Pleasantville

[Feraud]

It is such a tough balance. I'd probably go to see so many more movies, if I'd stop reading into them so much.

lol lol Correct!

 

[carebear]

Every film has "an agenda", it's a story after all and people tell stories for reasons. The art of storytelling is the art of maintaining civilization in the end.

What I really appreciate is the ability of truly great directors and producer to tell their story, with an intended "message", in such a way that I understand what they are trying to say without it having been thrown in my face. This excludes pure propaganda or polemic disguised as film of course.

A message shown that subtly and professionally can do more to stimulate debate because then one can put apply their own perceptions and experience to it. The larger moral can spawn shades of meaning for an individual.

For example, a great war movie like SPR or BOB (recent examples) that honestly demonstrates that war truly has horrors and can bring out the worst in human nature can support both the position that war is always to be avoided (pacifism) and that war should be undertaken only for the highest of reasons but can be ennobled by providing the opportunity for the best in human behavior.

A bad war movie like (using one of my least favs, YOMV, for an example) Platoon is so obviously a reaction to the admittedly suger-coated tripe of (some of) the 40's that it admits no room for a realistic middle ground or the idea that there was more than evil and stupidity in Vietnam. Stone used a sledgehammer to tell his story.

When filmmakers do that, they insult their audience.

 

[Lena_Horne]

I pretty much agree with MK's take on the film. The liberal commentary through out is just too much for me to ignore.

I agree with you about MK's viewpoint, in fact, I remember that was one of the things I originally--and still do--disliked about the movie. I couldn't understand her (the mother's) selfish, self-fulfilling but idiotic, behavior. I couldn't excuse any of it, nor condone it. But, merely as a story, getting from point A to B, I still enjoyed it. I thought Ms. Witherspoon's overly-promiscuous character wouldn't have fared well in reality, and I also wondered whether her mother (the real one) even missed her after the son returned which wasn't even mentioned.

Just because you're oversexed doesn't mean you're happy.

L_H

 

[PADDY]

I live in a Black & White world...some colours I just don't need.

I enjoy my little vintage, nostalgic B&W world. Is it dull living in a monochrome world with just this single duality of two colours, black and white...?. NO.

Does it really need the sexing up of colour of bright yellow double arches enticing me to super size?, or red blood oozing out of a TV set to the tunes of Mowtown to make it more acceptible? or the multi colour facets of foul mouthed language that seems to be accepted and tolerated in today's society? No sireeee!

For me...There's enough subtle colour to last a lifetime and more, in the Black & White and shades of grey world of PaddyVille.
The film, I loved it.

 

[Feraud]

Good points all around!
If one needs to se "color", spice, and excitement from the Golden Era Hollywood films, try reading a "behind the scenes" style book. There was plenty of action going on!
When people talk about how liberated and modern folks are today I look at people on the street. Young and older people dressed in that same Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Phat Pharm style. It looks very uninteresting and monotonous to me.

 

[MK]

.

Good points all around!
If one needs to se "color", spice, and excitement from the Golden Era Hollywood films, try reading a "behind the scenes" style book. There was plenty of action going on!

Agreed. For the most part Hollywood has never had high morals. It started out with theatre performers who had lived nomadic lifestyles with no real accountability. They just put a nice face on for the country....because most of the country had higher standards and would not accept their decadent lifestyle.

It is only through years of Hollywood projecting its values to the world that they have brought down our culture. You can trace the falling standards right along with the advance of electronic media. From a historical view that is a radical change....but that is another subject.

 

[mysterygal]

Golly gee wiz.[huh] And here all I was doing was stating things about the visuals & the costumes and how the actors seemed to fit it, not trying to make a political, moral or ethical point.
Call me simple, but I guess I try not to read too much into a story. For me I didn't see an upheaval of the 50's morality and being taken over by the 60's and so on. I just saw a very, very simple story. "All things change." Be it for the good or not, change is unavoidable, and that is that movie in a nutshell. Nothing more, nothing less. But to each their own, as it should be.
Me, I still enjoy the eye candy this movie has to offer.

Cheers!

Dan

lol I know I've always been somewhat of a downer as far as that goes. I know many people who love songs for the instrumental qualities, but pay no attention to the lyrics being song to it. I've had many friends get mad at me for spoiling a once loved song when I sang some lyrics from it :eusa_doh:

 

[MudInYerEye]

Agreed. For the most part Hollywood has never had high morals. It started out with theatre performers who had lived nomadic lifestyles with no real accountability. They just put a nice face on for the country....because most of the country had higher standards and would not accept their decadent lifestyle.

