| BEYOND THE MOVIE : Pleasantville by Tom Armstrong This movie is meant to portray a variety of levels of existence - both in what "Reality" we live in and in what perceptive levels we use to view our life and that of others. And in its examination of these levels, it looks at religious issues of translation and transformation. In the beginning, we are in the present-day and twins David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are on the quad at their high school. Jennifer arranges to have a date that evening with a hunk named Mark. David also asks out a good-looking classmate, but we quickly learn that his monologue is just his imagination. Instead, David's plans for the coming evening are to watch a marathon showing of a 1950s TV sitcom "Pleasantville," all episodes of which he has already fully memorized. We are to understand that David lives in his fantasies; he doesn't confront life, he avoids it. It is not inconsequential that Jennifer and David are presented as twins; they are yin and yang, each representing the incompleteness of the other. David is geeky -- full of facts from TV and books -- and very cautious. Jennifer is highly socialized, spontaneous, self-absorbed and uninterested in facts, knowledge and meaning. Together (by means that the film explains, but are unimportant) the pair is transported to the TV show and become the characters Bud and Mary Sue. David, had he alone been transported to "Pleasantville," would have been comfortable assuming the quiescent role of Bud. We see him enjoying watching a basketball he throws fall easily through the hoop. We see him competently and comfortably taking on Bud's job at the Soda Shop. Jennifer - in contrast - is an active personality who confronts the tranquility of the community. She tests boundaries, but has no sense of meaning. Plus, Jennifer very visibly suffers from something that is often addressed in Zen or psychology: She whines and justifies herself in her inner voice. We can see that she does this with her constant facial gestures indicating annoyances when she is denied anything. David is comfortable in rigid structure, but is interested in meaning. Alone, the qualities of neither would allow him/her to 'grow.' Together, these seemingly opposed personalities effect growth and change in the community of Pleasantville and in themselves. Color in Pleasantville The plot devise in the movie Pleasantville where people and things begin to change from shades of gray to full color is clearly intended to be of religious significance. At one point David/Bud, the central character, is offered a bright-red apple by his new Pleasantville girlfriend -- and he eats it. We are clearly meant to understand this event in the context of Genesis and the fall of mankind. Yet, in the full context of the film, the introduction of color (and this apple, and this girlfriend) is a decidedly positive event! At an earlier point a tree is aflame, much in the manner that the burning bush in the Bible has been depicted. WHAT is going on here? Is this some virulent anti-Christian movie?! The screenwriter, Gary Ross, has intentionally made it confusing for the filmviewer to figure out the meaning he intends for "color." Our first sight of color 'inside' the TV show is a red rose that Skip Martin (a popular boy at the high school in the sitcom) sees after he had been aroused by Mary Sue/Jennifer at Lovers Point.But Skip is a minor character who Mary Sue/Jennifer later dismisses, not someone who acquires fleshtone before the end of the movie, so it is curious that he, of all characters, should be the one to spot this rose. What significance are we to make of this first color event?!? And what significant are we to give to a character acquiring fleshtone? A central early color event in the movie is when Betty, the June Clever-like mother (Joan Allen), sees the world in color when she masturbates in the bathtub after getting instruction from her daughter. This event brought color to the bathroom wallpaper, a soapdish swan, a bird outside, and sets a tree outside ablaze. The next day, Betty has fleshtone which Bud assists her to cover with makeup. At first, we are led to believe that many of the teenagers in the town become colorized once they have gone horizontal in their convertible cars at Lovers' Point. But some teens, Mary Sue/Jennifer and Skip among many, remain black-and-white. Mary Sue at one point questions why her flesh remains gray when she has had "ten times as much sex as the other girls." The Soda Shop owner, Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels), remains black-and-white after Bud/David helps him learn how to do things on his own in his business. And is black-and-white even after he begins to develop ability in his passion, painting. Curiously, his flesh doesn't turn brown until we see him scraping the abstract Santa he had painted off the front window. Many items turn to color early on, including the yellow light in the clock at the Soda Shop and a teal-colored car in front of the business. The throat and tongue of one teenaged girl turns pink. I believe this is the girl in the high school hallway who was blowing a pink bubble with her bubble gum. This gum is one of the first color events in Pleasantville. What meaning is there to this gum!? I think that change to color in the movie can be understood as a metaphor for leaving the confines of a constricted life -- in the snare of a mundane mentality -- and that color represents the freedom necessary to begin on the path to awareness.It is not the case that there is anything approaching Enlightenment in the movie; the movie is an allegory with black-and-white representing ordinary, mundane man and color is the coming forth of the possibility of something startling, surprising.
