Social Values Depicted in Pleasantville - Movie Review Example

Pleasantville The film opens in the present day America, which we have been compelled to visualize and conceive as rude, decadent and dangerous. Teenager named David pines away in front of the tube, viewing a rerun of a 1995 sitcom conveniently titled “Pleasantville” in which every person is always moral, upright and happy. Meanwhile, his mother quarrels with her divorced husband and his sister Jennifer gets ready for a hot date. After receiving a mysterious new remote from a TV repairman they are magically transported into that 1950 sitcom world, into the black-and-white world of Pleasantville. Fortunately, this is a world that David is conversant with and knows it only too well, he is a TV trivia expert. To his sister Jennifer, this world is a mystery, so he updates her, they are now christened the names Bud and Mary Sue and their parents are Betty and George Parker. The film conjures the black-and-white 1950s sitcom world which is adorned with picket fences and bobby sox, a world where everyone is white and middle class, in employment, sleeps in twin beds, not ever has used the toilet and follows an identical script cheerfully every day. As we watch the people of Pleasantville cling to their façade of innocence, we both envy and pity them. We realize that their innocence is due to their lack of basic adult knowledge, especially in sexual matters. When Mary Sue, begins to kiss her boyfriend, he suddenly looks terrified, stares at his lap and says, “I’m sick something is wrong with me. What’s happening?” Mary Sue who knows a little more about such things, smiles and says,” what is happening is what is supposed to happen. It’s a good thing. You’ll see!” The life in Pleasantville is boring in the eyes of Mary Sue and Bud. The Geography curriculum in the local high school is reduced to subjects like “Main Street” and “Elm Street” because the world of Pleasantville literally winds up at the city limits. Space spirals back upon itself in Pleasantville and “the end of Main street is just the beginning again.” Life always goes as is planned. The first social norm of the movie, is before the teens windup in Pleasantville, is right at the beginning of the movie where the father, played by William H. Macey, works all day to bring in the money and comes home to a home cooked meal by his wife, played by Joan Allen, whom stays home to cook, clean, and tend to the kids amongst other domestic duties. The children do show respect for their parents without any complaint. This seems too good to be true. It is more like a TV series than what they are watching on TV when their father arrives home. The curiosity of the brother and sister duo set them off to find out what the town of Pleasantville is like and why everything is in black and white. They soon realize that the apathetic attitude of Pleasantville is why the town is entirely in black and white. This cold, callous attitude has caused the somber coloration of the world in which Pleasantville sets. Thus, the teen siblings set out to bring about some change to this world where life would be alive and more colorful. The siblings do this with the help of a simple minded soda jockey, played by Jeff Daniels, who at first did not want to get involved. The soda jockey stated that he liked the way things were. That is until the teen duo begin describing things that the soda jockey had never experienced. He was, then, convinced to help the teens bring some color to the town of Pleasantville. He and the teens bring about an array of emotions from the townsfolk which starts to bring about a transformation in the town of Pleasantville from a town in black and white to a full colored palette. The buildings, the environment, the people, the culture, and the attitudes of everything become more colorful and varied. In Pleasantville life always goes as is planned and during basketball training every shot goes in, but things change after one player experiences sex and he gets the ability to actually miss a shot. A dead stillness falls as it rolls away. “Stand back, boys!” warns the coach. “Don’t touch it!” An interesting part in the film is when Betty turns up in colors, she is frightened to expose herself and in a scene of unexpected tenderness her son assists her in putting on gray makeup. Meanwhile, her husband George Parker waits unhappily at home for his routine to continue, something which initially used to be a continuous flow of repetitive acts but due to the things happening things are changing. The chairman of the chambers of commerce remarks worryingly, “something is happening in our town.” something is happening in a town where nothing ever did. The older townsfolk were not happy with the idea of upsetting the status quo. But the youngsters in the town went along with the ideals of the teenage siblings and the soda jockey. Thus, color started popping up in the town. The first bit of color came in the form of a red rose, then a green blade of grass, and so on. The most shocking things to come about were the flesh colored tones on their very own skins. The cultural norms of good heightened Christian values in the quiet little town of Pleasantville were radically changed with the introduction of things such as sex, art, rain, and ideas. These were initially were foreign to the small town of Pleasantville. Furthermore, the people of Pleasantville began to stop hiding behind a façade of an emotionless stonewall that was put up as the status quo for the quiet town. The color added to the town of Pleasantville allowed everyone in the town old and young alike to see the variety that everyone can enjoy. Life is not just black and white, emotionless and cold. But, variety is what makes life unique, and enjoyable. The allowance of the people to differ from the status quo means that not everyone has to enjoy the same things everyday of the week. People can change the way they do things from day to day. Furthermore, people can differentiate from one another, not just having to be copies of one another to be cogs in a machine to make it work, especially since a machine is usually comprised of a variety of different parts. Just, like the machine, a town or city is comprised of a variety of different parts, people and cultures around us. Conclusion In conclusion, Pleasantville shows us that even in the mild mannered 1950s, people can have a variety of ways of enjoying a full and rich life. People do not have to live a bland, black and white existence. Instead, people should enjoy life and have a full, well rounded, colorful life and strive to have more than one set of norms which govern their actions in everyday life. It is a movie about how people who remain unaware of their own desires miss out in life. We may not agree with the way the people of Pleasantville respond to their awakening desires, but we must agree with the movie’s premise that they should respond. Otherwise they are not even fully human. The movie notes that sometimes pleasant people are pleasant naively because they have never ever been contested or dared. That it is frightening and unsafe to learn unaccustomed ways. The people in color are like earlier pod people now freed and unchained to progress into the future. We note that nothing results to fascism like the threat of freedom. Pleasantville falls in the category of parables that inspires and urges us to reevaluate the good old days and take a renewed look at the new world we so effortlessly dismiss as rotten and decadent. True we have additional problems, but also more solutions and answers, more opportunities and more freedom. The film is a portrayal of the forces of the status quo against the threat of change. Bud and Mary Sue, the children from the future are taken to be the sand that gets in the oysters. The movie was not exactly a blockbuster, but it was brilliantly written and produced. It is a comedy that reassures the present society that besides all the currents difficulties and snags, there is hope that the world around us represents progress and not decay. Cited Works Natoli, Joseph P. This is a picture and not the world: movies and a post-9/11 America. 131-134. SUNY Press, 2007. Ebert, Roger . Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008. Group Publishing. Women's Ministry in the 21st Century: The Encyclopedia of Practical Ideas. illustrated. Group, 2004. Walsh, Richard G. Screening scripture: intertextual connections between scripture and film. illustrated. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002. Read More