The wonders in the information age never cease. I am about to quote at length from an insightful piece of cultural criticism I just ran across at The American Enterprise Online. It appears that the mouthpiece of the famously conservative organization is giving a little ideological leeway to its columnists.

How else to explain that they are publishing something that asserts a work of modern American pop culture has redeeming social value?

The subject of praise is the new film Little Miss Sunshine, which has opened to consistently great reviews. Eric Cox in his review does what more cultural critics should be doing — analyzing the film in its full social context:

The Hoovers aren?t meant to be a genuine representation of life in America?neither is the film interested in mocking the bourgeois American family. On the contrary, Little Miss Sunshine targets the notoriety- and sex-obsessed culture that tells the Hoovers they are all, to use Richard?s vocabulary, ?losers.?

They aren?t rich, famous, or attractive. They haven?t broken the law or done anything else worth being interviewed on television about. They?re normal. Average. Unexceptional.

Even Frank, the nation?s leading Proust scholar, is upstaged by his arch-rival, Larry Sugarman (Gordon Thomson)?the nation?s second-leading Proust scholar?whose book on the acclaimed but little-read French novelist becomes a New York Times bestseller and enables Sugarman to buy a new sports car.

In that single subplot, the movie manages simultaneously to satirize the dumbing-down of high culture, the obsession with conspicuous consumption, and the intellectual pretensions of the American upper-middle class.

Similarly, in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant?which itself suggests the superficial competition implied by the American preoccupation with ?keeping up with the Joneses??the movie parodies the sick sexification of children brought to light a few years back by the lurid murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

You might think it?s impossible to exaggerate the grotesqueness of that phenomenon, even for purposes of ridicule, but the film?s raucous climactic scene manages to do it in a way that is both shocking and hilarious.

Cox’s willingness to break down the allegory he sees is noteworthy. Manohla Dargis in The New York Times makes a shorter reference to the film being “a surprisingly sharp look at contemporary America, one that sets the metaphor of the stage (and, by extension, competition) against the cherished myth of the open road.” I think I know what she is getting at, but I’d rather hear her broader ideas than her breakdown of the action and performances. For that, I should — and certainly will — be seeing the film myself.