Traditional Family Values In Pleasantville

The original utopia, devised by distinguished humanist Thomas More in his eponymous novel — Utopia (1516), was the faultless product of a superior race. The term itself is the coalescence of two Ancient Greek expressions evoking simultaneously ‘no place’ and ‘good place’, a characteristically classical play on paradoxical concepts. Since its creation, utopian literature have continually critiqued the defects of contemporaneous societies through the modelling of alternatives far superior in moral standards and practical benefits. Later works in the genre such as Pleasantville (1998) created by Gary Ross, however, captures the impossibility of such perfection due to humanity’s natural aversion to moral homogeneity. While both texts serve to highlight …show more content…
Set in a 1950s suburban village, Pleasantville is modelled after the post-war ‘American dream’, providing an antidote to the impetuous modern lifestyle. Villagers conform to “traditional family values”, typifying the Pleasantville tagline of “going back to simpler times”. Families within the village are perfect nuclear structures in which loving, monogamous couples raise dutiful and obedient children, providing a stark contrast to the evolving notions of ‘family’ within a modern context. America during the 1990s saw escalating divorce rates and diversifying family structures, a trend which the film explores by presenting both the destigmatisation of promiscuity among high school students and the prominence of single parent households. Ross emphasises this disparity between the ‘real world’ and the utopian setting by framing together adjacent images of the ‘ideal’ nuclear family and the ‘modern’ single parent household, drawing parallels between the two antithetical settings. Moreover, the desexualised society within Pleasantville arguably remedies some of the deadliest malices within the modern world. At the start of the film Ross constructs a series of zooming montage shots of class teachers explaining the many disasters plaguing the world, an extensive list which includes the likes of HIV and AIDS. Sexually …show more content…
The citizens of the island are seemingly oblivious to any differing moral standards in existence and are determined to uphold their uniform world view for eternity. Utopians act in accordance to the universal value of intellectual superiority and moral absolutism, concepts that permeates every aspect of daily life. For example, Utopians attend regular philosophical lectures as they value the “improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists”. This society focus on education and philosophical thought is ironic in a sense that all citizens who participate in said activities never question the legitimacy of their way of life. Despite regular contact with foreign nations through war and trade, no Utopian has ever rebelled against the state or fled the state due to differing opinions. All of this is despite of the widespread patriarchal oppression of women and the inequality between the labourers and the intellectuals, displayed through micro-aggressions against women such as the husbands’ ability to “chastise their wives” and the fact that elected officials are the only ones exempt from manual labour. Hythloday depicts the island as if it were one person and not a functioning society of many individuals, assigning no value to individual lives and diverse opinions. In fact, Utopia is free of diverse opinions and devoid of emotional