The Pleasantville Experience

                

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.”

                I never knew why I thought of it that way. I never knew that this movie can bring a lot to me. Especially in a way that can be very confusing to other people. I have always wanted to share knowledge to other people. Many have told me that I am a great explainer. My complicated and complex ideas can be summed up into simpler concepts but the essence of the complexity will still remain. Art for me is a very complex thing that many people might not get but the truth is, our mind is just dictating to us what is beautiful through the simple concept of morality.

    In the movie, people where very much angry with the concept of art because to them, it is wrong. Since it’s wrong, for them, it is ugly. An artist’s mind is a something that an average person may never get. And even for me, an aspiring architect, I find art as something complex to one’s eyes but simple If one has to think about it. The message of art is also complicated but that is the beauty of it. 

             
 The complexity of art will bring one’s self  into a solemn trance of beauty, completeness and aesthetics.