The Pleasantville Experience
Stereotypical
families bonded in black and white chains of color, “How exciting!”
(Sarcastic). Nothing bores the hell out
of me than black and white “perfect family” films. The Pleasantville Marathon
Series sucks and I don’t know why the main protagonist likes it so much.
I hate
to see people trying to act perfect in any way. May it be a fed-up girl who
aims at popularity in highschool, a mister know-it-all who makes everyone
around him look inferior, or even a TV series that shows exemplary actions that
makes them look like crap through pretending that they are what other people
seem, “perfect.”
This
movie has shown me several points that other people will get once they watch
the movie and it also had shown me subliminal messages that I thought of while
watching it. Obviously, people who watched this movie will get the point:
“People are not capable of constant behaviour, they have the gift of Change” or
something like that. Probably some will absorb: “People need change in their
lives so we must welcome it with flying colors.”
But for me, this movie has been an
eye opener for some points especially in the concept of art and aesthetics. This
movie involves concepts that will make a wondering person think. It can juice
out philosophical ideas from the heart of one’s mind. Some people may think
that the movie’s message is all about morality and values that will be
implemented in a persons’ life but it’s way more beyond that. It explains
points in certain subjects that connects art and aesthetics to the world and
it’s systems. It connects the human mind to certain perspectives of the differ.
It is the movie’s job to produce doors that will lead us to certain topics and
it is the viewer’s job to choose a door that will lead him/her to certain
ideas.
This painting is the Birth of Venus by Botticelli. This painting is considered to be the best of the renaissance era. This was the time when human was perfecting the anatomy of the body and this painting is a genuine form of proportion and aesthetics. This was adored because of the style it underwent and for the remarkable output. If you placed this in Pleasantville, would you think it would be considered as art?
What is art? Is art the concept of
being beautiful to one’s eyes? Or is art the concept of being ugly to one’s
eyes? It can also be the way people perceive things according to the nature of
the certain object is. Art can be a philosophical subject that no one can
describe nor define. It is a matter of perspective and criticism. Can a one
year old child tell what is ugly and beautiful? I think yes, but he will not
see it like older people do. A child may think that a cockroach is beautiful
because of it’s unique form but for experienced people, a “dirty” feel is
implemented into their minds because they already know what a cockroach is. The
movie Pleasantville is much similar to this kind of thinking. As I perceived
it, the movie shows that people are very subjective to what they think is the
concept of art is. They believe in what is “right” to them and the average
human brain contributes to the fact that of “realism” and “subjective”
thinking. The concept of art is then ruined by the concept of what is right and
wrong. Sometimes, the world has many immiscible factors. Like water and oil for
example, or science and religion, The concept of being moral and the concept of
art. These two entities should not mix together for they are two different
topics of 1 different world and our young human minds dictates to us what is
beautiful through the concept of righteousness. So basically, to almost all of
the population of earth, many will say: “Everything that is right is beautiful
and everything that is wrong is ugly.”
The complexity of art will bring one’s self into a solemn trance of beauty, completeness and aesthetics.