In many
ways, Pleasantville is similar to the short book Flatland
by Edwin A. Abbott (which can be found on-line at http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/eaa/FL.HTM).
While our brains cannot understand a vast pallet of colors beyond combinations of the three primary colors (or, in Flatland, a world of seven dimensions), we may understand (and a movie/book can present) the concept of transformation by analogy - by "going backward" to an anti-utopia, a place where there are no colors (or in Flatland, existence in two, or even one, dimension) and then show what it would be like for someone who knows only a limited existence to be exposed to something beyond what he could ever imagine. When Skip first sees the red rose - that first instance of color in Pleasantville - it is to be understood that he now knows that something other than 'bland' exists - something can come into his life that is exciting and impossible by any measure of his accustomed thought process. He was the first basketball player to have his ball miss the hoop! He is the first Pleasantville male to have an erection! While he is still 'ordinary' and unchanged in his mindset when he sees the rose (his skin is still gray), he now recognizes that there is something possible beyond being stuck in an endless series of reruns. Yet, he has not left the "control" of being ordinary-minded, and is, when we last see him, still gray-colored and burning books at the instruction of the City Committee. In contrast, Betty is a changed person when she is sexually awakened in that bathtub. This is symbolized by her attainment of fleshtone. The great depth of the change that she undergoes is further underscored by the change to color all about her -- and the red-and-yellow fireball that explodes in the tree in the front yard. Betty becomes different as a result of a sexual awakening that is a metaphor for a spiritual event and she -- in contrast to Skip -- allows her experience to transform her. The Soda Shop owner, Bill Johnson, is robotic and a captive of routine. He has to learn and understand and find meaning in the tasks that he performs in his business. David/Bud has to teach him how to be spontaneous and respond to the unexpected. Note that at one point Johnson stops making hamburgers (he experiences existential angst) and David/Bud explains that you have to make the burgers for the reason that one would find in Zen: No Reason! It is (simply) what you do; it is how you contribute; the meaning is there but is ineffable. Johnson, then, learns how to develop his ability to paint, but note that becoming a more-accomplished painter does not give Johnson fleshtone. It is only after he stops being fixed in the mindset of aping the style of masters in an art book he has been given that he acquires color. (In Buddhism there is an aphorism "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him" which means that you are yourself to become a Buddha. The idea in Buddhism is not to revere the qualities of Enlightenment in others.) It is only when Johnson scrapes off a Santa he painted on the shop window and is soon to bravely paint there a nude of Betty - a bold, original creation - that his body becomes fleshtoned. George (William H. Macy) is changed by compassion. When he is forced to delve within himself to see his deep love for Betty, he acquires fleshtone. His "love" for Betty before had been entirely selfish. At the end of the movie we see Betty in the company of both George and Bill Johnson and she does not choose between them. She shares company with both, in balance. In Zen (from the teachings of the last Ch'an patriarch, Hui-neng), we are taught that wisdom and unselfish compassion are to come in tandem and should be balanced. There are many interesting things to consider about the townspeople's relationship with color. One is that the people of Pleasantville knew what colors were before they came into being from the 'contamination' of our present-day culture. At the kitchen bridge game the four woman spoke of colors -- pink and green-- and it is very apparent that they all knew what it was they were speaking of. At the town meeting, the mayor (J.T. Walsh) easily knew the names of a variety of colors -- from puce to magenta! And there is one thing that flies past us but is very curious. Just before the town meeting starts (near the end of the film), a woman screams "Roy's front door is blue!" And a man (Roy, most likely) responds "but it's always been blue!" The point of this sneaky clue is to tell us that the colors have always been there. It is the denial that colors have been there all along that is the problem in the town of Pleasantville, NOT that the community has ever really been in black-and-white. The delusion is that things are bland black-and-white. And this delusion is an "open secret." Denial of the truth of color is a long-standing townwide conspiracy. At the trial at the end of the movie, Bud/David tells the mayor that he, too, has colors inside, just like