It is only through years of Hollywood projecting its values to the world that they have brought down our culture. You can trace the falling standards right along with the advance of electronic media. From a historical view that is a radical change....but that is another subject.

With the greatest respect, I am dismayed by your assertation. A brief of study of nearly any major aspect of world history reveals that folks were as vicious, decadent, bloodthirsty, duplicitous, sex-obsessed, power-mad, and just plain awful back then as they are now. Man and women have been packing perfomances by traveling minstrel and theatrical troupes for THOUSANDS of years. Furthermore, to pass moral judgement on performers in general amounts to nothing more than casting a first stone.

 

[MK]

.

With the greatest respect, I am dismayed by your assertation. A brief of study of nearly any major aspect of world history reveals that folks were as vicious, decadent, bloodthirsty, duplicitous, sex-obsessed, power-mad, and just plain awful back then as they are now. Man and women have been packing perfomances by traveling minstrel and theatrical troupes for THOUSANDS of years. Furthermore, to pass moral judgement on performers in general amounts to nothing more than casting a first stone.

I wasn't speaking of world history, I was referring to U.S. history. I would agree if we were talking including other cultures.

As for my commenting on performers, keep in mind I didn't say "all" performers. I said "for the most part". Some actors did and do have strong moral character. But I will say that I have been in the motion picture business for 20 years and have worked for every major studio in Hollywood. I have also spent the past ten years interviewing film veterans going back as far as the twenties. Several times I have been interviewed on television shows regarding Hollywood history. It should be safe to say I know what I am talking about.

 

[DanielJones]

Daisy's right, this thing has taken on a life of its own. Wow! I'm impressd that I am able to stir up such a hornest nest of oppinions like this with just a few key strokes.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I've enjoyed reading this stuff. But I still like the film for my little simple reason, it's enjoyable for me. And for me, that;s all that matters.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[jazzbass]

I hope none of my comments are thought of as critical of anyone's opinion. That is certainly not my intention.
The conversation I am trying to facilitate is something beyond "I like it because..." or not.

My query on the film creators' intention is merely to explore an angle no one has yet brought up. I think it is information worth knowing as it may justify (or not) many expressed opinions. Directors, writers, editors, etc. frequently explain their motivations in interviews and journals.

fftopic: For example, when one discusses Kubrick's "Lolita". Is the film pro child molestation or not? I am sure most people detested the film when it came out. The question begs.. what was Kubrick's point of view towards the novel, etc., etc..

Well, Nabikov himself wrote the screenplay for the Kubrick version and he is on record as saying the character Humbert was a sick man.




jazzbass

 

[Lincsong]

I never seen this movie. But if it's about some '50s style Desperate Housewife and "the door knob at the post office" then I'll just have to pass. I've heard enough stories about wife swapping, adultery etc. in the 50's from the neighbors growing up. I don't have to see Hollywood's version of what went on.

Bob and Carol and Ted and Alicefftopic: But that last scene where the entire casino at Circus Circus in Las Vegas empties into the parking lot and they walk in a circle to "what the world needs now" by Dion Warwick should go into the thread about silly dance/song sequences.lol Also, the "swinging Californian" plot of the movie wasn't '60s at all, that was happening in California in 1958.

 

[Senator Jack]

Also, the "swinging Californian" plot of the movie wasn't '60s at all, that was happening in California in 1958.

Well I really didn't want to bring up The Velvet Underground (the book, not the band) but, again, looking back from the future, it's easy to say that all this went on before the hippie movement. One must remember that this sort of behavior went on under the radar of mainstream America back then. B&C&T&A took its cue from the 66-69 era and not the underground of the 50s.

I had always thought Mazursky said a lot with that ending. I'm pretty put off by corn, and I didn't think it corny at all - perhaps just of its time. But then again I must reiterate that I think Forrest Gump is corny from frame one, though I know many disagree.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Lincsong]

Well I really didn't want to bring up The Velvet Underground (the book, not the band) but, again, looking back from the future, it's easy to say that all this went on before the hippie movement. One must remember that this sort of behavior went on under the radar of mainstream America back then. B&C&T&A took its cue from the 66-69 era and not the underground of the 50s.

