The movie Pleasantville contains some overtly race related themes, but what I found more fascinating was the use of religion within the movie. As I am currently taking a course in world religions, I thought it would be interesting to analyze the movie from not just a Christian but also, eastern (Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism) religions perspective. It seems as if the director chose to use Christianity for the more visual symbolism but thematically, the movie deals a lot with the yin and yang, or balance, of Daoism and the perspective of the world constantly changing from Buddhism (Prothero, 2010).
To give a little background, Daoism, is a religion founded around the idea of essentially getting back to human nature, sort of going with the flow. If Christianity is about salvation from sin, Daoism is about freedom from social conformities (Prothero, 2010). This is embodied in the court room scene where David/Bud convinces his father, George, to give up the trappings of the Chamber of Commerce and give in to his love for his wife. By acknowledging his feeling so passionately for a woman who is afflicted by the condition he been compliant in fighting against most of the movie, he gave in to his nature and found Dao. In fact, it could be said that the path to …show more content…
However, in the case of Jennifer/Mary Sue, who by her own admission, already had a lot of sex, the path to color was in “nerdy” activities, reading a good book, embodying the Mary Sue side of her character, which was sorely missing in Jennifer’s life. So as we see, simply shedding the idealist values of Pleasantville is not enough, to obtain color, or one could say salvation, one must find balance, yin alone is not enough, one must find both the yin and the yang, the balance of natural
To give a little background, Daoism, is a religion founded around the idea of essentially getting back to human nature, sort of going with the flow. If Christianity is about salvation from sin, Daoism is about freedom from social conformities (Prothero, 2010). This is embodied in the court room scene where David/Bud convinces his father, George, to give up the trappings of the Chamber of Commerce and give in to his love for his wife. By acknowledging his feeling so passionately for a woman who is afflicted by the condition he been compliant in fighting against most of the movie, he gave in to his nature and found Dao. In fact, it could be said that the path to …show more content…
However, in the case of Jennifer/Mary Sue, who by her own admission, already had a lot of sex, the path to color was in “nerdy” activities, reading a good book, embodying the Mary Sue side of her character, which was sorely missing in Jennifer’s life. So as we see, simply shedding the idealist values of Pleasantville is not enough, to obtain color, or one could say salvation, one must find balance, yin alone is not enough, one must find both the yin and the yang, the balance of natural