What Is The Theme Of Parenting In Little Miss Sunshine Movie
Allen - Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine is a black comedy film that portrays a scattered family that slowly bonds throughout the course of the film. It shows how parenting in the incorrect ways can lead to negative results on the children and how easily these mistakes can be fixed with the right timings and circumstances, in the movie's case it was a trip to California. The movie depicts the interactions of a broken family but was contrasted by the interactions near the end where this same group of people had become much closer and would be considered more as a family than the before. The parenting topics explored and depicted in this film are the types of family, parenting styles, and attachment theory. These topics are displayed as to showed to inform the viewer about these topics. …show more content…
The family refers to a unit consisting of a married couple living with or without children, and the different types of a family can be referring to extended or grandparents.
The movie shows a family that consists of the nuclear family, with the addition of one grandparent and one extended member. Between these people, Dwayne, the son of the mother, is the stepson of the father, which is a blended family relationship and uncle Frank is the brother in law of the father. The movie also hinted at a once potential LGBT family going on with the uncle and one of his students.
According to a certain definition of a family(Marvin Zuker’s), these band of people was not a family legitimate family in the beginning due to there being almost no emotional connections between a lot of the members. But over the course of this film, these people interact together more frequently and depended on each other either financially or emotionally which defines them as a family by the end of the
film.
Within the Family, there are certain roles which each member plays, and the role of parenting and its influence on the children are portrayed in an almost comical way. All 3 Parenting styles are present in the film: The grandfather being democratic by guiding olive to becoming what of he thinks would be a successful model, the mother being extremely permissive as she leaves Dwayne to his own devices by even allowing him to continue a vow of silence for 9 months and the father being authoritative as he constantly talks about being either a looser or a winner in an attempt to push the children(mainly Olive) in the direction in which he defines as successful. The 3 different styles being depicted imperfectly and comically sends the message of the styles having different strengths and weaknesses. This suggests that the best parenting style would need to be a combination of all 3 parenting styles as well as it being tailored to the child's needs and characteristics.
Lastly, the Attachment theory is also present in the film although not depicted in the most positive way. Attachment theory explains the attachment and bonds between family members, specifically, the bonds parents develop on the child. Note that this bond does not always make the child reciprocal back a similar bond. Which was exactly Dwayne’s case in the movie. All of his family members, including the extended uncle, attempts to include Dwayne in their activity, this is seen from the uncle actively making conversation with him in the beginning scenes. Even with all of this attention given to Dwayne, he did not immediately start to develop any bonds but instead he only developed bonds after his break down when he was the most vulnerable. With the help of his sister, who confronted him after the break down he was able to find the confidence to develop a bond with other family members and eventually became good friends with his uncle.
Little Miss Sunshine is a black comedy film that portrays a scattered family that slowly bonds throughout the course of the film. It shows how parenting in the incorrect ways can lead to negative results on the children and how easily these mistakes can be fixed with the right timings and circumstances, in the movie's case it was a trip to California. The movie depicts the interactions of a broken family but was contrasted by the interactions near the end where this same group of people had become much closer and would be considered more as a family than the before. The parenting topics explored and depicted in this film are the types of family, parenting styles, and attachment theory. These topics are displayed as to showed to inform the viewer about these topics. …show more content…
The family refers to a unit consisting of a married couple living with or without children, and the different types of a family can be referring to extended or grandparents.
The movie shows a family that consists of the nuclear family, with the addition of one grandparent and one extended member. Between these people, Dwayne, the son of the mother, is the stepson of the father, which is a blended family relationship and uncle Frank is the brother in law of the father. The movie also hinted at a once potential LGBT family going on with the uncle and one of his students.
According to a certain definition of a family(Marvin Zuker’s), these band of people was not a family legitimate family in the beginning due to there being almost no emotional connections between a lot of the members. But over the course of this film, these people interact together more frequently and depended on each other either financially or emotionally which defines them as a family by the end of the
film.
Within the Family, there are certain roles which each member plays, and the role of parenting and its influence on the children are portrayed in an almost comical way. All 3 Parenting styles are present in the film: The grandfather being democratic by guiding olive to becoming what of he thinks would be a successful model, the mother being extremely permissive as she leaves Dwayne to his own devices by even allowing him to continue a vow of silence for 9 months and the father being authoritative as he constantly talks about being either a looser or a winner in an attempt to push the children(mainly Olive) in the direction in which he defines as successful. The 3 different styles being depicted imperfectly and comically sends the message of the styles having different strengths and weaknesses. This suggests that the best parenting style would need to be a combination of all 3 parenting styles as well as it being tailored to the child's needs and characteristics.
Lastly, the Attachment theory is also present in the film although not depicted in the most positive way. Attachment theory explains the attachment and bonds between family members, specifically, the bonds parents develop on the child. Note that this bond does not always make the child reciprocal back a similar bond. Which was exactly Dwayne’s case in the movie. All of his family members, including the extended uncle, attempts to include Dwayne in their activity, this is seen from the uncle actively making conversation with him in the beginning scenes. Even with all of this attention given to Dwayne, he did not immediately start to develop any bonds but instead he only developed bonds after his break down when he was the most vulnerable. With the help of his sister, who confronted him after the break down he was able to find the confidence to develop a bond with other family members and eventually became good friends with his uncle.