The Changing Ways of Normal
In the film, Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a team of American film and music video directors, explore the ideas of beauty standards and what it means to be a winner or a loser. In the film, 7 year old Olive Hoover wants to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. With her over worked mother, gay uncle who was just released from the psych ward, type A father, a brother who took a vow of silence, and a drug addicted grandfather, they take a trip to California for the pageant. With family tensions high, the Hoover family goes through obstacles like their van breaking down, the father yelling at everyone, and the grandfather overdosing. Throughout the movie, there are many different norms that are tested. When the Hoover family was out to lunch on their trip, and Olive wanted to order ice cream, her father tried to tell her that you need to be skinny to be a beauty pageant. Throughout the movie, the idea of ...