Pleasantville was one of the most welcome suprises I've had in a long time. I was captivated by the beauty of the movie - watching people
wake up and come to life... books that had never contained words
filling with magic... a lonely man who didn't even realize he was
lonely finding his gift... and it even had a poly-friendly ending!
Inhabitants of Pleasantville turned to color when they broke outsideof themselves and their rules - when they colored outside of their lines. Living in black and white is living inside of the lines:
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feeling what you should feel
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loving who you should love
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accepting what you are told
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sleeping with whom who should but only feeling what you should (it is no accident that awakening sexuality was the key for so many of the characters)
Living outside of the lines is more dangerous, and leads to more heartache, but I have to believe the rewards are greater. And it is important to note that what counts is living outside of your own lines, not someone elses. The sister asked why she was still in black and white when she had had more sex than most of the kids combined. The answer was that she was still trapped in her own pattern -- it was not until she began to explore her intellectual potential that she turned to color.
So I wonder about the real world. I don't remember when I came into color, but I think it was when I started really immersing myself into reading and thinking about what I was reading. I've been reading Michener since I was 13, Tolkein since I was 10, and I have seen my father's heart out in the stars. But how does it happen?
As everyone who knows me is aware, I'm not a big fan of children. But even I can see that some children are itty bittle little PEOPLE and some are little automatons. Some are in color, some are in black & white. I think more teenagers are in color than any other age group, but some fade to black & white when they enter 'the real world'. And then, later, some come back into color.
I think that black & white is the safety boot default we all have lurking inside us. Have you ever had Windows crash in a bad way? When it's REALLY nasty, you get a special screen that asks if you REALLY want to take the risk of a full bootup, or if you wouldn't rather use the safety bootup.
Black & white, or living inside the lines, is a safety bootup that sometimes we fall into. It isn't necessarily the same as depression, or numbness, or grief... if you've ever known amaniac-depressive, or someone who suffers from depression-induced moodswings you know that depression can be pretty damn colorful! It is more like turning a part of yourself off and just going along for a while. Sometimes, though, I think people forget what color looks like.
So watch this movie - it's a good movie even if you just look at the surface. But I don't see how you can escape being drawn into the depth of emotion and life that this movie offers.
Leonard Nimoy said of this movie: 'I thought they created a film with a lot of heart, and I enjoyed the wonderful metaphysical use of black and white and color. I lived through the 50s -- and it wasn't a great time for actors who looked like I did.'