the "okayness" of lms in modern context

while watching little miss sunshine, ridaa, jacob, and i had a lot of commentary to give in our group chat. something that we talked about a lot was the fact that a lot of the themes in the movie, which came out in 2006, would not be reacted to in the same way if it was released in 2020. some of these things i actually thought to be quite funny, such as gay and suicidal steve carell, so i think it just depends on the audience. though people on the internet will always be mad about something, i don't believe that there was anything in this movie that would cause mass condemnation or is retrospectively offensive, such as slurs or other discriminatory language. and despite that, many movies from the early 2000s have dialogue that is more wholeheartedly considered to be offensive in modern times. take mean girls for example: though it's been over a decade, people just cannot seem to get over it. i re-watched it about a year ago, and i remember being able to point out specific scenes that would not be able to fly today. for example, janis ian is called a slur towards gay women at least once, and the characterization of the lunch tables separated by race/social circle thing is weird too.

but i digress. 

the biggest red flag, in my opinion, is the beauty pageant scene. as much as i'd love to delve into the complexities of everything subliminally and explicitly wrong with pageants, i'm trying to keep it brief here, so we will continue. the beauty pageant scene is the worst because of the demonstrations of young girls' bodies. i understand that it is supposed to be part of the satiric social commentary-- something that's supposed to make you think, "look at how dumb this is!", but i feel like in 2020 it can be deemed unnecessary. some may argue that it was a more fitting commentary on the times of 15 years ago, when things such as toddlers & tiaras were in the upcoming future, and to that i can agree with to an extent. but it's not like little miss sunshine was a movie meant to criticize the sexualization of children in the first place. personally, i feel that the exploitation of children for shock factor or comedic value or whatever will always be immoral, no matter how okay it was at that moment in time. i get that it's not like olive did anything explicit-- which also leads my minds onto the thoughts of children being made to act a certain way to preserve their innocence or propriety vs. the "let kids be kids argument"-- but that was what stood out to me the most.