Normality In 'The Unknown Citizen'

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Recommended: Conformity in the 1950s America

Conforming traps you In the ’50s people used to straightly follow the rules of normality, All a person could aspire to was being like the others, integrate in the society. Indeed as much they tried to be like the others, as they were losing their individuality. It’s exactly in the ‘50 that the movie Pleasantville takes place, it deals with two high school seniors, David and Jennifer, who are catapulted into the tv show Pleasantville, a black and white city where people live pleasant lives, without knowing emotions and doing what they are supposed to do. “The Unknown Citizen” is a poem that takes care of a conformed person too, this individual is so anonymous that doesn’t even have a own name. This person lives a life that is absolutly ordinary,
What their masks have in common is that they used them to seem perfect. Pleasantville is always sunny, always nice, everything is tidy. In the poem the main character used to do all the things in a way that was thought to be the perfect way at that time, He bought the newspaper every day, he had a radio, a fridge, children. This mask helps them to hide between the others. Furthermore, going deeper in the movie and in the poem, we see the cage that takes shape around the characters and traps them from discovering themselves and the world around them. In the case of the movie, Pleasantville itself is the cage of the characters, the city traps them, not having roads to discover other places, “There’s nothing outside of Pleasantville” answers the teacher in the movie, when asked about the topic. In the poem the state is the cage, it imposes the model of the perfect person, it gives rules that overwhelm the integrity of the people, telling them how to act, what to do, what to believe in. In conclusion, when people act like the others, they can’t reach their freedom, and they lose their identity. This movie and this poem share how people conforming takes them to show their masks and not themselves; they are not free in any way, and conforming

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