Pleasantville...Post-Comps Bluuuur

Excuse me if this post seems out there or hard to understand...it's been a very long week and a half...

So I just want to start out with the irony of Barney Fife being a part of a movie about the 50s...ohhh I loved it...Moving on...Marling Marling Marling...we all know the connections with that...the mention of the automobile, the Mamie Eisenhower style of dresses, Elvis music...the list goes on and on. That book fit perfectly into this movie. A book that I read for comps called Homeward Bound, was about how the Cold War affected the domestic sphere and created the 50s culture...I recommend it, loved it! And found many connections but I will spare you right now.

The scene with Jen (Reese Witherspoon) trying to come to terms with the 50s undergarments made me think of Leslie Shannon Miller's essay "The Many Figures of Eve: Styles of Womanhood Embodied in a Late 19th Century Corset" Of course because it's women's underwear but also in realizing how it's changed and the different shapes it makes on women's bodies...etc.

All of the articles on globalization also came to mind...Pleasantville was an isolated entity...the streets didn't go anywhere outside of the town, that is until the big change then it and the population is opened up to the outside world, which offers many opportunities and diversity.

The nesxt reading it relates to is bell hook's "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistence" which focuses on the attractiveness of the exotic. When people started becoming colored this whole sexual revolution takes place. They are consumed by "the other" it's new and exciting, but then of course there are those that still don't think so...

It also reminds be of "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory" by Raymond Williams...about the residual and emergent cultures...the "colored ones' start out as the minority but then like in "From Culture to Hegemony: Subculture The Unnatureal Break" this subculture then rises up to become part of the dominant. Everyone becomes colored...

The list of references could go on and on but I am going to stop there before completely not making any sense! See you Thursday!