The Creeps in the Shadows

Bernanation Muses on Lessons Learned from
Little Miss Sunshine and Humbert Humbert

While Little Miss Sunshine has received a healthy heaping of praise from movie buffs across the country for its wit, charm, and surprising humor, little has been said about the film's darker undertones. As the JonBenet Ramsey case rises with the rest of the sleaze to the top of the tabloids, and lawyers scramble to represent the gender-confused John Mark Karr, I can't quite suppress the chill in my bones, regardless of the sunshine.

The film follows a kooky family’s road trip across country so the youngest daughter, seven-year-old Olive, can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. On the day of the big pageant, the family sits uncomfortably in an audience of plasticine women. Olive's father notices a lone man decked out like a Hell's Angel sitting among the sea of pastel. He leans over, "Are you a father?" he asks. The leather-jacketed Goliath snorts and responds, "This your first pageant?" and pops in his ear plugs. While this moment caused me to laugh, I ended up choking on my mirth.

The film clearly identifies the pervert among the crooning mums, but it's not as easy to put your finger on the sicko in real life (not that you'd want to literally put your finger anywhere near a sicko). I mean, look at Karr: he was a schoolteacher; a nice looking man who was hunted down in Thailand and transported to America in business class whilst feasting on king prawns. No, the Humbert Humbert is not always the sleazy looking fellow dressed in leather; hell, the openly sleazy guys are usually more like Olive's grandfather, who'd rather be purusing porno magazines at the gas station than secretly lusting after the Olsen twins. Porn in and of itself is not illegal, but pedophilia is a different story. And the scary thing is, the guy with the kiddie porn on his harddrive could be the one teaching your kids their ABCs.

"Little Miss Sunshine" takes a close look at sexuality in American culture, and just how supremely warped our conception of it is. Some Americans think it’s perfectly acceptable to dress young girls in midriff-baring bikinis and lacquer their faces with make-up. They get to their feet and cheer when "tweens" croon suggestive pop songs and gyrate with batons. Because sexuality is only hinted at, Americans sit back in comfort; they don't have to stare sex in the eye, so it doesn't exist. (Now, I'm going to give away the ending of the film, so anyone who loathes spoilers should move on to Croftie's cartoon or something.) Still, if you put on "Super Freak" and "take it all off!" like Olive does for her talent, ho boy! America will slap you with a big old "censored" sign. It doesn't matter that Olive's moves are clumsy and childish, nor that she's still wearing more clothing than all the other girls combined, sex is expressed outright and that's WRONG. Let's all bask in the hypocrisy of our culture for a minute. America loves a good tan.

Little Miss Sunshine is a great film; it tells us to accept our families as they are, regardless of their eccentricities or shortcomings, and it reveals the truly revolting nature of the beauty pageant. Yet, while the film implicates the moms and pops who mold their daughters into mini sexpots, it falls short of dispelling certain stereotypes, namely, that those who look respectable are not always so genteel. The bad guys don't always wear leather and chains and tool around on bikes. No, if we've learned nothing from Lolita, Gentle Hum prefers first class.