Pleasantville

Debord says “The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible…The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance” (Durham/Kellner 119). First, the Pleasantville citizenry is somewhat hypnotized by its own spectacle nature. The people are engrossed in what their society has become that they fail to see that anything could be different and/or better. Also, David (Tobey Maguire’s character) is a victim of the Pleasantville spectacle. He sees his own reality as “unreal, unglamorous, and boring…while the spectacle is exciting and enthralling” (Durham/Keller 93) to the point that the spectacle regulates much of his real life (e.g. his lunchtime Pleasantville trivia game). In the creation of this spectacle, the Dorfman/Mattelart article about Disneyland comes to mind. Ideas about the way life “should” be and how people “should” behave were embedded into the Pleasantville society and broken only by the arrival of two outsiders. Just as Dorfman and Mattelart insisted that embedded messages created a cycle of ideologies, the rules of the home, school, and general life were embedded into Pleasantville society such as the daily routine of coming home, putting down the briefcase, saying “Honey, I’m home,” and having a warm dinner ready to eat (Durham/Kellner 122-129). Pleasantville as a spectacle containing embedded messages of ideal views about life also fits into Baudrillard’s conception of a “hyperreal model of the United States that is more-real-than-real, generating role models, ideals, and an image of a perfect world” (Durham/Kellner 447). While Baudrillard is discussing the role of Disneyland in the simulation of a real world, the concept applies to the presentation of Pleasantville as a model 1950s America and also ties into Marling’s decision to use 1950s icons as representatives of that cultural era.

When David and Jennifer arrive in Pleasantville, though, life begins to change for the town. Hebdige says that “violations of the authorized codes through which the social world is organized and experienced have considerable power to provoke and disturb. They are generally condemned…” (Durham/Kellner 153). When many people in Pleasantville begin to change into color, they represent the breaking of certain codes and ideals; they are a subculture. But just as Hebdige predicts, the concepts of the subculture become embedded within the dominant groups when the reluctant town leaders literally change their colors (Durham/Kellner 158). This “colored” subculture becomes for some Pleasantville citizens comparable to bell hooks’s “Others”. Hooks discusses ethnicity and race as commodity, spicing up mainstream white culture to the point that the “other” becomes an object of desire. Hooks points out that American culture creates the ideas “that racial difference marks one as Other and the assumption that sexual agency expressed within the context of racialized sexual encounter is a conversion experience that alters one’s place…” (Durham/Kellner 367). These ideas are presented in Pleasantville through the portrayal of “colored” townspeople in connection with sexual activity and eventually as different from the rest of the townspeople. The most obvious character who falls into hooks’s view of “desire and resistance” of the Other is Skip, who has no problem having sex with Mary Sue/Jennifer but also participates in the book burning activities. He is intrigued by the activities associated with the “coloreds” in private but to the rest of the town he struggles against the rise of the subculture…he both desires and resists.