Satire In Pleasantville

. To what degree does the movie shed light on common or universal social and human problems?

Pleasantville is a social satire written and directed by Gary Ross in 1998. It is about two teenagers, Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) and David (Toby Maguire), who are magically transported from the 1990s into a black-and-white 1950s sitcoms set in a perfect world called Pleasantville. The world where everything is simple and in order, but when David and Jennifer enter the realms now as Bud and Mary Sue and they do not conform to the idyllic vision of suburbia changes begin to occur. Thus, some of these changes are what the movie sheds light on, gender role, racism, and the unfamiliar. The movie sheds light on these social and human problems by demonstrating how people are unwilling to embrace change in the movie, while out-groups

For instance, the scene where Bud is standing outside with his girlfriend, and two of the locals drive up and ask him why he wasn’t at the town hall meeting, is it because of your spending time with your colored girlfriend. Then there is the sign in a window, no colors, and of course the incident when some of the town folk try to attack Bud’s mother. In his deviance, he takes a stand and defends her, finding his color and courage. Courage will always be needed when it come to change, and the unfamiliar, because people fight against what they don’t understand, or want.

With this in mind, let’s focus on the unfamiliar, David and Jennifer brought to Pleasantville with them something different from their era, individuality, a mind to think, reasoning, something Pleasantville wasn’t acquainted with. Because the whole town was based on conformity, to the rules, and regulation handed down for generations, that’s all they knew and that’s all some wanted to