Transcript Document

A Robin
Redbreast in
a cage
puts all
Heaven in a
Rage.
--William Blake
"What do you hicks do around here for kicks?"
- "The roses grow. People get married. Crazy as anyplace else."
Consider George: he is a normal, conventional
average guy.
He works hard at his job, is the head of
his family, is a good citizen.
He’s never had much opportunity or taste for
questioning his life.
He is happy with the normal life
that he has made for himself in Pleasantville.
But nice inoffensive George is going to be the
villain of our story.
Pleasantville is traditional
• Life is routine
• People live conventional lives designed by
others
• They are portrayed as conventional types, not
individuals
• They live by the rules and respect the status
quo
• This is a town meant for George and those
like him.
• People live by scripts; they do not think
for themselves
• So Pleasantville is black and white:
everything is simple, nothing is
ambiguous.
• Everyone knows how to live: they live
the way everyone has always lived; they
live the way everyone else lives
• No one is adventurous; no one is
eccentric; no one deviates from the
script
The solid black and white citizens of
Pleasantville refuse to recognize
anything that doesn’t fit their views on
how the world should be.
Geography lesson: “What’s outside of
Pleasantville?” Nothing, of course.
Pleasantville books have no contents. No
one can learn anything that doesn’t fit
with the conventional views which are
obviously limited and narrow. P’ville
books & maps leave out much of the
truth.
Traditional family/gender roles predominate in Pleasantville.
Some people--the Georges-- accept the world and do
the best they can while playing by its rules.
Some people either can’t or won’t do anything but play
by their own rules.
Pleasantville is a fable about what happens when these
two kinds of people collide.
This course is about the ideas that justify people of the
second kind
and
Some prominent examples of that kind.
The Theory and Practice of Romanticism
• Because not everyone is as content
with the status quo as is George.
• Consider Bill and Betty. They are not so
content, they are dissatisfied, though at
first they don’t know why.
• They are leading what Thoreau called
“lives of quiet desperation.”
Bill is really an artist at heart.
Early scenes with Bill are meant to illustrate
In an exaggerated form how people sometimes
unthinkingly do what they’ve always done; and
how they may be paralyzed by novelty.
When Bud doesn’t show up for work, Bill keeps
wiping the counter, waiting for Bud to show up and
do the next thing in the script so that he can move
on. Bill doesn’t know what to do if the script for
closing the malt shop deviates. He can’t ad lib.
He continues uselessly wiping the counter because
that’s what he’s always done.
Pleasantville:
Bill says to Bud, referring to the fact that the
one thing he really enjoys is painting the
Christmas scenes on the Malt Shop windows:
Why should I have to wait all year long for
one moment that I really enjoy? What’s the point of that?
Bud: So people can get their hamburgers!
Conventional society requires deferred (or possibly no)
gratification.
Important issue here:
Can we have civilization if everyone does what they
truly want to do? (Freud thought not: civilization
runs on repressed sexual instincts, he thought.)
Mustn’t people make sacrifices of their dreams so that
the hamburgers can be made?
What’s the human cost then of a civilization?
Is it worth it? Can it be ameliorated?
Are hamburgers that important? Perhaps we could do
with less and live better. (This will be Thoreau’s
message, as we’ll see.)
”
Betty has an unfulfilled sexual nature
And the kids have undeveloped and unrecognized sides
To themselves.
Skip is about to get a big surprise when Mary Sue shows
Him one of his undeveloped sides: sexuality.
• Basic metaphor of the film:
• Pleasantville is black & white.
• It uses only a small part of the color
palette.
• Metaphorically, Pleasantville uses only a
small part of the human potential palette.
As things happen to liberate people’s
potentials, color erupts in Pleasantville
Under the impetus of Mary
Sue, the kids begin to
DISCOVER
their
TRUE SELVES
(and turn color as they do--people by
nature are colored, not gray)
The film suggests that Mary Sue brings a healthy expression of
sexuality to kids whose sexuality has been badly repressed.
She liberates them from the shackles of sexual convention.
The initial liberation begins with Mary Sue introducing Skip
to sex. The word spreads to the other kids.
Sexual liberation is an essential part of our story: real life
American rebels are sexual pioneers and nonconformists.
Sexuality is easily seen as a natural part of who we are.
It is very intense, exciting, and fun and once let out, can be
hard to control: it often feels like a force of nature, rather than
something we control.
Bill needs art supplies and a teacher to really express
his natural artistic side; he might have gone his whole life
without being lucky enough to be exposed to artistic
influences.
But sexuality doesn’t need any accessories or training, so it’s
Accessible to everyone.
