Little Miss Sunshine
Introduction
The hit comedy movie, Little Miss Sunshine, released in 2006 shows the simultaneous love and despair of a family relationship. Richard, the father, is adamant about selling his book about how to be a winner and ultimately fails at this attempt. Daughter, Olive, competes in beauty pageants with the help of her Grandpa. Grandpa lives at home with the family after being kicked out of his nursing home for doing drugs, which he loses his life to the night before Olive’s big pageant. Mother, Sheryl, is the breadwinner of the family and is seemingly on edge from all the stress of everyday life. Brother, Dwayne, is nonverbal by choice until he can be a pilot in the air force. He later learns that this can not happen due to him being color blind. Then Sheryl’s brother Frank attempts to commit suicide. The doctor recommended that he has to be with someone else at all times, so he moves into the Hoover family home. The whole household sets off on a journey to California for the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. They encountered many difficulties getting to the pageant on time including death, the police, and forgetting a child at a gas station. Once there, the family is arrested for getting up on stage with Olive and dancing provocatively, the dance that Grandpa was teaching Olive. As the movie comes to a close, upbeat music is playing as they jump in the van one by one a final time, hitting the parking gate arm on the way out.
Analysis
Richard Hoover
In the restaurant, Richard believes that Olives’ ordering of the ice cream will make her fat. He is without doubt stereotypical that all women in the beauty pageants are skinny due to a fact that they do not eat ice cream. His perception of beauty is skinny is beautiful and fat is his descriptive form of failure. He does not want Olive to fail, much like he doesn't want his book deal to fail.
Richard Hoover has the personality traits of being high-strung, humorless, and completely obsessed with winning. Based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Richard is at the genital stage of his life. The genital stage goes beyond adolescence and into adulthood where the goal of life is to love and to work. (Berger, 2016, pg. 24) Mr. Hoover is obsessed with working and putting his all into establishing his career, even if it means putting his family last. During the movie when the family gets to the hotel, Richard and his wife get into a fight which could possibly lead to a divorce. To apply another theory of development, Richard is suffering from Erikson’s 7th stage of Generativity vs. Stagnation. At this stage occurring during middle adulthood, people become concerned with contributing something to society and leaving their mark on the world (Berger, 2016, pg.24). Raising a family and having a career are two key activities that contribute to success at this stage. Richard is not doing so well with being generative because he is failing at his marriage, does not have the greatest relationship with his kids and his business venture woefully failed. But because of all the losses and failures that Richard experiences, it humbles him and it pushes him to support Olive at the little miss sunshine pageant, knowing she would not win. The failures with his work opens his eyes to realize that his family is more important.
Olive Hoover
Olive Hoover is a seven year old girl living amongst her seemly dysfunctional family. At this age, children tend to be very observant of the people around them. Her main interest is to win the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant in California. Olive’s intense passion for becoming a beauty queen and learning how to win the contest stems from Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. This theory states, “because humans are social beings, they learn from observing others without personally receiving any reinforcement” (Berger, 2016, p.28). This idea is accurately shown when Olive is watching the model on television and starts imitating her mannerism, learning how to become a beauty queen. She has received no formal teaching from a coach or her parents. Through observation, she simply watches and teaches herself how to properly act like one of the girls on television. A second theory that is exemplified in this film is Erikson's life stage of Industry vs. Inferiority. This stage fits Olive because the approximate age of this conflict is ages 6 to 11 years old. Also it describes how children want to learn and comprehend the various new skills presented to them. In contrast, if this is not achieved they will feel inferior and will not be able to do anything well (Berger 2016 p.25). An example of this theory is when Olive is learning her dance routine from her grandpa. He is teaching her inappropriate moves and the song is quite sexual. However, Olive being a young girl she feels the need to show him and her audience that she can memorize a choreographed dance even though it is not appropriate for the beauty pageant. I believe she achieves Erikson's fourth life stage she mastered the new skills of memorizing a dance routine and also learning how to perform in a beauty contest.
Discussion
Richard Hoover
In the case of Richard Hoover, because of his fear of stagnation , he has a tunnel vision view on life. His egocentric behavior has pushed him into a state where he is dismissive of the emotions of others because he is mostly concerned with making a substantial mark on life. Instead of spending the time to creating a loving, safe environment for his family,he is investing most of his time in nurturing his career. This is destructive to the family dynamic as seen in the movie. As long as Richard Hoover continues on this path, he will never feel as if he has reached the stage of generativity. This will surely continue on into the older adulthood stage. Rather than feeling like he has integrity, he will often find himself in despair, trying to figure out where he went wrong and what he could have done to improve his role in his family. At this point, Richard would feel as if he has no sense of belonging because he was unable to achieve certain milestones in his middle adulthood.
Olive Hoover
Olive is at an impressionable age. It is evident that the media plays a role in the idealization of body image in competitions, that is, the media emphasizes that to compete in a beauty competition, you must be very pretty and super skinny. Clearly this can cause Olive to strive for “body image perfection” as seen in the media. Since humans are social beings (Berger 2016 p.28), Olive is willing to mimic the behavior seen by beauty contestants in the media, which predisposes her to experiment with eating disorders to achieve such perfection. This will be detrimental to her transition into adolescence, where she will feel inferior to her competition counterparts. Her insecurity levels will be elevated because Olive will struggle with a constant questioning, since her dad has planted the stereotypical seed of how a beauty contestant is suppose to look. Erikson hypothesizes that once an individual feels inferior within this stage of inferiority versus industry, their next stage of development it is highly likely that they will experience role confusion.
Conclusion
Little Miss Sunshine is a multi dimensional film that showcases the real problems that families can encounter in life. The Hoover family brings drug abuse, suicide and family dysfunction to life. Each of the main characters in the movie grow and shape as they travel to the beauty pageant. The two main protagonist that highlight exponential change is Richard and Olive Hoover. Richard lives out Erikson’s seventh stage which is Generativity vs. Stagnation, by trying to make his mark. He is constantly battling through the film trying to push his winning mentality but ultimate realising that family comes first. This also supports that he is in the genital stage of his life based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Olive on the other hand is battling her own fight at only seven years old. Even Erikson has a level for a young child, she is going through his fourth stage, Industry vs. Inferiority. During this stage she is realizing the idea of modesty which she achieves after her family is kicked out of the pageant. Olive also demonstrates the greatest fact of children which is they observe. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory clearly shows that Olive is a typical child that does what she sees. This movie is a prime example on how characters grow and develope which is shown through the growth and development theories.