“The first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things

that are unpleasant”: Gary Ross’ Pleasantville and the Classic Era

of TelevisionHUM 3085: Television and Popular

CultureSpring 2015Dr. Perdigao

January 21, 2015

Pleasantville (1998)• Fin de siècle mentality?

• Twenty-first century: 1950s culture

• Normative identities for women, men

• Social constructedness

The End of the World…?• Film begins with 20th century contexts, famine, poverty

• Escapism through the show (from familial problems)

• Geography class

• End of Main Street is its beginning

• Overemphasis on order

Television History• 1950s programming

• Clip from Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963)when David and Jennifer are first in Pleasantville, self-conscious reference to the types of shows being watched at the time, contemporaries of Pleasantville

• Don Knotts as repairman (Andy Griffith Show [1960-1968], Three’s Company [1976-1984])

• Dick Van Dyke originally to play television repairman in script—Rob’s TV Repair (named after Van Dyke’s character in his own show [1961-1966])

• Jukebox—from Happy Days (1974-1984)

• “Mary-Sue” as character that inserts self into the show, fixes problems—originating in fan fiction as plot device

Don Knotts in Television History• The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6ecC1jf9E

• Three’s Company (1976-1984; Don Knotts in 1979-1984): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4stdMIqjsSc

Television History• Twin beds—Mary Kay and Johnny (1947), I Love Lucy (1951-

1957), The Brady Bunch (1969-1974)

• Most special effects in a film until Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, capturing characters in color alongside those in black and white

• Set in Burbank, CA—façade of their house for the film but others in neighborhood recognizable from 1960s television series: Gidget (1965-1966), Hazel (1961-1966), and Bewitched (1964-1972). Margaret’s house is the family’s house in The Partridge Family (1970-1974).

Utopia in TV Land?• Shifts with rock and roll, rebel culture

• Books filled in when remembered: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye

• Book burning, censorship

• Garden of Eden, loss of paradise

• Eve offering apple, replayed, “go on, try it.”

• “You don’t deserve this paradise.”

• Question of values, “holding onto those values that made this place great”

“Across the Universe”• Civil Rights in 1950s

• “Whitey”

• “colored girlfriend,” “no coloreds”

• Now violence, threat of rape, looting, mob, book burning—dystopic

• Non-changes view of history in classes, favoring continuity over alteration, new rules

• Mural on wall: woman, kiss, records, bowling, town hall into water, Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, Moby Dick burning

• Now court system, first trial

• After court case is resolved, color tv, images of world, history

• Multiple possibilities at end? Multiple universes?