Monday, February 9, 2015

Blog 002 *Little Miss Sunshine


"Dysfunctional but Functional Family at the end Thou"


Absolutely, “little miss sunshine” is a kind of movie wherein it has a symbolism. I state an example on that and that was the scenario of the family in their yellow van. I think the van and its colour represents that their family was dysfunctional. The van itself is a representation of the family and their dysfunction. For example, along the way going the California they had many problems with their vehicle and also their communication inside the van, firstly, the horn plays up, which causes them to be pulled over by a police officer. In that sense where the police came over to their van one member of their family, Richard told them try to act as normal. That was an insulting statement as the family themselves are seen as social untouchables with each other and as far away from normal day they had and they used to. In addition, the Van’s gearbox plays up and the family are told by a Mechanic that the Van can still start but only in third gear, you just have to be perfect at starting it. This is suggesting that teamwork is required in order to go further, which is difficult at that time as the Family are close to a breakdown.

The Van’s over-all beaten-up appearance also contributed the idea and emphasizes the fact that they themselves, have taken many emotional beatings. The setting of the Van plays a part in symbolizing the family, the wide-open spaces in the background, are in contrast to the cramped-up inside of the Van where the Family are forced to communicate with each other in order to attain one common end which was to support Olive in the beauty pageant.

            I’ll go the characters who gave life to the movie. First we have: Olive Hoover,  an ambitious beauty pageant. The little girl who was very hopeful to compete with the “little miss sunshine”. One day she was very happy as she received a call from one of the organizer of the pageant that she qualify for the beauty pageant in California. For the chance to fulfil her dreams, the whole family supported her and drove to California in order to compete with the said beauty pageant.


            Sheryl Hoover who's losing patience with both his crisis and their marriage. Mother of Olive, at first she was uneasy to the decision in letting Olive joined the competition but as she go through he convinced his husband to join them to California.


            Richard Hoover a motivational speaker whose career downslide is starting to give the lie to his own philosophy. He had many misunderstanding with his wife and to the other family member. He kept in resisting going to California for the beauty pageant, she told Sheryl that Olive will get upset at the end of the pageant since many of the contestants are really good compared with their child.


             Olive's teenage brother was Dwayne Hoover hasn't spoken in nine months. He's not depressed, exactly; he's been reading Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence while training to get into flight school. Plus, he hates everybody. He only wrote whatever he wanted to say something and he also wrote his respond as an answer to the person who asked question from him.


            Grandpa, Olive's coach, spends hours working on her dance routine for the beauty pageant. Grandpa has been kicked out of a retirement home, for sleeping around and for snorting heroin; he’s into taking drugs and he was always bringing drugs with him wherever he goes and drugs was the cause of his death. His philosophy is that you'd have to be crazy to do smack when you're young, but when you get old, you'd be crazy not to.


            Uncle Frank, Sheryl's brother, is the number one Proust scholar in the world, and has just attempted suicide because he fell in love with a graduate student who neglected him. He was at the same time a companion with grandpa as they agreed each other whatever they did in their travel to California.


            In addition, Little Miss Sunshine is a friendly and breezy film, with a neatly engineered dramatic twist - yet the satiric intent is weirdly uncertain. The movie is tricked out with embarrassments and euro-literary references and the very fact that they're headed for one of these creepy kiddie-beauty pageants is intended to function as a continuous, background guarantee of edginess and indie daring.

In the competition they supported Olive all throughout the way and that made their family functional wherein they never agreed things beforehand but in that certain time they worked together as family, they showed to Olive that they’re enjoying the competition even though his grandpa was dead due to overdose of the drugs. They gave their all support to olive because it was her dream to attend in that beauty pageant.







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