History Headscratchers / Pleasantville

*** No. No, I wouldn't. I'm a former psych major; I know. I read once of a case study where a man blind since birth had his sight restored by an experimental surgery. Although overjoyed at first, he came to discover that his new sight was confusing. He lacked depth perception, having been sightless for some forty years or so, and couldn't judge the distance of things--cars many yards off looked like Matchbox toys to him, for example. He suffered quite literal sensory overload. As a result, he became depressed and killed himself. Now, if a sequel were done to this movie, that's the direction I'd go. The people of Pleasantville have had a surfeit of color and some have grown tired of it. They split into two factions--those who love the change and those who wish to go back to the way things were. They erect a wall and divide the town (a take on the Berlin Wall). Soon, those on the side that hate change lose their color and resume their calm, colorless existence and are happy. The changeoids, meanwhile, find that beneath the pretty hues, frantic movement, and loud noise the infrastructure is rotting and they have no way of keeping it together, so the greens turn brown and the skies go black with filth. The father and the mayor, who vanished and ran off respectively at the end of the movie, return. The mayor is an alcoholic wreck and wants desperately to return to Old Pleasantville, but he's so poisoned by change and booze that he can't come back. His little temper tantrum at the town hall made him what he hates the most: a technicolor changeoid (the typical liberal argument towards conservative anger, that it makes them less "real"). The mother and the artist are unhappy together, the newness having worn off long ago, and having her old husband back makes her realize the old ways are best. Meantime other towns are following Pleasantville's example and splitting their populations into traditionalist and changeoid factions. Civil war looms. We go from a clock stopped at 18 months after WWII to the Cold War anti-commie propaganda to the counterculture of the sixties vs. rock-ribbed conservatism. Change is not always a good thing. It means learning new rules and living in constant fear of losing everything if you break one.

*** No. No, I wouldn't. I'm a former psych major; I know. I read once of a case study where a man blind since birth had his sight restored by an experimental surgery. Although overjoyed at first, he came to discover that his new sight was confusing. He lacked depth perception, having been sightless for some forty years or so, and couldn't judge the distance of things--cars many yards off looked like Matchbox toys to him, for example. He suffered quite literal sensory overload. As a result he became depressed and killed himself. Now: if a sequel were done to this movie that's the direction I'd go. The people of Pleasantville have had a surfeit of color and some have grown tired of it. They split into two factions--those who love the change and those who wish to go back to the way things were. They erect a wall and divide the town (a take on the Berlin Wall). Soon, those on the side that hate change lose their color and resume their calm, colorless existence and are happy. The changeoids, meanwhile, find that beneath the pretty hues, frantic movement, and loud noise the infrastructure is rotting and they have no way of keeping it together, so the greens turn brown and the skies go black with filth. The father and the mayor, who vanished and ran off respectively at the end of the movie, return. The mayor is an alcoholic wreck and wants desperately to return to Old Pleasantville, but he's so poisoned by change and booze that he can't come back. His little temper tantrum at the town hall made him what he hates the most: a technicolor changeoid (the typical liberal argument towards conservative anger, that it makes them less "real"). The mother and the artist are unhappy together, the newness having worn off long ago, and having her old husband back makes her realize the old ways are best. Meantime other towns are following Pleasantville's example and splitting their populations into traditionalist and changeoid factions. Civil war looms. We go from a clock stopped at 18 months after WWII to the Cold War anti-commie propaganda to the counterculture of the sixties vs. rock-ribbed conservatism. Change is not always a good thing. It means learning new rules and living in constant fear of losing everything if you break one.

** It is contentious and since the movie never indulges that contention, I am. As far as the movie is concerned, these people are enslaved by this horrible reality where... wait, what sucks about this? Oh um, people aren't having sex and there's nothing outside of Pleasantville. Yeah, that's so much worse than the real world with war and starving third world countries and so forth. Its a retarded contention the movie makes. It only works even a little bit for societies like ours where we have it so well off. They'd literally kill for this life elsewhere.

