self-awareness

From the movie and novels we went through in this unit, there is a large group of characters whose attempt to define their relationship with society leads them to alienation from their true identity. From the movie Little Miss Sunshine to The Invisible Man, lots of characters lack the self-awareness of the their identity as an individual in society.

The narrator of the Invisible Man, for example, his home, or “hole” creates a huge contract between how he sees himself and how others treat him. The narrator describes his “hole” as a warm and bright place that he doubts if there is a brighter spot in all New York than his “hole”. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”, narrator is often ignored and alienated by people around him (which also made him alienated himself from his true identity), therefore, it seems reasonable that his “hole” is full of light – where he could express himself as what he believes who he is.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, when Olive is introduced, she is watching old tapes of Miss America pageants and mimicking the contestants – it is clear that Olive wants to be a beauty queen. However, as her journey progresses, Olive begins to doubt herself and her ability to win. In the scene that Olive disappointedly refuses her ice cream because her father warns her that ice cream will make her fat, and Miss America is never fat. By choosing not to eat ice cream, Olive chooses conventional beauty over happiness, showing how her individual wills are against what society expects her to be – to be a perfect skinny ideal female. At the moment Olive refuses to eat ice cream, the “ideal women figure” drives her away from her true self.