Introduction
Moving images – whether in film, television or videogames – are primary
modes through which most in industrialized regions encounter the world.
In this sense, they are virtually reality for many. They can also be
virtual in the sense of being artificial and simulated. The movie
Pleasantville (1998) is a case
in point, but in a very specific way,
namely, that it does not offer an imitation of historical events as
much as an imitation of ready-made narratives circulating in mass media
and culture, which it converts into visual rhetoric.
In
Pleasantville, a brother
and sister are mysteriously transported
into a virtual world of a 1950s television program called
“Pleasantville”, and there forced to live as characters. The town
represents conservative America, and the movie a rejection of its
values. Or so we are meant to think. In fact, “think” is too strong a
word, for the movie employs cultural iconography or what Roland Barthes
called mythic imagery that forestalls critical thought, and veils the
fact that it conserves mainstream American values behind a symbolic
cloak of progressivism. In addition to the naïve, conformist 1950s
sitcom, Pleasantville invokes images of racial segregation, fascism and
pluralism, with the former three associated with antagonists and the
latter with protagonists. This masks what concretely occurs, namely,
that characters consistently move towards mainstream values when
imagery has audiences and indeed the writer-director Gary Ross
believing the reverse. The film accordingly exemplifies how background
cultural stories based in historic events and what laypeople accept as
veridical – for example, equality and its rightness as a moral reality
– can be co-opted to instantiate the contrary with few notic-ing.
Consequently the film also demonstrates how visual rhetoric can subtly
mislead, and because such rhetoric profoundly shapes worldviews,
educating people to sort through it is of pressing importance today.
One Thing in the Guise of Another
While ostensibly mocking conservative ideology,
Pleasantville
overwhelmingly portrays those deviating too far from it as misdirected
and immature. Yet iconography obscures this. The character Jen, for
example, is initially brainless and promiscuous, and she introduces sex
to the heretofore celibate Pleasantville world, typified by the
squeaky-clean oeuvre of the sitcom
Leave
it to Beaver (1957–1963). With
time, however, a love of literature supplants carnal appetite, and when
one night Jen denies her Pleasantville boyfriend sex, opting to stay
home reading, she transitions from black and white to colour. As in
Leave it to Beaver and other
programs from that era, the Pleasantville
world is initially colourless, and such transitions signify
self-actualization – a breaking into a richer existence, further from
the naïve, closed, conformist world of 1950s and 60s television, which
forms a symbolic antagonist in the film. By the end, Jen has “grown
up”. She has had enough of what she calls “the slut thing”. When last
we see her, she sits outside a college building, dressed in a chaste
outfit, reading to a studious young man gazing attentively at her face,
who, to all appearances, likes her for the “right” reasons. Jen does
not rebel, but finally conforms to a safe conception of what a young
woman should be, whether in America or elsewhere, the 1950s or today,
however laudable her changes may be. The transition to colour and other
mechanisms to be discussed, however, suggest otherwise, and indeed
imply she is entering a more dangerous world.
This pattern repeats. The movie concludes with David and Jen’s mother
outside the Pleasantville world abandoning a weekend with her
boyfriend. “He’s nine years younger… doesn’t make me feel younger,
makes me feel older”, she sobs. By relinquishing him, she too aligns
with conventional mores – specifically, those decrying older women
taking up with younger men. Likewise with her son. He begins as an
archetypical geek. He has probably never had a date. By the end, he has
proclaimed his heterosexuality by becoming romantically involved with a
girl, and asserted his male prowess by attacking a hooligan to protect
Betty, his stereotypically helpless mother in the Pleasantville world;
and at just this moment he morphs into colour, again indicating
self-actualization, and a conventional one, however healthy, since it
hardly goes against the status quo for young men to date and physically
defend women. At times,
Pleasantville
is flagrantly repressive.
Throughout, men control the appearance of women. After becoming
coloured, Betty passively allows David to apply pasty grey makeup to
conceal the change. When Mr. Johnston urges that she should not hide
the beautiful colour, Betty lets him remove the makeup with a damp
napkin. At the conclusion, David dabs tear-streaked makeup from his
mother in the contemporary world. However, the repressive side of all
this is obscured, among other reasons, because the stereotypically
conservative 1950s sitcom and those advancing its agenda are
established as primary antagonistic forces, so that those acting
against this outlook are taken as proponents for a more liberated
worldview.
A seeming exception to the rule of non-deviance is the implied affair
between Betty and Mr. Johnson, who runs Pleasantville’s soda shop.
