Preview

Three Major Themes In The Movie Pleasantville

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1086 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Three Major Themes In The Movie Pleasantville
Simpler Times
In the Movie Pleasantville, two teenagers are taken from a crazy lifestyle; they are teleported to a faraway place called Pleasantville. Where everything is picture perfect, the town where everybody is friendly and there are no dangerous things to be found. But a place where everything is perfect isn’t always the case. Things may seem perfect on the outside but are totally different on the inside of Pleasantville. Being perfect still has it drawback even in place where things seem to be cheerful and perfect. During their visit to Pleasantville they see three major themes; concept of change is one, the second theme is discrimination, and finally the third theme would be racial segregation.
Right off the bat you notice that when things aren’t done in the proper order it throws off everything off. In normal
…show more content…
But then all of this unusual events started happening which is what didn’t help things too. Nobody likes changes and when something big happened people panic which makes things harder, people tend to forget the little details that make the situation a little less stressful and once people start to think again and they eventually realize that there were almost little hints that were telling them that something was going and on and that eventually it come when they least expected it. An example would at the end of the movie when Bud and Bill are in court. Bud gets right in the judges face and it asking him why he isn’t letting himself show what he is really feeling. Bud does what another person would do when they want the real truth not some excuse. The problem the whole time was that people were afraid to feel what they really felt. They feared that people would judge them all because they had a different view on the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Just Walk On By

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The author recognize the fact that he have positive attributes on his side that can help him to “alter public space”. He works in a very good editorial, this means that, whatever he say can cause a strong impact in society’s mind set. Staples knows his influence in the media. Also, he is black and he understands how black people are stereotyped in society, so he uses to his favor the sense of “hazard” that society have toward black people. Staples have lived racism in a closer look since he was a child and he was able to convert that negative experience into a positive and encouraging method to overcome racism.…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The most important part of this movie is the eponymous setting. “No one is homeless in Pleasantville. It’s just not what it’s like.” Pleasantville is perfect. Well, not perfect, it’s “swell”. The temperature is always sunny and cool, the residents are content; hell, the school basketball team doesn’t even miss a single basket. But no one has ever heard of the concept of…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pleasantville

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the movie Pleasantville, a brother and sister from modern day became part of a black and white ‘50s television show called Pleasantville. This was done using a special remote given to the main character David, by a TV repairman. In the beginning David believed Pleasantville should remain the same. Pleasantville was his utopia; he thought everything was perfect. His sister Jenn was determined to change Pleasantville. Jenn thought people acted like losers, and wanted them to be “cool”. David later realized things should change because people did not show their emotions in Pleasantville, and had no way to express them. When people in Pleasantville showed their emotions, they changed from black and white to color. By the end of the movie, everything was in color because of David. People had learned to show their emotions. The creator of this movie was trying to communicate the message that emotions make things more interesting. This statement is true for Pleasantville and writing. In Pleasantville people would change to color when they showed their emotions. Bill expressed his emotions through painting colorful pictures. David gained his color when he got angry and punched Whitey. Emotions are put into writing to add detail. At Lover's Lane people reading books became colored and the listeners remained black and white. If people incorporate emotions into their writing it will help get the reader's attention and make the plot more interesting. This movie relates to our critical analysis essay. The idea of perception versus reality is conveyed throughout the movie. David thought Pleasantville was perfect when he watched it on television. When he became part of the show he found it had many flaws. The citizens of Pleasantville believed there was nothing outside of Pleasantville; in reality there was a lot. In reality, bad things can happen. When the tree caught on fire, the firefighters did not know how to deal with it because there had never been a fire in…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Racism in Martinsville, in

    • 1718 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The murder of Carol Jenkins in 1968 is largely accounted for giving Martinsville, Indiana the racist image it has today. Although this was not the first or last act of racist hate crimes in the town, this one stuck in the minds of many people. This woman was murdered by who was thought to have been a local resident, protected by police, and started a huge controversy about racism in this small town of 14,000-20,000 people. Racism is a problem that plagues each community but I think it is more prominent in smaller towns throughout America. This is just one story about the troubles that one small town has gone through in its troubled past and present. The incidents that affirm the racist image of this town, and things the town has done to erase that negative image are plenty. The citizens of this town want nothing more than to shed this bad image and show people who this town welcomes people of all cultures and races with open arms.…

    • 1718 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ross also portrays and somewhat satirises an unchanged society's people to be ruled by their own mindlessness, and in their epiphany, translates to the viewer that change can come from within or from outside one's self but is different for everyone. Dark overtones are used to parallel the Pleasantville to a society under fascist rule. However, in the end, change will always affect everyone and this new understanding will help to overcome the changes encountered in the future that may seek to detriment the society. The three scenes which will be discussed in relation to the filmmaker's attitude towards change are the breakfast scene, the classroom scene, and the rain scene.…