I had always thought Mazursky said a lot with that ending. I'm pretty put off by corn, and I didn't think it corny at all - perhaps just of its time. But then again I must reiterate that I think Forrest Gump is corny from frame one, though I know many disagree.

Regards,

Senator Jack

Well, it seems that all of the neighborhood knew which house had the "swingers", who was visiting who while someone was working graveyard.lol I think it just wasn't blared on television and the big screen. Although, The 7 Year Itch touched upon it.lol

 

[Doctor Strange]

As the last few posts have indicated, it's worth remembering that the *reality* of the 1950s was not quite the whitewashed "1950s" of the time's TV sitcoms - much less the "Pleasantville" sitcom of the film, which exaggerates the whole Leave It To Beaver/Father Knows Best/Donna Reed Show concept for effect. There was a much wider disconnect between TV and real life back then, largely due to the TV industry's self-censoring to not offend, well, anybody.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's a book by sociologist Stephanie Koontz entitled "The Way We Never Were," which makes an interesting companion piece to "Pleasantville" -- it goes into the whole 50s TV sitcom family trope and examines it against the reality of postwar family life. If you can force yourself to wade thru the annoyingly academic prose, it's a very eye-opening book.

 

[deanglen]

The Collar responds...

That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one might say,
'See this, it is new'?
Already it has existed for ages which were before us.
There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still.

-Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 (NASB)

Offered for inspiration, not to settle all points of view. Great thread Daniel got going here. An excellent thought provoker. I remember when Pleasantville was released, there was a comedian who did a routine about waking up in Ronald Reagan's America, which apparently did not please the comedian. I think recall the film being an attempt to puncture the conservative view of society. I prefer Jeff Daniels in Gettysburg.

dean

 

[Benny Holiday]

There's a book by sociologist Stephanie Koontz entitled "The Way We Never Were," which makes an interesting companion piece to "Pleasantville" -- it goes into the whole 50s TV sitcom family trope and examines it against the reality of postwar family life. If you can force yourself to wade thru the annoyingly academic prose, it's a very eye-opening book.

When I was 16 and well on my way to becoming a rockabilly hoodlum, I worked at the local supermarket after school. One of the girls I worked with was picked up by her dad in the evenings, and he was a bodgie ('greaser') back in the mid-50's. He was pretty surprised to find a kid sporting a Tony Curtis cut in the late 80's, so one night he struck up a conversation with me.

Naturally, we dug the same music and style and got to talking most nights he was there. One night I aksed him what it was like in the 50's. I thought he was going to tell me about the local milk bar and Bill Haley and pegged pants and how everything was like an episode of 'Leave It To Beaver' or 'Happy Days'. To my surprise, the way he talked made the greasers sound more like skinheads are today: always fighting, they mostly came from poor and abusive families, and most of the music on the hit parade wasn't the rebellious Gene Vincent and Elvis I'd imagined, but adult tunes by Eddie Fischer, Sinatra and Kay Starr. When ol' Henry told me about getting his bodgie haircut in 1954, with the DA in back, he told me his father was so furious he slammed the then 15-year-old's head through the living room wall!

And no, few people here drove big American cars like Chevies, Buicks and Plymouths. Henry totally shot to pieces my whole concept of what the 50's had been like; he took me from notions of milk shakes and bobby socks to savagely violent gang warfare, poverty and hopelessness in just an hour and a half.

 

[MudInYerEye]

Benny,
You hit the nail on the head, my man. Too many of us long for a time that never existed, a time when the majority of people practiced good sound morals, a time before the evil hedonists seduced the world towards a downward path. It's such an easy cop-out, and a bogus justification to finger-point. While I love the past and incorporate many elements of past culture and style into my daily life, I am not so naive to think the world was an even slightly better (or morally less corrupt) place 70, 60, or 50 years back.

 

[carebear]

I would never expect folks to be more moral. People have been people since the dawn of time.

All I ask is that they just , in public, adhere to some standards of decency and keep the bedroom dress, activity and attitude in the bedroom where it belongs.

The sexual revolution apparently wasn't about actually "doing things"; it was about "doing things" publically.

Discretion, modesty and courtesy towards others (not flaunting your personal kinks) does not equal "repression". It's just good manners.

That's what I yearn for.