl, it was rare for me to find a character that looked and acted so much like me. People would often guess that I was Hawaiian before they found out I was Filippino, and Lilo’s love for music, water, and all things unusual made her a near-perfect fit for me. But once I passed 19, I suddenly saw myself crystal clear in Lilo’s older-sister-turned-guardian, Nani. I’ve watched this film hundreds of times, but never fully understood the degree that Nani would go not only to protect Lilo’s child-like creativity, but to encourage and nurture it.Nani stops the kennel attendant from rejecting Lilo’s naming of her new “dog” Stitch. Instead of blaming Lilo for losing her job, she confirms Lilo’s story of the manager being a vampire and tries to convince her sister into joining his “legion of the undead.” When I noticed those details, I was struck by my ability to see myself both as Lilo and Nani in these situations. I was at Nani’s age, lost and trying my best, but I was also Lilo, a little girl who desperately needed nurturing. I saw Nani as my current self, allowing my younger self (Lilo) to be who she is and feel what she needs. How appropriate that my favorite film from childhood through young adulthood first taught me how to accept myself, and is now teaching me how to nurture my inner child.
Part of that inner child includes a series that is comfort and childhood personified, one that saw me through lazy afternoons, sick days, and cozy evenings. Little Bear was the first book series I ever read, after being introduced to the TV show through VHS tapes. Little Bear spends his days with friends of all kinds—a duck, a cat, humans, bears, frogs, etc—and taught me, in some unconscious way, how to get along with others. But as a young adult who sees the series as a comfort, I’ve come to learn that there is a reminder of something that rings far more true in my life now than it ever could have when I was younger. Childhood fosters play, of course, but it also fosters being gentle and patient, two characteristics that are easily lost in the midst of the fast-paced, technology-centered world I’ve come to be a young adult in. When Little Bear dreams of a mermaid in a lake and a trip to the moon, the characters are gentle with him—they do not discount his tales or tell him that he is being a bother. It is a reminder that I am allowed to slow down; to be patient with my inner child. The nature of my age is that the little girl who made me who I am still has her say in my life, and much of my discomfort can be soothed by a trip back to my gentle and open roots that Little Bear forever embodies.
In a way, I felt as though I had already learned everything I could from the media I grew up on. It was fun to revisit, but not beneficial. In another, truer way, my childhood media has always taught me lessons—especially in one of my greatest times of change. It’s a pool in which you can see your reflection, distortions and all; a wide, open space that allows you to explore; a perpetual afternoon of friends and slow activities. In these fictional childhoods, there are a million perspectives to shape and reshape who I am, and who I can be. ♦