"The Unpleasantness of Pleasantville" by Eric J. Lakits

14 Nov 98

The movie Pleasantville is the story of two teenagers--a brother and a sister--who get trapped in a late 1950's television sitcom. The plot of the story is how they influence the people living in a black and white universe and how that universe changes to color as a result.

On the surface, the movie appears to promote values such as freedom of expression and individual rights, while attacking prejudice and the idea of dictated morality. And this is the window dressing that the writers would like you to believe. However, the real aim of the movie is to assault values as such, and it does so by presenting a Garden of Eden style allegory in which the audience is cheering for the serpent--but for the wrong reasons.

The overall message of the movie is confusing at first. It begins with a montage of the dogma that we usually hear in our current culture (e.g., jobs are scarce, the earth is warming, AIDS is a primary killer, etc.). This is presented to the audience as a typical day at school. The audience is left wondering “why bother!” From here, the male lead goes home and retreats into the television set where he finds his escape from reality.

During a fight with his sister over the remote control, they break it. In a style similar to an episode of The Twilight Zone, a television repair man mysteriously appears at the door to help. He replaces the broken controller with a magical one that ends up transporting the brother and sister pair into a fictitious sitcom called Pleasantville. In Pleasantville, everything is as it would be in a late 1950's television sitcom, but exaggerated out of proportion. There are no toilets, people do not have sex, married couples sleep in separate beds, people perform the same routines mindlessly over and over, etc.

The boy, Bud (his name in Pleasantville), observes that if they are not careful they could disturb the entire universe of these people. The sister, Jennifer (her name in the real world), does not care and chooses to continue being her promiscuous self. This is what leads to the predictable results that follow. During the movie, many townspeople--starting with the teenagers--begin to become colorized as they experience things they never had before. Gradually, the temptation to have sex, read books, run around in the rain, masturbate, leave home causes a rift in the small town.

At this point the message of the movie begins to come into focus. The audience is presented with a choice between two false ideas: rigid conformity to social morality, or range of the moment, whim-worshiping hedonism; a strictly defined code of Republican style ‘family values’ dictated by society and tradition, or no code at all. In philosophical terms, it becomes a battle between intrinsicism and subjectivism.

The choice the writers have made between the two false alternatives becomes obvious. For, during this rift, the locals who choose to adhere to their old ways are depicted, by way of analogy, as white southern racists. They are shown placing “No Coloreds” signs in store windows, harassing the “coloreds,” burning books, throwing rocks through windows. The message to the audience is that people with no objective standards of value are moral, while those who do hold value judgements--right or wrong--are racists.

By denouncing a standard of values without filling the void with a new standard, the movie essentially declares that there should be no objective standards or otherwise. It is no accident that, in the field of literature, the movie extols the works of D.H. Lawrence, J.D. Sallinger, Herman Melville, and in the field of art presents the audience with paintings that are out of focus, lacking in perspective, non-cognitive, and even non-representational. The artwork that eventually brings the movie to its pivotal climax is similar to an inner city wall mural.

Trying to restore order, the local government publishes an edict. In it, they rightfully ban certain courses of action (such as those committed by the mobs), while at the same time ban legitimate activities such as painting with colors and listening to popular music. How do the alleged heros respond to this oppression? Rather than answering as they should with rational principles and cogent arguments, they instead respond with blind rebellion and self-expression.

It should be no surprise then when the boy has to make his climactic speech in court that he has no philosophical reasons to support his case. It is the low point of the movie when he makes his speech. He begins by pronouncing in a booming voice--as if ten feet tall--”You do not have the right!” The courtroom responds with ‘oohs’ since they are not accustomed to such a manner of speaking--they need not worry. As if apologizing for his heroism, he changes his demeanor as if to imply “sorry, I did not mean to come on so strong. Please forgive me for being so absolute. Don’t take me so seriously. I’m just trying to give you my opinion.” He riddles his speech with phrases such as “I mean . . . ,” “it’s like . . . ,” and “I’m only saying . . . ” And in so doing, he appeals to everyone’s emotions by referring to a certain “something that we all have deep inside.” He does not bother explaining or defining this mystical ‘it’ that we all have, nor is his argument convincing at its own level. There is simply something intrinsic residing within all people that each needs to reach inside and discover. He blathers about this while the judge yells at him to be quiet and sit down. The climax occurs when Bud sequentially gets his fictional father to change color by realizing he loves his wife, and the judge to change color by making him realize his hatred.

The movie makes its point even more explicit when Bud returns to the real world to find his mother in the kitchen crying at the table. She is upset about a bad date in particular and her life in general. She explains to her son--while using modern day explicatives--that, before she got divorced, she thought she had everything going for her. She thought she had the right house, the right car. He interrupts to tell her “there is no right house or right car.” His mom continues to explain that nothing is the way it is supposed to be. Bud explains that there is no ‘supposed to be’ that nothing is supposed to be anything as he wipes away her tears. She smiles and asks him how he became so smart.

This scene, which is next to last, confirms the whole theme of the movie: there is no objective standard of value, all values are arbitrary and subjective, and this is what makes life worth living. The leftist’s attack on Pleasantville is not because the townspeople hold a standard of values and code of conduct that is wrong or improper, but because they hold a standard and a code as such. Therefore, I found Pleasantville to be rather unpleasant.