Little Miss Sunshine

When this low budget independent movie started to gain traction with theater audiences and received an Oscar nomination, there were many viewers who expressed confusion in regards to meaning of Little Miss Sunshine. And, based on the story, it seems logical why many Americans would not understand the meaning of this almost perfect cinematic tale.


The Story

Little Miss Sunshine is a story about a dysfunctional family living in New Mexico. The father is peddling a nine point plan for success that is gaining no acceptance. The mother realizes that her brother, the gay Proust scholar, unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. The teenage son takes a vow of silence until he achieves his goal of flying jets in the Air Force. The young daughter is obsessed with beauty pageants and lastly, the grandfather is a heroin addict forced to live with his son since he was thrown out of his retirement home.

The story picks up with the realization that the daughter has just qualified for a beauty pageant in California and the family must drive together to attend. During this journey, the VW Van breaks down and can only start in third gear. The father finds out that his book deal is not moving forward. The grandfather dies of a heroin overdose. The gay brother discovers that his lover has left him for his rival and the teenage son finds out that he is color blind and cannot fly jets.

Just making it in time to the beauty pageant, the family is struck by the recognition that the girls in the pageant are much pretty than the daughter. Even though the family wants to stop the daughter from performing, she goes on anyway and does a striptease act taught to her by her grandfather. The movie climaxes with the entire family defending the daughter’s right to perform on stage.

The Meaning

Little Miss Sunshine is a Buddhist tale. For this reason, I believe many Americans have a hard time understanding it. Americans, like the characters in the movie, embrace a tomorrow thinking culture and they do not share the “today attitude” of Buddhist philosophy.

In the movie, the characters ignore today and dream or lament about tomorrow. The father obsesses about a book deal that will make him rich. The son sacrifices any social life to become an Air Force pilot. The daughter dreams about becoming a beauty queen. On the other side, the gay brother gives up on tomorrow since he is no longer the preeminent Proust scholar and the grandfather thinks there is nothing else to live for so he slowly commits suicide by heroin use.

Through all of this forward thinking, when the daughter is making a travesty of the beauty pageant by performing an inappropriate, yet innocent striptease act, the family stops thinking about tomorrow and embraces today. Each individually jumps on stage and dances along with the daughter showing defiance to the beauty pageant. The beauty pageant is a symbol of a forward thinking culture that prepares each of us to participate in future “beauty pageants” that will constitute our “success”. Collectively realizing that life is about the here and now, the family enjoys the moment and rebukes their forward thinking personas.