David and Jennifer are siblings and are present-day teenagers, both with different high school branding and social life. Starting off with David, This gentleman with no social life is a shy and withdrawn guy who spends a lot of time watching television, while his sister Jennifer is an aggressive extrovert who sometimes can be so superficial. David is a big fan of “Pleasantville”, a 50’s black and white situation comedy and he wants to watch the marathon of that said series. However, Jennifer wants to watch a concert on television but it hits on the same date where the marathon will be released, that is why they came arguing on who is going to be in-charge of the remote control. Out of no-where, a strange television repairman suddenly showed up and gave the quarrelling siblings an unusual remote control. Upon using the remote, it transported them into “Pleasantville” and now they play as bud and Mary Sue as portrayed on the show.
Now
they do things from their world and introduce them into Pleasantville. So every
time things do not come about the way they should be in the show, Pleasantville
happens to change from black and white into a colorful community. This consists of people’s faces and its surroundings.
According to a blog (I forgot who the blogger is)
that I have read days ago relative to Pleasantville, the blogger’s
understanding about the film was that Color was an important device used in the
film. It was a clear distinction on characters.
It also depicted communal protests in art earlier in the 50’s. Pleasantville was a perfect example on how
the 50’s society looked like. There is a definite standard intended for
everything throughout this time and this standard must be maintained. Everything has to be uniformed. If this standard is not followed, the society
will go against the offender.
In the film, color has a much deeper meaning
behind it. It did not dwell on its
literal attributes as for its ornamental purposes and beauty. Color highlighted a development in art during
the 50’s where paintings of Picasso and other famous artists during his time
were shown in some clips. The characters
in the film portrayed people in the 50’s where some get to agree with the new
art while others dwell on the same old style resulting in violence and anger.
When Post-modernism was introduced, modernists
had their own custom. This custom is
considered being the ideal and it covered everything. It covered the people’s lifestyle,
citizenship, and philosophies. Modernist works was only linked to the artist within
himself. Their work did not associate to
other people just the artist themselves.
Post Modernists moved out further from its reach. What they did was, they crafted an art that
was not linked only to the artist but it made the art somewhat interactive,
making the witnesses connect to it; getting them to be involved in it. The viewer is fundamental relative to the
work. The work’s totality or
completeness cannot be attained without the viewer.
Pleasantville revealed a revolution of a town with
a mind-set that does not want change, into a place with an open mind to explore
new ideologies. The flaws in art led to
a discovery of a fresh kind of beauty that despite of the imperfection, creates
something extraordinarily beautiful.
Beauty is a word where not everybody has the same
understanding because its definition relies on the beholder. Not everything that looks beautiful may be
beautiful to others. Likewise in the
movie, the black and white was the norm existing in the town of Pleasantville. The shades of grey were considered the
pleasant one. In the eyes of David and
Jennifer, everything looked so dull and lifeless but for the settlers, it was beautiful.
When things became colorful, some people felt uneasy. It looked ugly for them seeing some
colors. Paintings were showed in the
film and in relevance to that David introduced art to Mr. Johnson the diner
owner. To Mr. Johnson, color was beautiful
and art was beautiful. The paintings and
him had a connection like a bond where there is an emotional activity given by
the art to him. Beauty therefore is the positive
emotional push given back to the beholder by the object. It gives the beholder pleasure to look and to
savour the object being beheld. Similarly,
people in Pleasantville upon seeing Mr. Johnson’s artworks, they revolted
against his art. They found no pleasure
in looking at it so in their point of view it was ugly.
We see different kinds of art and not everything
is beautiful to us. We say something is
pleasing to the eye because it gives us a positive emotional connection. We may feel so no matter if something has
color, or maybe just plain black and white. It is not just color that makes
something beautiful and pleasing to the eye.
It is not only the symmetry that makes object perfect. As long as the object connects with us, it is
considered beautiful because it can reach you intrinsically. The irony behind art is that, its
imperfections and flaws can create something new and diverse making a different
kind of beauty, where it affects the beholder positively. Change is an entry way to betterment. We can relate to the movie. There are things that we do that seem to be
redundant. This redundancy makes us feel
bored and spiritless. We make changes to
make things better. We change for the better.
Architects are the bud and mary-sue of this
globally competitive “Pleasantville” world.
The world has its own standards and its own definition of beauty, on the
other hand Bud and Mary-sue introduced a new kind of beauty, going beyond the
standards. They changed Pleasantville into
a new town, making the town a new variety.
Our world is a living “Pleasantville” waiting to be changed, where standards
will be taken further. The world is
baked cake. A cake waiting to be
transformed to a scrumptious icing filled dessert. We future Architects get to draw, make plates
and design structures. But it doesn’t
end there. We only not draw. We connect to people like Bud and Mary-Sue
did. We create beauty in all forms like what they did. In the end, we can change the world above all
odds, just like what Bud and Mary-sue did to Pleasantville. But not only can our works change the world,
it can change us, just like how it changed Mary-Sue.
