Posted: February 13th, 2022

Pleasantville Essay

When David and Jenifer are tolerated to Pleasantries and are forced to play the part of Bud and Mary-sue the whole routine/script goes out of whack. We see Davit’s fantasy at the start were the director has used a close up shot of David talking to the girl of his dreams. As the camera zooms out, It becomes obvious that he was Imagining talking to her the director uses this to portray Davit’s character. From this we see that he Is a loner and Is socially awkward. To David this perfect world Is his reality.
David knows everything bout Pleasantries all the characters the script everything there is to know. It almost seems to be a religion to him. For Jenifer this is only a fantasy and she doesn’t like it she wants to bring her reality to this fantasy world. Change Change is commonly seen throughout the film and is represented in many ways. We not only see change In the characters but In the environment around them. The first sign of change we see Is the red rose that bud sees after his date with Mary-sue the director uses this to show the audience that everything Is about to change.
The director also use costumes to show the change In Pleasantries, teenagers In Pleasantries start to wear more modern clothing that are bright and colorful. The director also introduces rain and fire to Pleasantries, which are all new experiences for people in Pleasantries. When the director introduces rain The main characters in the film change in some way through the film. Jenifer is a teenage girl trying to be cool by smoking and getting with guys. When Jenifer is tolerated to Pleasantries we e change as the film progresses.

We see a glimpse of change in Jenifer when she picks up the glasses to read the book. Moments later as we see the camera move across we see the photograph of her wearing glasses. Another sign of change is when Margaret starts baking cookies for bud Instead of Whaley. When we see Bud and Margaret on their date at lover’s lane we see Margaret pick an apple from a tree, the apple symbolizes the corruption of the real world. The forbidden fruit. The people in Pleasantries have very little knowledge. We see an example of this when Mary-sue ask, “What outside Pleasantries” Everyone looks at her as she was stupid.
The teacher replies “Mary-sue you know better than that it goes around in a circle”. We also see another glimpse of there lack of knowledge when the tree catches on fire. When we see the tree on fire the director portrays both the people of Pleasantries and the tree on fire to show their confused and intrigued faces. When bud is at the fire station yelling “FIRE” the fire fighters are all confused it wasn’t until e said “cat” that the fire fighter got into action but when they got there they didn’t know what to do.
In the end bud saves the day putting out the fire. The tree on fire is a major event in the film this is when the people of Pleasantries what to know more. We see an example of change and knowledge when David was saying the ending to a book as he was saying what happened the black pages in the book started to fill. Creating new knowledge soon after all the books in Pleasantries were filled and everyone was at the library reading and gaining new knowledge. By Dylan South