Pleasantville is a film set around two teenagers who happen to fall into the predictable 1950s’ black and white sitcom, Pleasantville. The show represents a very stereotypical image of what American culture was known for in the 50s’, in regards to gender roles, segregation of races, and basic societal standards. With a society, so bland, David and Jennifer bring along their personalities that influence new ideas and innovation, keenness for knowledge and most importantly a display of freedom. As the citizens of Pleasantville became exposed to new experiences and opportunities, an eruption of “intense” emotions took over the town, which led to the outburst of the symbol of colour. These abrupt changes to the society’s norms highlight the uneasiness
Herbert Gans piece on the mass production of suburban styled homes like Levittown with its homes on the outskirts of the city and mixed land uses closer within the core “ analyzes the suburbs and makes it evident that they are not a utopia” no matter the societal segregation they represent (Herbert Gans). These areas have their burdens resulting in physical and social isolation, no access to transportation, the start of gender roles, and inadequate decision making. In comparison, Pleasantville was a society of segregation due to the land constraints and urban planning of the society. Its visible that there is an increase in segregation between the suburban population and inner city. The higher class living in the suburbs would remain in that area unless it was for work. This is evident when Mrs. Parker goes to visit Mr. Johnson just through expressions its clear to the audience that they have not seen each other in years. Moreover, Pleasantville was an automobile dependent society. This reliance on a vehicle to take you from one place to another ultimately led to the mentality of gender roles. This sprung the idea that women should stay home and be housewives and the man would go off to work. “Honey, I’m home” was a line over used in the film outlining that these gender roles were dominant at the time. We do see a shift in this mentality by the end of the film when Mr. Parker comes home she makes it very clear to him that dinner is not prepared and shows him how to turn on the stove for his meal to cook that night. She then leaves the scene which shows a clear line that these roles have diminished in her
Using the movie Love Jones I will talk about the characteristics of male/male and female/female relationship as they are portrayed in the film. Then I will talk about how different the female/male relationship is and focus primarily on their communication styles. There is some harsh vocabulary included in my essay but only in quotations that I have taken from the movie itself to communicate what was going on in the scenes I have chose to talk about.
I did my paper on the movie Pleasantville. This is about a brother and sister who get trapped inside the 50’s television show, Pleasantville. The movie starts off in color until they get to Pleasantville where their world suddenly turns to black and white. Pleasantville is a perfect society where husbands come home to a beautiful wife and children and a home cooked meal ready on the table, and everything and everyone works together to make the community a perfectly functioning society. When the siblings, David and Jennifer, become part of Pleasantville’s perfect society they immediately have a strong influence that changes it substantially. As the people of Pleasantville start breaking their community’s norms, color starts to appear
Society is faced with various problems that hinder the development of its communities. These issues affect the society in a numerous of ways and has a major effect on the citizens of the community as well. Social adversities causes grief and is also the cause of crimes and other miscellaneous activities that occur in inequitable areas. In the film, Fruitvale Station, there are abundant amounts of these adversities and societal issues that are illustrated. Fruitvale Station is a great example of a film that shows accurate social issues that occur in today’s society. The movie demonstrates issues of inequality, racial prejudice, gang involvement and also unemployment. It also shows how the people who are forced to live with these issues, fight for survival to maintain to see another day.
Pleasantville is a movie written and directed by Gary Ross that reveals the dystopian elements hidden within seemingly utopian worlds by portraying the contrast between modern society and the idyllic setting of suburban 1950s’ America. The film follows the adventure of twin teenagers David and Jennifer as they find themselves transported into the world of the 1950s’ television show “Pleasantville”, replacing the main characters Bud and Mary Sue. In various events throughout the movies, both characters spark a series of changes in the conservative Pleasantville society that result in the town gradually transforming from repressive black-and-white to liberating Technicolor. In Pleasantville, Ross shows that the Technicolor version of Pleasantville
Many different depictions of gender roles exist in all times throughout the history of American culture and society. Some are well received and some are not. When pitted against each other for all intents and purposes of opposition, the portrayal of the aspects and common traits of masculinity and femininity are separated in a normal manner. However, when one gender expects the other to do its part and they are not satisfied with the results and demand more, things can shift from normal to extreme fairly quickly. This demand is more commonly attributed by the men within literary works. Examples of this can be seen in Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire”, where Stella is constantly being pushed around and being abused by her drunken husband Stanley, and also in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the female narrator is claimed unfit by her husband as she suffers from a sort of depression, and is generally looked down on for other reasons.
Each gender has its little tells and associations, the movie Victor Victoria depicts gender cues very accurately and well. Victor Victoria is a movie about a woman, who wants to have a successful singing career, but in order to do so she must pretend to be a man pretending to be a woman. This movie takes place in the 1930’s in Paris, France during the winter time. One gender cue I noticed was how women and men wore their coats differently. Men tended to wear their coats over their shoulders without putting their arms in the sleeves and women, wore their coats a help their coats together with their hand placed close to their chest, indicating they feel cold. Another gender cues I noticed was when Carole "Toddy" Todd, played by Robert Preston,
about marriage that our society assumes to be true today. These include ideas about single
The change in a social class is something that is shown in every day life and the media. It is the American Dream to move upward in society. The movie Sweet Home Alabama is a prime example of social mobility in the main character. The main character Melanie Carmichael left her small town Alabama home and achieved an impressive upward social mobility. She began her life as a daughter of a respectful working class family to become a world famous fashion designer in New York City. At the beginning of the movie, Andrew, the mayor’s son, proposes to Melanie. She says yes, but before she can marry him, she has to clear up a not so final divorce with Jake, her high school sweetheart she left behind. Melanie is now caught between two classes and two cultures, the working class that she grew up in and the upper class she has now placed herself in. As the film continues, her dilemma will require her to acknowledge and reconnect with her mother who lives in a trailer park while still trying to impress h...
