Pleasantville: A not so post-modern film celebrating a post-modern world?
Pleasantville is certainly one of the most interesting releases to come out in the last year. At first sights, it seems to fit the mould of a post-modern film perfectly. You start with a place where the boundaries are defined, where people have control over their lives, lose that control. But there are things that subvert it - like David's gaining control and meaning from his life at the end of the film, whereas at the beginning he was lost. The movie has a number of Hollywood elements in it as well: the score, the almost two dimensional battles played out: between colour and b&w, between good and evil. It also has a wierd Capra-esque feeling to it - the future is uncertain, but it is something to rejoice in. Pleasantville turns our post-modern world into a utopia. All the contradictions and uncertainties are glorified by seeing that the past may not have been so good. There's a lot in this film, and I feel that much is to be written about it in years to come. Below is a script of my brief critique.
Betty Parker: "do you know
what's going to happen?"
George Parker: "no, I
don't..."
The ending of Pleasantville is at face value perfectly post-modern (1). The future is uncertain, even our own identity is uncertain. This is in stark contrast to the Pleasantville we see initially. Everything made sense, things were certain and a regimented lifestyle ensured that (notice how the clock is in the background in many of the shots - In the café, where David turns up to work at 4pm, in the court room where David gives his speech on the dot at midday).
What makes Pleasantville's ending so interesting is that it is done with that "Pleasantville" smile we saw in the opening moments of the film (2). My interpretation of this ending and what came before it is that the film presents us with a unique vision - one that presents the post-modern world as a utopia. The uncertainty of life, the different shades of personality and expression in people (accentuated in the film by emotion being represented by black and white changing to colour) and the breakdown of the traditional family are all celebrated in the film by Pastiche-ing the 1950s fantasy and then shattering it (3).
However, this presentation of our world as a post-modern utopia may not be post-modern in itself. While presenting the original Pleasantville as Eden and shattering that myth (David eats apple) is post-modern, in creating an alternate utopia the film creates a binary opposite in a sense: The world of old Pleasantville (certainty) versus the 90s (uncertainty). While introducing colour to shatter the simplicity of the (metaphoric) BLACK and WHITE type world may be post-modern, a new binary opposite takes its place: Black&White versus Colour. And in the end there is a victor - the coloured utopia with all its uncertainty. This to me is not very post-modern(4).
So, perhaps Pleasantville is not a fully POST-MODERN film, but it certainly sees our current post-modern world as a utopia - so much so that the people of the late fifties would sacrifice all their certainties to enter into it(5).
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(1) Lecture Notes - week one and week three.
(2) Unlike the ending of Barton Fink.
(3) The film also works on other levels for example the idea that
the only certainty is that there will be uncertainty, that people
will change. Or as an example of how to beware of fascism and
racism that can easily crawl its way into society. Or as a brief
guide to the social upheaval that occurred in the sixties and
seventies. The latter is another possible interpretation of the
film. 1958 is just before the social upheaval 60s and 70s (it
would be even funnier if 1958 was the year colour tv was
introduced in the USA). When we see the characters at the end
saying "I don't know what the future holds" - well, we
the audience know. The world's going to be just as uncertain -
and the consequences of their choosing 'colour' over the
regimented lifestyle of the 50s (even though it was a pastiche -
a parody of the nostalgia that older people have about the 50s)
will have consequences for us in the 90s (as is evidenced by the
boy's single mother).
(4) Furthermore, the ending (saying "I don't know" with
such a happy face) itself harks back to a very weird inversion of
a Capra-esque faith in the world and in the future. The score is
Coplandesque (Aaron Copland's typically american music) which
seems to cement the Hollywood influence and there is an element
of the two dimensional sort of mentality that creeps into the
film. All these aspects go against the actual film being
"post-modern". Ironically, there's a subversion of what
happens in a post-modern film, because while the inhabitants of
Pleasantville lose control, the exact oppostie happens to David,
who happens to be unable to make sense of the world at first, but
with Pleasantville, he seems to gain more control of his life (as
is the case with his sister).
(5) The film therefore may be either post-post modern (if there
is such a thing), or a re-invention of traditional Hollywood
motifs in a post-modern world. But perhaps my uncertainty as to
how to classify the film's perspective is evidence of its
post-modern nature! No wonder the term is so difficult to grasp
(hence widely applied!).
80/100