    • 2172 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Inequality, prejudice and discrimination, values our society has adopted throughout time, particular values utilised throughout the era of the 1900s. A culture naturally dominated by the white race, arrogance gained through the particular colour of their skin, disconcerning the other coloured folks as irrelevant. Many whites believed it was a virtue or a privilege ....And others sought their skin no barrier between their morals, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”.…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The transition of the movie was incredible and the flashbacks made the movie more interesting. Most of it based on characters flashbacks and past events. According to book, to successfully transform an actor/actress into his or her character requires that the actor feel a comfort sense of…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Birmingham Church Bombing

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Before September 15th, 1963 life in the South was harsh if you were colored, more so in Birmingham, Alabama than others. Many people of color were shot during this time and not all were for a just cause. Back then, “The Birmingham Police shot a lot of people, the city was like a shooting gallery” (Norris 71). As if being shot by the police wasn’t enough, colored people also had to worry about the Ku Klux Klan and their malicious ways. But being shot at wasn’t their only problem. Everywhere people went there was segregation. Bathrooms, drinking fountains, schools, theatres, and many other public areas were all segregated. Was it really so bad that a colored person went to the same school as a white person? Segregation was supported by the legal system and the police. For quite some time colored people couldn’t even do anything about it because they had no voice, no right to vote. Finally on January 12th, 1946 members of the Alabama Democratic Executive Committee announced “that ‘qualified negroes’ would be allowed to vote” (Norris 116). Though their voting right was restricted it was a start, and the colored people of Alabama were not about to let it go. But as time went on people all over the country…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In her book Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody writes about her different experiences while growing up in the South as an African-American female during the 1950s and 1960s. Her various stories range from living on a plantation as a child, to working for Caucasian families as a teenager, and to fighting segregation laws publicly as an adult. As Anne grows from a naive child to a progressive adult, she gradually develops into a local leader for African-Americans and an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Segregation in America at this time greatly affected the relationships between African-Americans and Caucasians. Most of the opinions and mindsets of the Caucasians who were perpetrating African-Americans resulted from the tradition of their ancestors who also looked down upon the opposite race. Throughout her memoir, Anne Moody narrates the seemingly hopeless battle concerning racial equality by sharing her personal journey to the end of segregation.…

    • 1311 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I have recently read the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and watched the movie Pleasantville. These works focus on making perfect societies. The Giver is about a boy named Jonas who lives in a community with many rules. He is assigned the job of the Receiver of Memory and goes through great amounts of pain and happiness during his training. Pleasantville is about David and his sister Jennifer who goes into their TV to a show called Pleasantville. This town is supposedly peaceful and pleasant. Although The Giver and Pleasantville are both about perfect societies, their characters, setting and the symbolism establishing their greater involvement.…

    • 598 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    First, I applaud the movie for daring to tell a story that nobody else presumed creating. Even in 2005, this was a pretty prohibited thing to discuss. To its credit, the movie follows the original story fairly close, but a details were left out that made all the difference.…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    One of the most controversial problems in the world today is racial inequality. Ever since I was a little girl, I was always told to see the beauty coming from the inside of a person's heart and to never judge someone by the color of their skin. As I got older, I started to realize just how serious of a problem this was and that many people take racial segregation and inequality to an extreme level.…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the documentary “I am not Your Negro” directed by Raoul Peck, the most memorable moment for me is the section focuses on integration at American public school. It is difficult for me to believe that many people march on the street only because an African American girl is going to school with the white kids, and I feel really angry and shocked when people are saying things like “when a negro child walk into the school, all decent parents should take their white children out of the broken school”, or “God can forgive adultery, but he is angry about integration ”. Even though those comments and events can have a huge impact on social discrimination and hurt to African American, they are real things that happened in the American history, and…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although the comparisons are well hidden both today’s society and the story ‘Harrison Bergeron’ share a good amount of similarities. They both have to deal with equality, which leads to problems and consequences. Secondly having to deal with competition and trying to prevent it from occurring, which also leads to problems. Lastly both struggle with normality, and it’s hard to accept that different is okay now.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Post Racialism

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Living and working in Monroe, LA quickly brought my feet down firmly on the ground. You see Monroe is where I first drank from the “colored” water fountain and used the “colored” bathroom. This was the first place that I was called “nigger” and saw a cross burned to frighten students not to attend Northeast Louisiana University (ULM). Putting all these memories in the back of my mind, I still had room to hope that maybe we as a country had grown from this horrible point in history. Much to my regret I began to feel and eerie feeling of impending doom and my dealings with the “white” race became very strained, it was almost as if I had committed some crime. Sure my walk was a little lighter my usual banter took on a more jovial tone and I’d look in the mirror and feel…

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays