Liberalism In The Movie Pleasantville

This movie is about David and Jennifer, who live in Southern America in the ‘90s which was said to be a liberal state, are sent from reality to a TV show ‘Pleasantville’ in 1950s. From reality looking through this TV show, Pleasantville looks like an ideal place for people to live in, but getting a closer look and being part of this world you actually realize that it is very different from what is shown on TV. After David and Jennifer arriving to Pleasantville, they become colorless, everything there is either black, white or gray. People then expose their conservative lifestyles with suppression of sexuality, discrimination and restrictive of personal liberty and imagination. In Pleasantville, people assume that there is no outside world other

Skip Martin as the conservative because he doesn’t even want to hold hands with Mary Sue when they were first hanging out at the malt shop where Mr. Johnson works. After he shares this experience with his basketball teammates about what happened, they also start having sex with their girlfriends. Mary Sue then continues spreading her “wisdom” and teaches her mother who is a conservative on how to fulfill the gratification by herself. On the other hand, Bud introduces Mr. Johnson who desires to be an artist to their mother. Mr. Johnson falls in love with Ms. Betty and they start having a relationship such as kissing and sleeping together, he also draws a huge nude portrait on the window. Mr. Johnson used to be a conservative and we can see it from how he feels lost and anxious when Bud is not around to do the usual things to assist him, then he begins to turn liberal after Bud telling him that he can actually do all these things on his own. He starts to see colors and feels bored about the never-changing regulations such as window decorations can only be done in Christmas time. He also realizes that painting is what he desires, that’s when he starts seeing colors from a painting book Bud gives him. Teenagers in Pleasantville are used to be conservatives, but after Mary Sue

Things are a bit stereotyped, but Bud and Mary Sue loosen everybody up, and also, nobody seems to care much. But when women in Pleasantville break the roles to be free, men decide to take a stand and speak up this is when we finally figure out the dark side of the ‘50s. When Betty shows up in color, she is scared of revealing herself to others, this is a way of stepping out to be liberal but worried that it might not success and people would not accept it. Betty’s husband is also an obvious figure for conservative, George Parker – waits impatiently at home for his daily routine to continue but finds out his wife is not home to wait for him and feels helpless for not knowing what to do without his wife, this also shows the stereotypes of inequality between men and women in to ‘50s. Citizens in Pleasantville are no longer conservative, they are beginning to change and see colors. Some gain colors from having sex, Mary Sue gains colors from reading books, Bud gains colors from getting into a fight, and so on. These behaviors that have never happened in town before seem to appear, it starts to have colors here and there, stepping to anger the elders which is one of the reasons why they set up a committee to limit the use of colors, kinds of music and book, and banning people from going to Lover’s Lane and this also explains that elders are more on the side of conservative and they do not want to change the