Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Voo — 26 Feb 2015

Pleasantville is a story, or movie, about how two main characters, David and Jennifer, who both have two conflicting events the same night, fighting over the TV remote and breaking it. Unable to turn on the TV, a TV Repairman appears and gives them a new remote after a short conversation about their favorite TV show, Pleasantville. This new remote looks strange and as David turns the TV on they are both sucked into the TV and appear as Bud and Mary Sue, in the TV show, Pleasantville. Afterwards they begin to change the TV show, bringing knowledge to the TV Show.

In Adam and Eve, after they both partake in the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they gain humility and use leaves to hide themselves from God, because they want to avoid shame. In Pleasantville, Bud’s mother change color after coming in contact with change, and is afraid because she is the first adult to turn to color. She hides herself from Bud’s father by covering the color with makeup, to similarly avoid shame. After a large spread of color in both environment and the people, people begin to segregate themselves and the Non-Colors start to bully the Colors because they feel they are superior in some way, possible because they are the ‘originals’ where the colors have changed and are therefore irrelevant. The Mayor, soon after, starts to instate rules or laws that target Colors specifically to ‘maintain pleasantness’, mostly because of the fact that he thinks the colors aren’t good for the community because he is a Non-Color himself. In Adam and Eve, once God sees that Adam and Eve have gained knowledge, he gets angry and starts to punish Adam and Eve with things such as death and disease, hunger and labor, etc.

In Pleasantville, there is no real snake to tempt change with the main characters, but there is one in Adam and Eve. In Pleasantville, the change or gaining of knowledge happens over a longer time period, things becoming apparent slowly, but in Adam and Eve, the change is very fast, happening in the short time that God speaks to Adam and Eve about the things they have unleashed upon the earth. The change of Pleasantville is coming along from the two main characters, Jennifer and David, because they influence the people and environment around them, so in a way their existence in Pleasantville is the ‘snake’ as they tempt others by the idea of knowledge. It is also somewhat represented by David and Jennifer’s need to change the people around them. Near the beginning there is a scene where David tells the other man who works at the restaurant that he can do things without David being there, changing him. Also, in Pleasantville many of the people feel that change is good, or see it as them being happier after changing even though some of the things that come aren’t that happy, such as rainstorms. In Adam and Eve, God portrays the change, or knowledge, as something bad, or unhappy possibly. The story shows that change must not come because if there is no change, everything will keep going as they had before, maintaining a feeling of safety and peace. This could possibly relate to the saying, ‘Man fears nothing but the unknown.’.

In conclusion, Pleasantville and the story of Adam and Eve are very similar and try to portray the idea of change in different ways. Pleasantville portrays it as knowledge comes with good and bad things, but in the end you become a happier or better person because of it. In the story of Adam and Eve, it is portrayed as bad, that knowledge and change need to be kept away to keep the people safe. I feel that Pleasantville portrays the message better but in a more light-hearted way, whereas Adam and Eve portrays it worse, in a more heavy and angry way. The story, however, is much older than Pleasantville so it may have a bias towards not changing things due to old beliefs or the modern way of thinking at the time. As a personal reflection I feel that change is necessary to grow as a person. If you do not change you will be stuck where you are or how you think until change takes place.