However, “seeming” is the operative word, for activities occur within
normalizing boundaries.
1
Violence, for example, is normalized and
celebrated in hockey rinks, and adultery popular entertainment, even
among conservatives, when portrayed within prescribed codes of daytime
television. A contrary example is David Cronenberg’s
Crash (1996): a
movie in which partners openly enjoy and encourage one another’s
infidelities, and, finding automobile accidents erotically stimulating,
have sex at crash sights, and sometimes cause them as foreplay. The
film was deemed depraved by many.
2
The unease, however, is not from
adultery, crashes or violence per se since all are staples of
mainstream entertainment. Rather, it is the fact that these activities
are not confined to their “proper” place and occur in combination.
Betty, by contrast, commits adultery within prevailing boundaries. She
lies to her husband about her first encounter with Mr. Johnson, and
consequently keeps her relationship deceitfully and hence “properly”
behind closed doors – a form of conduct perplexingly less threatening
than open relationships. Moreover, she remains sexually monogamous
since Betty and her husband, despite having kids, have never had sex, a
point emphasized when Jen teaches her what it is, which also emphasizes
Betty as “a woman in need”. Taken together, this makes her affair tamer
than those portrayed daily on television, more so since next to nothing
is shown.
Pleasantville thus does what
many advertisers do: it offers one reality
on the face of it, while tacitly marketing another, and this, in large
measure, by means of visual rhetoric. An example from the advertising
world is a Yahoo! commercial from some years ago. The ad has a tattooed
woman, dressed in Bohemian garb. In the top right corner, a caption
reads: “Your own personal everything.”
3
Combined with the tattoos and
outfit – symbols of rebellion in Western culture – this creates an
appearance of individuality. Only the appearance is false because the
woman’s individuality is assaulted: she is branded with tattoos that
include logos for Yahoo! and Facebook; and, moreover, these companies
make money not by facilitating individual expression, but by exploiting
profiles and searches to identify what one person shares with many, so
that users can be sold to marketers. Here what is taken as a social
“truth” in contemporary Western culture – that individuality is
desirable – is co-opted to advance something largely at odds with the
ideal. Although the strategy is obvious in this case, there are
instances more difficult to parse.
Pleasantville
is a case in point,
which, for reasons to be discussed, has even the writer-director
confused about what he is promoting.
Mythic Imagery
That
Pleasantville
overwhelmingly fails to subvert conventional social
boundaries is obscured by what Barthes called “mythic imagery”. By
“mythic imagery”, which in principle can be auditory as well, he meant
images loaded by history with meaning so that they communicate rapidly
and form a sign language. Once loaded, they function very much like
words.
4
Photographs of Hitler or Gandhi are examples, and they
immediately evoke connotations of oppression or liberty, almost as
readily as the words “evil” and “justice”. Like concepts, moreover,
such images are overwhelmingly abstractions, removed from what most
have directly experienced. I will return to this point at the end.
One obvious mythic image is the 1950s television program, reinforced by
the fact that Don Knotts – himself an icon of family values television
– plays the repairman responsible for sucking David and Jen into the
Pleasantville world. By poking fun at this mythic image of naïve
idealism,
Pleasantville
offers an invitation to unthinkingly assume it
questions traditional values without critically examining the content
of the movie.
Another way the film cloaks the fact that it conserves mainstream
American values is through symbolic iconography of authoritarianism,
social oppression and patriarchy. David and Jen’s arrival in
Pleasantville disrupts the town. The formerly grey world begins
blossoming into colour, a boy brashly quits his job, the high school
basketball team suffers its first loss and double beds appear in
furniture shops, something absent in 1950s and 60s shows such as
Leave
it to Beaver. These happenings worry the town’s leaders,
branding them
as foolish. This precipitates an authoritarian reaction. A typifying
scene occurs in the local bowling alley. George – David and Jen’s
father in the Pleasantville world – staggers in, drenched. Men help him
to a chair, as if injured. Shocked, he mumbles “rain” – an
inconvenience heretofore unknown. Worse still, he returned home to
discover “no wife, no lights… no dinner”. Another man, Roy, removes his
jacket to reveal that his wife singed his shirt with an iron when lost
in thought. Roy weeps. The men wince, as if Roy is burned. The mayor
asks: “Are we in this thing alone or … together?” One by one the men
say, “together”. Then in unison they chant: “together, together,
together!”
