Little Miss Sunshine

I’m not going to lie, the thing that’s deterred me from watching this movie for so long is the poster. 

The incredibly bright yellow for some reason made me think this was one of those boilerplate optimism movies that’s mass marketed to the American public to persuade that even if their boss is brutally exploiting them and the weight of the world is crushing their skulls and they had to eat a one-dollar cheeseburger from McDonalds again for the fourth night in a row because they had no other choice, it’ll all be okay, and they just need to keep going, just keep working harder, just endure through the pain, and it’ll all work out fine. 

Safe to say this film is nothing like that and there seems to be a lot more going on. Lesson learned: don’t judge a film by its poster.
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If there was a “Great American Movie” like there’s a “Great American Novel”, I’d put this in the running. It feels like the film gives a glimpse into an essential aspect of American social life.

I see Lauren Berlant’s work everywhere in the film. It’s that feeling of attachment to dreams or ideals that are ultimately objects to one’s own flourishing. Whether it be becoming a pilot, a particular career move, achieving academic superstar status, or succeeding in a beauty pageant— the attachments the characters have to these dreams resonate so deeply with Berlant’s thinking.

At its core, I think what both the film and Berlant are interested in is this very neoliberal capitalist idea that you need to “fix yourself”. I don’t mean it is neoliberal to notice things within ourselves and work to fix them. I mean the phrase as a sort of demand that holds within it this way in which neoliberal culture assumes a certain level of deficiency or lack inside of the body politic. That there’s something innately wrong with us, and to fix it, we need to vote with our dollars at the cash register and purchase those things that promise to fix this deficit. This movie asks, rather, what if we revel in that deficit? What if everything we need is already inside of us?