And to many it has given two morals:
1. Adults are hypocrites: nothing bad has happened now that
we’ve had sex -they just wanted to keep it for themselves:
2. And: how can something that feels this good and loving be bad?
We shouldn’t believe everything we’ve been told.
And so sexual experience can lead to
•A realization that those in charge may have feet of clay.
•An attitude of skepticism toward traditional points of view.
•A belief that conventional life can rob one of exciting and
Important experiences.
•A tendency to follow one’s natural instincts regardless of
what adults or other authorities day.
Adults seem to be missing out on something good:
“Oh, I don’t think your father would ever do anything like that, dear
• Pleasantville has been pleasant and safe because it
walled out anything new or threatening
• It saw the new as automatically threatening and bad
• Allowing passion and liberation will not be safe and
pleasant.
• Joy and passion have their down sides: you don’t get
a rainbow without a thunderstorm
To their true natures. . .
In each case of liberation there is a convention that has been
adhered to that is now broken in order to express the true self:
Mary Sue’s convention is that she’s a “slut” who never
opens a book
The Mayor’s is that he is a rational, calm person who
would never do anything unpleasant
George’s is that he could never do anything
unconventional or love someone who did.
Bill’s is that he only paints once a year and is content
with that.
Betty’s is that she is happy being a traditional housewife
The Lovers’ Lane kids’ is that they are content holding
hands.
But each of them finds something different in themselves:
Mary Sue really has a brain and
enjoys using it.
Bill is an artist
George finds that he can love an unconventional woman
(though he discovers it too late).
And Bud. . . What does Bud find out about himself?
Other awakenings
• Kids have sex
• Betty falls in love--Bill paints her and reveals
her true, colored, self to her.
• The mayor gets angry.
• Bud defends his mother from the gang
harassing her.
• Kids stand in the rain--it’s a gentle rain
standing for the benevolence of Nature.
• They are not choosing to be different; they
are discovering who they really are;
discovering their individuality & identities
Your genius will speak from you,
and mine from me. That which we are, we shall
teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily.
Thoughts come into our minds by avenues
which we never left open, and thoughts go out
of our minds through avenues which we never
voluntarily opened.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bill shows us that sexual liberation is only part of the Romantic
Package: it is the whole human being that needs to be
Freed from unnecessary and artificial social restrictions.
Freedom for artistic expression
Freedom for intellectual expression
Freedom for aesthetic expression in how one dresses, e,g
Freedom of political expression
Freedom of spiritual expression
In a nutshell:
Freedom to be who one really is despite social pressures
to conform to tradition, to live like everyone else.
“Maybe it’s not the sex, Mary Sue”
And it isn’t--it’s doing something
real,
something authentic,
Something that expresses
who they really are deep down Inside.
As Bud says
“It’s inside all of us”
Sex is only one way of expressing
who they really are.
Romantic lesson #1
EXPRESS YOUR TRUE
SELF: BE FREE
Insist on yourself; never imitate
-Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
The shock of the new
Buddy Holly: Rave On
A-well the little things you say and do
They make me want to be with you-oo-oo
{Refrain}
Rave on, it's a crazy feeling and
I know it's got me reeling when you
Say, "I love you," rave on
The way you dance and hold me tight
A-well rave on, it's a crazy feeling and
I know it's got me reeling I'm
So glad that you're revealing your love for me
Rave on, rave on and tell me
Tell me not to be lonely
Tell me you love me only, rave on to me
“Rave-on” is the tune that plays when Bud rebelliously turns the
jukebox back on after the City Council has banned rock ‘n
roll.
Note its themes:
• Craziness and irrationality of love
• Following one’s heart
• Revealing one’s true self (“love”)
These are Romantic themes:
just why the Council banned rock ‘n roll.
the conventional will attempt
to make the newly-liberated
retreat to conventionality
Rebellion even in
Pleasantville
doesn’t come
easily:
The kids need
permission from Bud
To turn the juke box
back on after the
town council has
decreed that no one
shall listen to
that kind of music
anymore. They are
used to obeying
the authorities and
their instinct is to do
so again
Bill tries to make deals about what colors
he will use in order to be able to paint
while still remaining respectably within the
norms.
The kids in the malt shop give in to their
traditional respect for authority after the
Town Fathers have put forth the Code of
Decency banning rock ‘n roll.
Lesson #2: The old ways will reassert themselves
and must be resisted by courage and endurance.
Some of the rebels in Pleasantville become
• afraid of their new selves
• ashamed of themselves for no longer being
“normal”
•one’s old conscience will not disappear overnight:
--Betty will suffer pangs of guilt for leaving her
husband and children and committing adultery
with Bill.