As a milkman makes his rounds the next morning, we see a sign posted on
a tree:
Town Meeting
Tonight
All True Citizens
––––––of––––––
Pleasantville
Town Hall
8 o’clock
David skips the meeting, opting to stroll with Margaret, his love
interest. David is still black and white, but Margaret is coloured.
Headlights momentarily blind the couple when a car driven by a boy
named Whitey rolls up. Whitey, whose name emphasizes white supremacist
iconography, asks why David is not at the meeting, sneering it might be
because he is entertaining his “coloured” girlfriend. At the meeting, a
riled crowd of non-coloureds packs the town hall. Low angle shots
reminiscent of
Citizen Kane
(1941) evoke fascism, as does the décor,
which unmistakably resembles that of Hitler’s January 1939
Reichstag'speech. The mayor stands before a colossal banner bearing the
Chamber of Commerce symbol, and all its members wear pins recalling
those worn by Nazis.
The morning after, a sign reading “No Coloureds” adorns the barbershop.
A crowd gathers around the soda shop where Mr. Johnson has painted a
Matisse-like nude of Betty on the window. A throng led by Whitey clamor
around Betty, exhorting her to show “what’s under her blue dress”. When
surrounded, David intervenes, punching Whitey. Crimson trickles down
Whitey’s otherwise uncoloured face, and the boys, shocked, flee.
Growing nastier, vandals hurl projectiles, shattering the window, and
then wreck the shop. In a later scene reminiscent of Nazi book
burnings, masses heap contents of a library onto a bonfire. The
authorities enact ordinances that, among other things, dictate that
“the only permissible paint colours shall be black white or gray”. Mr.
Johnson laments, “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t paint
anymore”, to which David replies, “maybe I have an idea”. Early next
morning, the pair slump half-asleep against the exterior of the town
hall. Behind them is a colourful mural. An agitated mob of
non-coloureds gathers. Music swells.
David and Mr. Johnson are arraigned for unlawful use of paint.
Spectators in the hall are segregated, with coloureds confined to the
balcony. Near the climax of the proceeding, David points to the
balcony, and says: “You see those faces up there? They’re no different
than you are. They just happen to see something inside themselves.”
Motioning to Betty, who is now coloured, David urges: “Look at her,
dad. Doesn’t she look pretty like that? Do you really want her back the
way she was?” Tears wet George’s face. He becomes coloured, as do many
spectators. The mayor exclaims: “This behavior must stop!” David
laughs, “That’s just the point. It can’t stop … because … you can’t
stop something that’s inside you.” The mayor imperiously retorts, “It
is not inside me”. David taunts further, enraging the mayor, who then
turns to colour. Triumphant music builds. A youth bursts in and cries,
“Hey, look at this!” Out stream the people to discover their formerly
colourless world has blossomed. Margaret and David kiss. Jen teases.
Betty beams. David giggles at a display of colour televisions in a shop
showing scenes from around the world.
Colour commonly symbolizes pluralism, and the victory of David and his
followers is undoubtedly meant to represent an ascendancy of diversity
and freeing from convention. Yet, as discussed, most transitions are
towards the mainstream. Furthermore, David’s triumph brings a concrete
reduction of diversity. Before his victory, there was both colour and
black and white. Now all is colour. There was also discord in opinions.
With David’s victory, disagreement ceases. The message concretely
instantiated – a message David explicitly expresses when he says
“they’re no different than you are” and “you can’t stop something
that’s inside you” – is that we are all essentially the same,
especially on the inside. Thus while deploying an anti-totalitarian
sign language, the movie brands the totality with a single identity,
therewith affirming what it pretends to reject. In this regard, the
movie manifests a longstanding tendency, namely, emphasizing shared
identity and interests. The mechanisms and reasons for this, elaborated
especially well by Frankfurt theorists, are too complex to detail here,
but the effect is that insofar as people believe they are the same and
share common interests, opposition and hence social change decreases.
5
This is not to suggest problems generating opposition within society go
totally unrecognized in
Pleasantville.
For example, socioeconomic
disparity is acknowledged when, answering some trivia early in the
film, David says, “Nobody’s homeless in Pleasantville because that’s
just not what it’s like”. Thereby the film ostensibly highlights the
harshness of the “real world”, while inviting the viewer to chuckle at
the ingenuousness of 1950s television. Yet the movie exclusively
displays safe, middleclass life, which would not be so problematic if
not for the “in touch” pretense.
