Pleasantville Essay

Words: 672
Pages: 3

The purpose of the the film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross explored many aspect of society and tries to break social boundaries. In Pleasantville two kids gets sucked into a television show known as Pleasantville. Here the two try to get back to their own world, but on the way become accepting of each other’s differences. The overall purpose of Pleasantville is to draw attention to social acceptance and broadening one's thinking. These are brought about by the use of different cinematic techniques such as color, camera angles, historical connections, and location . The film draws attention to social acceptance and broadening one’s thinking in much the same way. This is because both of these idea are very similar. When one widens their …show more content…
This scene is very impactful because a low angle shot generally means that the subject that the shot is focused on is very powerful. The filmmaker chose to include this low angle shot to demonstrate the power of the colored people and their forward thinking. This connects back to social acceptance because it represents that the colored people are superior to everyone else, but when everyone becomes colored everyone's equal. This can be seen by the straight on shot of the town’s citizens leaving the town hall. Now that everyone is colored everyone is equal. This representation of equality and inequality in the film has many historical parallels, one being slavery. During the time of slavery the black people, the film corollary being the colored people, are inferior to the white people, the film corollary being the black and white people. This historical undertone in the film goes so far as to having the film’s own version of the Jim Crow laws. This historical parallel was put in the film to emphasize how bad discriminating people, because in the film people are discriminated but in the end everyone is shown to be the same. The location of this film also is very important. This majority of this film is located in a fantasy world. It is in this fantasy world that at the end of the movie everyone is equal and the different classes of people no longer exist. The key point here is that the