Conflict In Pleasantville

Kallie Schmidt
October 30, 2009
Communicative arts

A Whole New World

In the film Pleasantville, the basic idea is that today’s families are nothing like they once were. The story starts out with a family that has a mom, a brother, David, and a sister, Jennifer. David is a fairly good kid, but he and his sister are completely different and are not close at all. Jennifer is a total bad girl; she smokes, is sexually active, and doesn’t really care about anyone but herself. The family overall, is broken because of the parents divorce, and because of that, are nothing like families in Pleasantville. Jennifer, also known as Mary Sue in Pleasantville, faced many conflicts in this story. Before she was zapped into Pleasantville, Jennifer
Once she finally got him to come over when her mom was gone, her and her brother got zapped right into Pleasantville. In Pleasantville, Mary Sue was expected to act proper and “swell” which she was not used to at all. On top of that, the entire Pleasantville world was black and white. The rebel inside of Mary Sue continued to shine in Pleasantville and she began changing the lives of everyone, starting with skip, at Lover’s Lane. Once Skip told all his friends what he and Mary Sue had done, they started doing it as well. In effect to that, little by little, things started to turn to color. Not only did colors start to change in Pleasantville, but books that were empty before, started to fill up with stories and pictures. Mary Sue became particularly interested in these books and found herself reading instead of engaging in her usual teenage activities. One night, Mary Sue fell asleep reading and in the morning when she awoke, she awoke to a room and skin full of color. At the end of the film Mary Sue decided she liked the life she had in Pleasantville a lot better than the life she led in the real world, so when her
People used to lead such “pleasant” lives and expected everything to be fine and dandy, whereas today, we are far from that, and because of that, our family relationships have become less important than they used to be. Family used to be put at the top of the pyramid, put as most important, but today, family relationships are broken, and complicated, and not as valued as they used to be. The director of this film was trying to communicate this idea to his audience in order to show people the problem right in front of them that they weren’t even aware of and show that there needs to be a happy medium between the two. He does this by changing the color throughout the film. In perfect Pleasantville, everything is black and white, but as the people of Pleasantville begin to explore new things and do something different than they usually would, things start to change color. The director uses the change of color as a symbol of change of the actions of the characters in order to place a more dramatic effect. This movie has a great story line that really opens your eyes about the world today. Because of the color changes, the point of the film and the message is literally brought to your attention. The film successfully communicates the director’s point and broadens the eyes of its viewers. This film is purely inspiring and entertaining as well. I highly recommend viewing