Functionalism In Pleasantville

UID- 141077

R.NO -149

When you see “Pleasantville” for the first time,it doesn’t strike you hard enough how much sociological theory has just been served to you.Thus,when I was watching it for the first time my mind was going in circles about the following pattern.

Consumption-Artifacts-Profane-Thought-Perception-Distinguishing-Convenience-Questions-Resistance-Novelty-Loss and Gain.

The word connect is aiming to give an explanation of how at any particular point in time every discourse lived by people follows, if not rigidly, but closely related “patterns”.It is also to highlight why functionalism becomes the dominant ideology when it comes to the structures in society.However, the word functionalism here is to be used in the Mertonian

Or Weber, who theorised the relation between “the Protestant Ethic” and the capitalistic attitude in America.The 1950s American society is still viewed as the ideal by them and we see Donald Trump conveniently using it to his advantage.Marxist theory highlights the alienation faced by Betty in her house / of the women in that period of time or the whole point in the movie where everyone realizes the foolhardiness of following the ethos of “Chamber of Commerce” which is congruent to the haves who are in power because of being industrialists.It is also very interesting that the director has shown that there are no homeless people in “ Pleasantville” which explains why any deviance is a thorough struggle for the people when it happens due to Mary Sue and her wish to explore her sexuality.It is so new ,its unfathomable.The “somehow” factor to bind an individual personality with the culture and expectation of the macro subsystems which Parsons believed in (Motivated compliance) is what is exemplary of the ‘Father-knows-best’

What corrupts the change/ advancement is the treatment of it by the people.The internet was an attempt at transforming communication which was needed at that stage . The myriad purposes ( illegal ones) it is being used for now is the abuse of change.This also extends to the aspects of latent and manifest functions where the manifest function is that a number of visible positive has come from internet.On the flipside, the latent functions have 1.Made human life too digital 2.Created a superstructure of ‘surveillance’.What struck me further is that deviance in any society is resultant of the discovery of sex ,art, books and the like that people consider “material culture”.It becomes inevitable at this point to not draw parallels with the Indian society and the constant struggle we face between deciding which is our indigenous (greater/go-to culture) and what is the influenced westernised(deviant/non-normative ).There is an underlying assumption that material culture