Imagine a society where everything and everyone is perfect and uniform. All the houses look the same, all the lawns are immaculate, and crime is unheard of. In the movie Pleasantville this place exists in the form of a black-and-white 1950’s television show. The main characters, David and Jennifer, are siblings and high school students who get transported from their normal lives into Pleasantville. While there, David and Jennifer see first hand just how different this town is. The two of them start to expose the citizens of Pleasantville to things they’ve never experienced before. These changes disrupt the whole culture of the community and cause major effects. David is a shy teenager who spends most of his time watching the television show Pleasantville. Pleasantville features the ideal family of the Parkers. George Parker is the working dad, Betty Parker is the typical housewife, Mary Sue and Bud are the teenage children. David knows what has happened in all the episodes and wants to watch the Pleasantville marathon so he can enter into a trivia contest to win $1000. His sister Jennifer is the complete opposite of David. She’s outspoken and has a very active social life. One night when David wants to watch the marathon and Jennifer has a date, they fight over the remote and end up breaking it. Within seconds a repair man arrives to fix the remote. The repair man also has a great interest in the show and quizzes David on some episodes. The repair man is surprised to learn David knows the answers to his questions. He gives David and Jennifer a new remote and leaves the house. With the repair man gone, David and Jennifer continue to argue over the remote and get transported into the television to Pleasantville. The whole world, including them, is now in black-and-white. David and Jennifer are now apart of the Parker family and take on the roles of siblings Mary Sue and Bud. As defined by My Sociology textbook, a role is the expectation associated with a status. For example, a man may have the status of a father and therefore is expected to take on the role of protecting and providing for his family. The roles of Pleasantville’s citizens are clearly displayed in the movie. The wife is expected to clean and take care of things around the house while the husband is at work. When the husband comes home from work she is to greet him and have dinner ready. One evening Mr. Parker arrives home and finds that Mrs. Parker isn’t home and dinner isn’t waiting for him which frustrates and angers him. That situation illustrates a way in which roles shape and constrain social behavior. Mrs. Parker’s social life is limited because she’s a mother and wife and has other priorities. Since no one notices that Mary Sue and Bud aren’t the same people, David and Jennifer decide to continue acting as if nothing has changed. Pleasantville demonstrates American cultures and values from the 1950’s as well as in the modern day. Culture is the way of life of a people. It is what the people in a society create, do, and believe. Values are ideas shared by the people in a society regarding what is important and worthwhile.
The 1950’s culture of Pleasantville was all about uniformity. People followed the norms of society and rarely tried anything different. Any deviance from the social expectations was looked at as taboo. People valued their family, friends, and daily life the most. David and Jennifer’s modern culture was extremely different from Pleasantville. People were open about sex and relationships, wore revealing clothing, and were allowed to be different from the rest of society. Pleasantville portrays stereotypes about women and men numerous times. A stereotype is a widely held belief about the character and behavior of all members of a group. The teenage boys were perceived to be the usual basketball player/jock that the teenage girls liked. Teenage girls were into their social lives and boys. Women were perceived to be housewives without much of a say so or input on anything. And men were the typical workers and providers for their family. Once David and Jennifer go to school they get accustomed to their new life as Mary and Bud. Mary and Bud are fairly popular and have several friends. Skip, Bud’s teammate and the basketball team captain, has a crush on Mary and takes her on a date. While on the date Mary has sex with Skip. Sex is something that teenagers in Pleasantville have never experienced before. This causes Skip to see a flower in red for the first time after he takes Mary home. This is the first time anyone in Pleasantville has ever seen a color besides black, white, or grey. Eventually when people start to experience more life changes and their eyes are opened to a new culture, they themselves turn into color as well as the world around them. The stereotype of race is also a topic covered in this movie. Once people turn into color they are viewed differently from everyone else. Mrs. Parker turns into color one day while she’s at home cooking cause she has experienced love with the neighborhood restaurant owner, Bill Johnson. Mrs. Parker is distraught and doesn’t want to be seen in color by anyone. David covers her face and hands with grey make up so she can appear black-and-white again. This shows the lengths people go to be normal and to not be segregated by the rest of society. Women’s issues were displayed a few times in Pleasantville. During this time period women were so used to going along with the norms of society without asking questions. Being a housewife and mother was virtually all a woman was. Not one woman in Pleasantville was a doctor, lawyer, or judge. The usual job for a woman to be a was a teacher. The issue for women was not being able to have a say so in what they could and could not do. They were to obey their husbands and play their role as a wife. Most citizens of Pleasantville belonged to some form of group. A group is a collection of people who identify and interact with one another. Some examples of groups in the movie would be the high school students, the basketball team, the city hall member, and the townspeople. Belonging to a group helps people to relate to one another and to be social. Pleasantville’s society had a different kind of structure and social stratification. Social Stratification is a system by which a society ranks categories of people in hierarchy. In the film everyone is flawless and no one appears to have any money issues or any troubles at all. Because of this I have concluded that all the citizens of Pleasantville are equal. Their attitudes, values, and ideologies are all the same. Social behaviors are the way people behave in social settings. Since everyone in this movie are conformed to be a certain way, socially expressing yourself is not prohibited. For example: Mr. Johnson loves to paint the window of his restaurant every year. Once David introduces Mr. Johnson to colors he no longer paints his windows with shades of black and white. He paints with different hues of blue, red, orange etc. This act appalls some of the people of the town as well as the Mayor. Citizens completely trash Mr. Johnson’s restaurant and throw objects through his painted window. Subsequently, colors, books with words, and certain music is banned and he is no longer allowed to paint with colors. This is a way social behavior is controlled in the movie. When people first started to “step out of the box” and show deviance it was not accepted. Deviance is the variation from a set of norms or share social expectations. The mayor immediately banned anything he didn’t think was pleasant. He even started racial segregation. Colored people weren’t allowed in some public places and they started to get harassed and were treated differently from everyone else. Even after the Mayor bans these things David and Mr. Johnson paint a colorful picture on an outside wall. They both get arrested and have to go to court. At the trail David finally gets the Mayor and the rest of the townspeople to think differently and all of them turn into color as well. Once the Mayor runs out of the courtroom and everyone else goes outside, we see that the entire town is now in color and Pleasantville is now apart of the rest of America. With their job done, Jennifer stays in Pleasantville to go off to college and David goes back through the television into his normal life. David and Jennifer showed people that they all do not have to be like each other and it’s okay to be different and have different views on things. I believe things and people change from black-and-white to Technicolor when people start to experience change and things they never have before. When they stop being naive, ignorant, and lose some of their innocence is when things start to change. This movie shows how drastically a society can change. By using sociological references it becomes easy to understand the film and why people might behave the way they do given certain situations. It challenges viewers to think outside the box and to be yourself so that you can learn from life’s experiences and the world we live in.