Women also dealt with taboo subjects. The novel Peyton Place (1956) by Grace Metalious dealt with many scandals among the inhabitants of what appears to be a serious and proper New England town which later became a popular TV series in 1960s. The novel was considered indecent and scandalous and it included taboo subjects like sex, profanity, alcoholism, and graphic violence. A year after the publication of the work it was turned into a movie which became a major hit. A popular TV series in the 1960s based on the novel became forerunner of TV dramas such as Desperate Housewives. There occurred a drastic change in the publishing industry after the publication of Peyton Place. Americans no longer felt embarrassed about reading such novels
Within Tennessee Williams's story about love and abuse within marriage and challenging familial ties, there lie three very different characters that all see the world in vastly different ways. These members of a family that operate completely outside of our generation’s norms, are constantly unsure of themselves and their station within the binary not only of their familial unit, but within the gender binary that is established for them to follow. Throughout the story of the strange family, each character goes through a different arch that changes them irrevocably whether it is able to be perceived or not by those around them. The only male, Stanley is initially the macho force in the home who controls everything without question. He has no consequences for his actions against his wife and is never held accountable for treating the people around him poorly; this lasts until Blanche arrives. Blanche is an outwardly demure, but spirited young woman who after experiencing untold misfortune breaks mentally and decides to no longer care what others may think of her. She lives her life lavishly and foolishly by having dalliances with younger or richer men who shower her with gifts and attention to get sex from her all too willing form. Her effect on Stanley is one of temptation and challenge; she continually tries to convince her sister that she is too good for the man and in turn fosters a resentment for her in him. Stella acts as the antithesis of Stanley and Blanche’s extreme personalities. She is innocence and purity where they are the darkness that threatens to overtake her life. Throughout, Stella is a pawn that they both try to use against the other to no real avail as she is determined to make the best choice for herself. In th...
As a fan of cinema, I was excited to do this project on what I had remembered as a touching portrait of racism in our modern society. Writer/Director Paul Haggis deliberately depicts his characters in Crash within the context of many typical ethnic stereotypes that exist in our world today -- a "gangbanger" Latino with a shaved head and tattoos, an upper-class white woman who is discomforted by the sight of two young Black kids, and so on -- and causes them to rethink their own prejudices during their "crash moment" when they realize the racism that exists within themselves. This movie does provoke a dialogue on race that, according to author and journalist Jeff Chang, "has been anathema to Hollywood after 9/11. " During the first viewing of this movie, the emotionally charged themes of prejudice and racism are easy to get caught up in. (125) Privilege is inclined to white males through every facet of our everyday lives that inconspicuously creates racism through classism.
In many ways today's society, even though women have come a long way, we still live in a patriarchal world. There are many examples of this in everyday life, whether it be that there aren't very many women CEO's or the mere fact that we've yet to have a woman president. No matter where you live, there is the presence of a male dominated world. It especially extends into the working fields. There are professions that are categorically 'women's' jobs like nursing, school teacher, or secretarial jobs. The rest of the professional world is mainly male dominated, i.e. engineering, CEO's of major companies, and Law Firms. Which brings us to the movie I picked to watch, Legally Blonde.
Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind, a classic that gives insight into the Confederate lifestyle before and after the Civil War, is known as one of the greatest American novels ever written. The story centers around a former Southern belle named Scarlett O’Hara who grows up in the heart of Georgia on her plantation named Tara. Scarlett doesn’t care about anything or anyone except for her lover, Ashley Wilkes, and finds herself heartbroken when he marries his plain Jane cousin, Melanie Hamilton. As the Yankees get closer and closer to her beloved home, destroying everything she’s ever known and forcing her to flee to Atlanta, Scarlett finds herself forced to fight for what she loves. Though
Pleasantville is about the radical changes that happened to Americans as many started to modernize not only in technology but social reforms. Jennifer is the sister of David who was obsessed with an old television show called Pleasantville that described the perfect American family. Jennifer is a self-obsessed teenager who only cares about boys, smoking cigarettes, and basically not following the norms of society. After being transported into the television show by a mysterious old man, she is forced to act like the other teenagers despite her being the completely opposite from them. After becoming the character of Mary Sue, she begins to change others around her. Instead of their actions being dictated by external factors such as the City Council and and what seems to be right, they begin making decisions of their own. The women in the show, including Jennifer, were very limited in their rights in the world of men. They were seen as homemakers, to cook and clean for the family, but Jennifer, being Jennifer, starts to preach that they do not have to hide. There is a much higher quality of life if they can embrace the change. They come up with new beliefs such as openly showing affection, which the adults are extremely worried about. Back then, such public display was not right and made
Individuals who do not know what gender role they are disliked and shamed by society because they are not what society calls “normal”. The definition of normal is conforming to a standard or conforming to the expected. Society should not have the power to make an individual conform to anything. Does a person have to be born female to be female? The answer is simply no. Jenna Talackova is a prime example of this because she was born a man but knew he was a female from the beginning. These people who were born with a specific genetic gender have no control over their chemical make-up, but they do control what gender role they decide to be and no one should tell them to pick one that fits the normal standards of society. Judith Butler writes about gender is her book and how it should not be a preconceived notion. People who have non-normative gender roles struggle daily with the fact that they cannot express who they are because the public would disgrace them and society would not accept them, which are problems that can be solved by a simple lesson of not judging a book by its cover.