--those kids who had pre-marital sex will not lose the
conventional morality so easily: they will feel guilty too.
Conformity suppresses what is natural in us.
Fear of being different can lead us right back into the closet.
The judges of normality
looking askance (and a bit wistfully)
at expressions of authenticity
Defenders of the status quo
strike back
Burning books
Destroying Bill’s “obscene” art
Destroying the malt shop
Attempting to rape Betty
Discriminating
Lesson #3: PERSONAL
CHANGE=SOCIAL CHANGE
It’s the personal example of individuals
changing that converts Pleasantville into a
colored town, that subverts the status quo
and allows a new, more tolerant society to
emerge: one in which Betty can seek
happiness and Bill can paint.
Most of the Romantics we’re going to study
were not political activists. They either wished
simply to be free to live as seemed right to
them, or they believed that personal change
is the road to social change.
But their attempts backfired, as the
color spread despite their
best efforts
• Imagination, emotion, and freedom are
certainly the focal points of romanticism. Any
list of particular characteristics of the literature
of romanticism includes subjectivity and an
emphasis on individualism; spontaneity;
freedom from rules; some choice of the
solitary life rather than life in society; the
beliefs that imagination is superior to reason
and love of nature;
In Pleasantville, the revolt is led by kids
According to Romanticism, kids are
•less set in their ways and it’s easier for them to
hear the “still small voice” inside because
•social customs have not had time to
set in so deeply that they are
•obeyed without even realizing one is
obeying anything--the point where those
conventions become “second nature”
•Kids can become nonconformists more
easily too because the ruts of their lives
are not very deep yet.
But it’s not just the kids who rebel:
Kids rebelling against parents has become normal:
Parents anticipate it: it’s a “phase.”
But romantic rebellion is not just an adolescent phase.
Notice two other important figures:
Betty: who symbolizes the liberation of women from the
conscripting scripts faced by 50’s women
Bill: who symbolizes the alienation from the “philistine”
dominant culture often felt by artists
Both these groups, along with the young, will be important
to our story of American Romanticism’s expressions.
Features of
romanticism in Pleasantville
•
•
•
•
•
•
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the repressive nature of society
the search for authenticity, for one’s “true” self
the use of nature as a standard for goodness
the embrace of the present: “seize the day”
the importance of joy
validation of imagination and emotion
the liberation of the self from domination by
conventional values and roles
rejection of traditional ideas of "success"
the personal is political
• The modern fascination with self-definition
and self-invention, the notion that
adolescence is naturally a time of rebellion in
which one "finds oneself," the idea that the
best path to faith is through individual
choice, the idea that government exists to
serve the individuals who have created it: all
of these are products of the romantic
celebration of the individual at the expense
of society and tradition.
The questions of
Identity: who am I if I am not who society says
I should be?
Individualism:what is unique about me?
and
Citizenship: how do I balance the demands of
my community with my need to be an individual?
that the major Romantic writers have raised
have remained the relevant puzzles of America. "
Is it a good thing for those kids to discover
their sexuality, for Bill to discover his artistic
nature and so on?
Yes, say Romantics
Or is it a bad thing that will lead to
permissiveness and a loss of values, as
sober citizens like the Town Fathers would
say?
Knowledge destroys their paradise
But the Romantic view is that
Pleasantville is a false paradise
All this “pleasantness” is bought at the
price of one’s individuality
“You can’t do this, Mary Sue,” says Bud,
““They’re happy.”
“Nobody’s happy in a sweater set and poodle
skirt.
They’ve got potential.”
(as a girl leaning against a locker blows a
colored bubble.)
Living authentic lives, being true to oneself, may not be
As pleasant and certainly not as safe.
This is a theme we see as far back as the ancient Greeks,
when Socrates is executed by Athens for his refusal to
compromise his way of life.
Living an authentic life may be dangerous, frustrating,
Miserable but it may also be exhilarating and satisfying.
Either way, the Romantic view is that it is how we ought to
Live, being true to ourselves, living up to our potentials,
Going our own way in the face of disapproval, condemnation,
And even persecution.
When people begin to discover who they really are and to
diverge from the norm, there are different reactions:
Some are frightened by the discovery. They know they are
missing out on something important but don’t have the nerve
to defy convention. They lead what Thoreau called “lives of
quiet desperation.”
Some view the new ways as immoral, degrading, disgusting; they
strike back to reaffirm the old status quo, to force these
new individuals back into conformity to the right values.
Some embrace the new possibilities and go on to live novel,
eccentric, individual lives. These are the Romantics
It’s these last that we are going to look at in this course:
Romantic rebels, bohemians, individualists, &
counterculturalists