More Proof That I'm Not So Bright

Ever since I saw the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" I have been smugly confident that I was only one who noticed how much the film cribbed from "The Grapes of Wrath." This morning a Google search, of all things, proved how wrong I was. Not only had other people made the connection, they also noticed how many similarities the film had with "National Lampoon's Family Vacation." I hadn't noticed these similarities, in part because I've never been a huge fan of that movie and because I havn't seen it in about 15 years. At any rate, let's summarize what the film has in common with "The Grapes of Wrath:"

• Doomed roadtrip to California (a sort of promised land).
• A highly unreliable yet decidedly all-American form of transportation (Joads' Jalopy, the Hoover's VW van). Incidentally - a good dissertation chapter for somebody who actually has talent and is in Cinema would be to look at these movies using the theoretical model developed by James Chandler.
  
• Young female who is the hope of the family.
• Terse young man.
• Father unable to provide for the family/make good decisions.
• Financial crisis.
• Mother who holds everything together.
• Death of the matriarch in the midst of it all (Arkin's character is sufficiently feminized through his attention to Olive to make this argument viable. Plus, the porno addiction subplot never really went very far).
• The Hoover's original location is never disclosed. We only know how far they have to go to get where they are going. I think that this is ultimately not dissimilar from Steinbeck's placing of the Joads in Oklahoma - a kind of cultural and geographical Nowheresville - even now, but especially during the depression (afterall, only 20 some-odd years before the novel was written Oklahoma was still 'Indian Territory' and was the last blank spot on a map of the contiguous 48).
• We aren't experiencing a Dustbowl right now - but global warming will fix that in no time. Additionally, after Katrina we know that we're all fucked if something like that happens again.
  
• How much more do you need? I think this list will suffice.

One point of contention I do have with those who have already pointed out the similarities between the two texts. Some tried to make the claim that things aren't really that bad for the Hoovers. Certainly, its not like they just lost the farm to the banker-man, but things are pretty bleak nonetheless. They face a financially uncertain future and exhibit exactly the same kind of morose, dispirited ennui that the Joads practically ooze. The key difference here is that Steinbeck had the perspective to write-in all the socioeconomic elements of despair that we associate with the depression. "Little Miss Sunshine" doesn't have that kind of perspective because it is written in the midst of a slow, disastrous national crisis. Rather than make these things explicit, the film assumes that the audience knows of what it speaks. In any major American theater a majority of the people in attendance are tied to unreliable transportation, have no long-term hope, probably don't have or can't afford insurance. Above all, we're all effected by the perverse American sense of social Darwinism which dictates that we all have to figure out a way to survive or be ruthlessly cast aside. The Joads were willing to go to California to pick apples, but we live in the age of the culture industry. It is fitting then, that "Little Miss Sunshine" made the transition into this new, more modern venue. And really, the point is the same - be exploited by the agricultural industry or be exploited by the culture industry. In my mind this is the great failure of the movie. By making such a joke of Olive's performance at the end it ultimately makes light of the kind of exploitation that each and every one of us would sell our souls for. Fame and fortune seem like the only truly safe antidotes to the creeping cultural and economic slide that our country is currently undergoing. However, we have to bear in mind that the film is a film. Its part of the culture industry that it fails to critique. In that sense we should not be surprised as the fox will always relish his chance to guard the hen house.