** It is contentious and since the movie never indulges that contention, I am. As far as the movie is concerned, these people are enslaved by this horrible reality where... wait what sucks about this? Oh um, people aren't having sex and there's nothing outside of Pleasantville. Yeah, that's so much worse than the real world with war and starving third world countries and so forth. Its a retarded contention the movie makes. It only works even a little bit for societies like ours where we have it so well off. They'd literally kill for this life elsewhere.

*** No, you are not. Do Simpsons ever age?

** What about the thing they did in The Chronicles Of Narnia? Those kids were there like fifteen years living there and aged normally, but when they got back into their world they were children again.

** I figured that, when David came back but Jennifer didn't, the same [[RealityWarper reality warping]] magic that was tranforming Pleasantville altered the real world so that there never ''was'' a Jennifer.
*** Who really cares? how is she going to show she has a degree? how is she going to convince her parents that she's been to college and doesn't need to go AGAIN?
**** Alternatively: She knows the stuff for her degree. Now when she goes to collage in the real world she has a much better chance of getting much better results.
* Maybe people in the actual 1950's weren't happy but these were actual fantasy characters designed to be happy. Happiness is relative anyway. If you have 10 dollars you want 20, if you have 20 dollars you want 40. These people actually had everything they wanted because they honestly didn't know any better (unlike in the real 50's where they pretended not to know or had feelings glazed over). But Witherspoon's character had to screw it all up, and the movie made it clear she did it for her own amusement. Now they're saddled with the desires we have. You know, the ones we drive ourselves miserable chasing after, the ones that will never be satisfied. If these people had wanted these things for themselves, they would have snapped themselves out of this mode the way we did. They wouldn't have needed an outsider to do it for them. This makes the whole exercise of this movie either, a) tragic, b) pointless, or c) a worthless Strawman argument.
** They were happy, but were they human? They had no hopes or dreams, nor any possibility of change, all vital to the human condition. As rather heavily symbolised by the apple, the protagonists brought them the knowledge of good and evil, expelling them from the garden, but whether that is a bad thing is a contentious question. Many would say the possibility of frustration and despair, of tragedies spiralling into darkness, it worth it for the chance to ascend into glory, to do great things and carve your name into legend, to dream of being more than you are, and make of those dreams truth. Admittedly, the people who say that tend to be the ones on top, but even those in the gutter would not lightly surrender their dreams.
** It is contentious and since the movie never indulges that contention, I am. As far as the movie is concerned, these people are enslaved by this horrible reality where . . . wait what sucks about this? Oh um, people aren't having sex and there's nothing outside of Pleasantville. Yeah that's so much worse than the real world with war and starving third world countries and so forth. Its a retarded contention the movie makes. It only works even a little bit for societies like ours where we have it so well off. They'd literally kill for this life elsewhere.

*** No. No, I wouldn't. I'm a former psych major; I know. I read once of a case study where a man blind since birth had his sight restored by an experimental surgery. Although overjoyed at first, he came to discover that his new sight was confusing. He lacked depth peception, having been sightless for some forty years or so, and couldn't judge the distance of things--cars many yards off looked like Matchbox toys to him, for example. He suffered quite literal sensory overload. As a result he became depressed and killed himself. Now: if a sequel were done to this movie that's the direction I'd go. The people of Pleasantville have had a surfeit of color and some have grown tired of it. They split into two factions--those who love the change and those who wish to go back to the way things were. They erect a wall and divide the town (a take on the Berlin Wall). Soon those on the side that hate change lose their color and resume their calm, colorless existance and are happy. The changeoids, meanwhile, find that beneath the pretty hues, frentic movement, and loud noise the infrastructure is rotting and they have no way of keeping it together, so the greens turn brown and the skies go black with filth. The father and the mayor, who vanished and ran off respectively at the end of the movie, return. The mayor is an alcoholic wreck and wants desperately to return to Old Pleasantville, but he's so poisoned by change and booze that he can't come back. His little temper tantrum at the town hall made him what he hates the most: a technicolor changeoid (the typical liberal argument towards conservative anger, that it makes them less "real"). The mother and the artist are unhappy together, the newness having worn off long ago, and having her old husband back makes her realize the old ways are best. Meantime other towns are following Pleasantville's example and splitting their populations into traditionalist and changeoid factions. Civil war looms. We go from a clock stopped at 18 months after WWII to the Cold War anti-commie propaganda to the counterculture of the sixties vs. rock-ribbed conservatism. Change is not always a good thing. It means learning new rules and living in constant fear of losing everything if you break one.

