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Reflection for December 31, 2006

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Pleasantville

Recently I was surprised by a re-run of a 1998 film called Pleasantville, which while retaining a muted concession to Hollywood's obsession with lust nevertheless transcended that "required" ingredient and came across as a very moving movie - chiefly because, like so much secular art, it can't help but be influenced by our biblical tradition which remains the foundation of Western civilization. The leading characters are David and Jennifer, twins living in 1998. David is fascinated with re-runs of a 1950's TV show called "Pleasantville" that's much like the "Father Knows Best" series of 50 years ago - always in black and white about a family where the mother is always nicely dressed even while cooking and serves meals on schedule on a properly laid table and the kids are polite and Dad works somewhere you never see and always returns on time with a cheerful "Hello! I'm home!" The high school kids are dressed neatly, the boys' hair well combed, the girls sweet. The basketball team never misses a basket! It's perfect and David watches to escape his here and now.

Then a TV repairman presents David with a remote that can place him and his sister right in the TV setting as members of the show's Parker family. There they find themselves every morning at a breakfast with pancakes stacked high enough to feed a multitude. The father smiles, the mother is as maternal as can be. Then they're off to school where the kids may tease but are otherwise pleasant. The streets are traffic free, the houses prettily built. The drive-in has a cook who never does anything but make hamburgers, serve Cokes and polish the counter, And so on.

But David and his sister are too much out of the future to leave Pleasantville black and white and gray for long. David works at the drive-in and suggests the cook can do much more than his script allows. When the cook says he likes to draw and shows David his black and white etchings, David encourages him to indulge his talent. Also while serving his classmates at the drive-in David talks of Huckleberry Finn. The students have heard of him but have never read the story because all the books in a TV town are props; their pages are blank. Under David's influence the novel's text appears and soon people are lining up to get into the public library. Again under the influence of the twins people begin to see color. First it's a red rose, then a traffic light, then someone's complexion blossoms. The cook's drawings take on color. More poignantly David's TV mother begins to long for more than her script's routine and sheds a tear, which washes away the gray of her cheek to reveal her underlying rosy complexion. David encourages her to wipe away her lipstick as well (which come across as black on TV) and apply a bright red and suddenly all her vital color returns. Color gradually overtakes the town. The mayor doesn't like it and votes to segregate the "colored" citizens from the "gray" but during an argument with David he becomes so enraged that he too recovers his ruddy glow and runs screaming (in terror or joy?) from the hall.

Why do I find in this film an echo of our Gospel tradition? Well consider the event we celebrate today - the Epiphany. Wasn't it a black and white world into which Christ was born - a place of censuses and governments that saw the world in black and white? And what does Jesus do? He introduces angelic song, attracts a new star and draws forth magicians from afar with their exotic retinue and colorfully wrapped gifts. Who will deny that the Gospel of Christ can resurrect our human capacity to see the beauty of this world and of our own complexions from beneath our usual make-up of brooding gray? Of course there are mayors and Herods who would ban all such beauty. Even we too often drive around this valley as if it were gray instead of possessed of all the tints that make it a tourist's delight. Epiphany is a time for us to wake up - to wash away all that gray from our environment and kiss the infant Christ with ruby lips.

-- Geoff Wood