everyone, something the mayor firmly denies. Only when Bud/David riles the mayor to anger does the mayor turn to fleshtone. Note that this was how Bud/David, too, turned fleshtone - when he got angry and socked the boy on the street who was taunting Betty. Anger, for many people, can be a manifestation of a recognition that our tranquil and mundane (and delusional) world has been blown apart. Bud/David and the mayor had both been secure; their egos had sustenance in their delusions. Note that our egos are the Mayors (Kings/Queens!) that preside in each of us, boosting us to have an inflated (and, indeed, false!) sense of our own self-importance. At the end of the movie, all of Pleasantville is in color - the discrimination dividing people and things between those who are gray and those that are multi-hued is gone. ALL that has happened is that NOTHING has happened. The color that was there all along was merely brought to universal recognition. The Egoity of individuals has been blasted to smithereens and the residents walked out of the courtroom into a colorful paradise of authenticity. More about the movie's meaning David at the trial speaks of everyone having colors inside. His effort - and his success - is in having the colors inside be in agreement with what has been outside all along. Hui-neng's contribution to Zen is his insistence that dhyana and prajna go hand in hand, and that "our mouth and hearts be in agreement." It was a call for genuineness as the mode to spiritual growth - in contrast to our instinct to seek truth in an unbalanced manner, exclusively through pleasantness, which corrupts quickly into falseness. The movie's explicit message is one in support of the turmoil of change in contrast to a rigid and seemingly benign pleasantness. Authenticity can come to flourish only in an atmosphere where change is possible, although in such an atmosphere life is, in David's words, "louder, scarier and more dangerous." At its most-artificial - or lowest - level, 'inside' the sitcom, the books have blank pages and the stalls in the bathroom have no toilets, the basketballs always find the hoops, and nobody knows nuttin' about sex. We learn from Mary Sue/Jennifer's social studies class that the roads in Pleasantville do not lead out of town. At the end of Main Street, we are told by the teacher, is the beginning of the street - again. The street, like a syndicated TV serial, loops through endless reruns. This is how the film depicts the 'non-public', off-stage goings-on of this TV-world. In "reality," too, we have off-stage existences where we prepare ourselves to go out on stage, to be more public. There are levels to our public life, extending to extreme, glitzy events where our animality is fully denied. Here, too, we pretend not to go to the bathroom and that any proverbial basketballs we shoot will glide through the hoop. In the town of Pleasantville before it is transformed, there is nothing going on behind the scenes; the people truly have no animality to deny, it seems. One level above that in the film are the artificial elements that we can see in sitcoms in the 50's: twin beds for married couples; the impeccably clean house and yard without apparent labor performed to make them that way, and the unrecognizably nice, unsexed, but good-looking teenagers in the town. And, as was the case with TV programming in the 50's, there is a bizarre absence of characters who were not Caucasian. Indeed, "Pleasantville" is a captive environment, captured on black-and-white film, changeless, without stress - seductively sterile, serene. There is something idyllic about the many 50's sitcoms like "Pleasantville" - especially for its time when threats of nuclear war and the discord from non-white citizens demanding civil rights was being broadcast on the 15-minute network evening news shows. These sitcoms were the Utopian dream for post-WWII, white America. But, too, it is an ideation of Heaven for a current-day viewer of old TV situation comedies. Conflicts in the TV show are minor, and all is resolved happily. There simply is nothing like it nowadays. In the 50's (and early 60's) TV shows, discord, sexuality and serious problems simply aren't there in the first place. Nuclear bombs weren't mentioned. Non-whites and people who were not comfortably middle-class didn't exist. It is only because these sitcoms were made in the 50's and the 60's that they can be enjoyed today. You really couldn't film "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Andy Griffith" or "Leave It to Beaver" or "Father Knows Best" today. As silly as sitcoms still are, today's shows cannot be as innocent and blissfully ignorant. We forgive (and enjoy) the ignorance of the 50s shows because we think of the time they are from as ignorant -- and you cannot fault someone for genuine ignorance. You can only really fault many viewers who blot out truth for the ease of a myth of a trouble-free heaven. Copyright © 1999 Tom Armstrong | 
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