Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Comedy Podcast

The Land Before Time: Deep Thoughts About Grief, Animation, and How Much Scientific Verisimilitude We Require From Talking Dinosaur Cartoons

The movie

The Land Before Time
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Show notes

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen closely. This week, Tracie brings her deep thoughts about the 1988 Don Bluth animated film The Land Before Time . Although both Guy girls were a little too old to appreciate this staple of Millennial nostalgia when it originally came out, Tracie loved the hand-drawn animation, the way Bluth's storytelling offered a kid-friendly meditation on grief, and the pop culture trope of found family when she watched the film repeatedly while regularly babysitting dino-obsessed kiddos. There's still a lot to love in this gorgeous animation, even if you discount the technical skill of the artists. The story offers kids a framework for understanding loss and death and the long-term mental health challenges that can remain after experiencing grief. Considering how often children's movies don't allow their protagonists to feel sad for more than a scene, this is truly remarkable. But as much as the animation doesn't talk down to its audience in regards to Littlefoot's grief over his mother, it also underestimates kids' ability to understand what's happening on the screen and their ability to handle anything other than a MegaHappy ending. (Also: those dinosaurs lived millions of years apart. Tracie and Emily feel kind of hypocritical that they don't care.) Throw on your headphones and join us for a scientifically inaccurate but artistically beautiful prehistoric adventure! This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings. Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-

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