Little Miss Sunshine

Social deviance can be defined as a deviation from societal norms as portrayed in the film Little Miss Sunshine. The characters form a dysfunctional family each one having their own form of social deviance. The father instills a crude perspective of parenting, the son expresses symbolic interactionism through silence, and the daughter portrays her grandfather's outlooks on life through her talents at the beauty pageant.

The father's outlooks on life are easily summed up as winning in life is the way to succeed. He goes about his parenting in a way that distracts from showing how to support his family in a loving way. He deviates from social norms in how he chooses his priorities and how he focuses on succeeding in life more so than being a father. He even uses his form of success as a way to have his seven-year-old daughter worry about her weight instead of just enjoying being a kid. He is also deviant in how he chooses to stray from social norms with how he deals with different situations that arise on their trip to California. Such as putting his deceased father in the back of their van, choosing not to fix their form of transportation, and leaving his family in the middle of the night to consult his work that fell through.

The son vows a vow of silence until he flies for the air force which is uncommon for people of society to do. His symbolic interactionism is represented through how he shows his disliking towards everyone including his family. He lacks to emotion to care for anyone in his family because of how dysfunctional they are. Instead of helping them work through their problems and express his feelings towards them he just ignores them because it is easier to not have to deal with any of it. As a result of his issues with interacting with others, he holds in all of his feelings and suffers from all of his thoughts.

The daughter is fond of her grandpa and learns his outlooks of life. She takes his advice on how to dance and forms a routine representing how he has his own opinions and sticks to them no matter what. During the pageant she shows her social deviance in how different her music, routine, and looks are compared to everyone else in the pageant. All of the family realized how everyone else in the pageant fit a different style than what they knew their daughter did. As they realized her deviation from the pageants norms they began to embrace it and truly expressed their growth as a family in how they supported her.

Hollywood portrayed social deviance in an oblivious way through this film. Little Miss Sunshine represents a variety of social deviances, some being positive deviances and others being negative. This film shows how you can grow and change from your differences and how embracing your deviances can express personal thoughts and opinions in a good way. Not everyone is deviant in the same way but if everyone were to be the same, they could be easily represented