The iconographic portrayal of pluralism, fascism and segregation
reinforce the idea that those clashing with David and his followers are
repressive and conformist. The tendency is to conclude that David
opposes oppression and that his victory marks the ascendance of
pluralism. What is missed is that two warring factions need not
represent opposed ideologies; groups holding nearly identical values
may still tussle for power. That the mayor and his allies affirm the
status quo does not mean David and his followers subvert it. However,
this is hidden by symbols that create a semblance of opposing
ideologies. The film rallies moviegoers to the cause of protagonists by
playing on what most audience members already accept as morally true –
that fascism, segregation and patriarchy are bad, and pluralism good.
Thus without looking at what is concretely occurring, most will side
with those who seem to fight these outlooks, and against those
appearing to defend them.
Marketing the Mainstream
Pleasantville encourages
moviegoers to laugh at the idealized security
and cleanliness of 1950s television programs, joking there are no
toilets, the weather is always nice and nothing is flammable –
firefighters only rescue cats from trees. Then David and Jen arrive. A
little violence, thunderstorm and small fire ensue. The message,
explains writer-director Gary Ross, is that “[y]ou can drain the life
and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make
everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free”. “The
tougher thing is to give yourself that kick to be alive and to be fully
engaged.” “I guess if the movie has a message”, he sums up, “it’s that
it’s worth that price, as difficult or strife-ridden as it may be.”
6
The problem is that Ross never addresses the price. In
Pleasantville,
nobody gets seriously hurt, starves, suffers depression, cancer, war,
hazardous work conditions or even severe obesity or bad skin. Despite
some violence, nothing worse than a split lip results, the thunderstorm
is a novelty, not a natural disaster, and the fire causes no injuries
or significant damage.
Speaking of “myth from the right”, which might be expanded to include
myth that conserves the world as it is, be it conventionally
conservative or liberal, Barthes suggested we fear the Other, and
consequently attempt to reduce it to sameness.
7 The movie manifests
this at the end when all things and people become coloured. Barthes
reasoned that when this strategy fails, the Other may be reduced to a
clown,
8 as with communism in the
United States, so that it no longer
threatens the status quo. This also occurs in the movie, for example,
with conventionally liberal values envisioning a hungerless or
unpolluted world or conventionally conservative ones discouraging
pre-marital sex all symbolically associated with naivety. This
encourages thoughtless rejection of a variety of outlooks.
Interestingly, moreover, it is repressive not only in the sense of
promoting current, mainstream American ideology, but because it thwarts
debate by suggesting that to consider traditionally conservative views
is to be an idiot.
Barthes maintained that one can immunize “the contents of the
collective imagination by a small inoculation of acknowledged evil”,
and hence protect “it against the risk of generalized subversion”,
9 and
the movie does this to some extent too. It creates a binary opposition
between a flat, homogenous existence with no evils and a colourful
world with trivial ones. It thereby adds the impression that mindless
fascism is the price for a world without hunger, pollution and so
forth. While completely ridding the world of such evils is unlikely,
this does not make the end any less valid, nor mean we are powerless to
move closer; and there is no reason to suppose that doing so inevitably
leads to totalitarian forms of administration.
An additional way the movie obscures realities it pretends to address
is by symbolically communicating in historical terms that most have
never directly experienced. While racism and fascism still exist, Jim
Crow style segregation and Nazism are these days known mostly through
media portrayals. In line with this, segregation scenes in
Pleasantville seem based more
on
To Kill a Mocking Bird
(1962) and
suchlike than historical occurrences themselves. The fascist imagery
likewise appears borrowed from movies such as
All the King’s Men (1942)
and
Citizen Kane (1942). The
symbols accordingly are imitations of
imitations, analogous to shadows in Plato’s cave. However, they and
other media portrayals are virtual realities for us – again, like
shadows in Plato’s cave – because they comprise the bulk of our
experience about current and past affairs. In
Pleasantville, symbols
specifically bestow progressive appearances on regressive messages,
partly, it seems, because they mimic earlier movies that had genuinely
progressive thrusts.
The take home message of
Pleasantville
is: “Shut up, don’t complain,
accept things as they are.” Because the visual rhetoric – especially
that involving fascism, segregation and pluralism – is so strong, most
are likely to miss this and that the movie is a smug affirmation of
mainstream Western values. For just these reasons, the movie is a
valuable cultural text that can be used to exemplify how social and
moral ideals that we unthinkingly accept are used to sell the reverse
of what they celebrate.