** So a couple of teenagers know whats best for a completely different culture? If they weren't all the same skin color, this would be so MightyWhitey
*** This is a bit of an over-simplification; David initially wants nothing to do with the changes and resists them for precisely the reason that it's not their place to decide what's best for these people, and for all Jennifer's fine talk it's initially made clear that the real reason she's messing things up is partly for her own selfish pleasure and partly to spite David by screwing up the world of his favourite TV show. The whole point of the movie is that they change as much as the people of Pleasantville, and come to realize that these changes are ultimately beneficial.

** You probably meant that as a joke, but I can't resist answering the question. Yes, if the map outside of pleasantville fills in, that would suggest the emergence of other common infrastructure.

** That explanation above is indeed Word Of God according to Gary Ross' DVD commentary (although he admitted he made up that explanation on the spot). 1 hour in real life = 1 week in Pleasantville. Three years of college works out to be about 6 days.

* What good is it for Jennifer to go to college in the Pleasantville universe? It's not like it'll change her (presumably shitty) real-world grades, nor will her Pleasantville degree be honored by real-world employers.

*** [[TrueArtIsAngsty Pretentious much?]]

*** No. No, I wouldn't. I'm a former psych major; I know. I read once of a case study where a man blind since birth had his sight restored by an experimental surgery. Although overjoyed at first, he came to discover that his new sight was confusing. He lacked depth peception, having been sightless for some forty years or so, and couldn't judge the distance of things--cars many yards off looked like Matchbox toys to him, for example. He suffered quite literal sensory overload. As a result he became depressed and killed himself. Now: if a sequel were done to this movie that's the direction I'd go. The people of Pleasantville have had a surfeit of color and some have grown tired of it. They split into two factions--those who love the change and those who wish to go back to the way things were. They erect a wall and divide the town (a take on the Berlin Wall). Soon those on the side that hate change lose their color and resume their calm, colorless existance and are happy. The changeoids, meanwhile, find that beneath the pretty hues, frentic movement, and loud noise the infrastructure is rotting and they have no way of keeping it together, so the greens turn brown and the skies go black with filth. The father and the mayor, who vanished and ran off respectively at the end of the movie, return. The mayor is an alcoholic wreck and wants desperately to return to Old Pleasantville, but he's so poisoned by change and booze that he can't come back. His little temper tantrum at the town hall made him what he hates the most: a technicolor changeoid (the typical liberal argument towards conservative anger, that it makes them less "real"). The mother and the artist are unhappy together, the newness having worn off long ago, and having her old husband back makes her realize the old ways are best. Meantime other towns are following Pleasantville's example and splitting their populations into traditionalist and changeoid factions. Civil war looms. We go from a clock stopped at 18 months after WWII to the Cold War anti-commie propaganda to the counterculture of the sixties vs. rock-ribbed conservatism. Change is not always a good thing. It means learning new rules and living in constant fear of losing everything if you break one.

* Your position is not entirely without merit, but there is a long standing viewpoint that an eternity of unchanging paradise would be a fate worse than death. The first century or two might be pleasant, but a billion years locked in the same changeless routine? And no, death would offer no escape; there is no death in Pleasantville. It is the lotus eater's dream, and one many authors have said people would go to any lengths to escape, no matter how unpleasant the reality. The film may not have been the best presentation of this position ever, but it is not a stance that can be lightly dismissed.