The movie Pleasantville is about two teenagers who mysteriously get drawn into the 1950s fictional, black-and-white television sitcom, Pleasantville. The show portrays a very stereotypical image of the 1950s having similar elements to that of “Father Knows Best.” In Pleasantville, both David and Jennifer are forced to take on the roles of Bud and Mary-Sue. But as they play along in the perfect and pure little town of Pleasantville, their presences soon influence extreme changes. As the citizens of Pleasantville discover sex, art, books, music and the concept of originality, colour erupts in their black-and-white world. Colour spreads throughout the town, threatening the Mayor to rid of the sinful/tainted colours, and change Pleasantville back to what it once was. The film also secretly represented the double standard for men and women. In the time of the 1950’s, women were said to stay at home. Women were supposed to stay in the house, with the kids, prepare food for the family, and have it ready for the husband when he walked in from work. Women of this time period were supposed to look beautiful at all times, never have a bad moment, and were not to worry about a thing, especially social problems, but were more like a “pet” for the husband to showcase. The town of Pleasantville is a figurative ‘garden of Eden’. The town is perfect and nothing goes wrong until someone makes a bad choice (in this case Jennifer) and the whole world of Pleasantville is turned upside down. Betty Parker, the repressed housewife, is figuratively a representation of Eve. She’s so innocent that she doesn’t even know what sex is. When she “sinned” so to say, she wasn’t even aware that what she was doing was wrong. Particularly in a certain scene, where Mary-Sue (Jennifer) plays the role of Satan as she spreads the knowledge of “evil"; she teaches her mother about sex and how to satisfy herself. The tree with the apple represents the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” As the bible story…
