Pleasantville: Traditional Family Roles

 

            Pleasantville, a film directed by Gary Ross and released in 1998, tells the story of two siblings who are transported into the world of the fictional television show from the 1950s, "Pleasantville". This town is untouched by non-traditional values, with wives being controlled by their husband's will, staying inside and uninvolved with the politics of the world. Pleasantville is all in black and white, but when the two siblings enter the world with their modern view on the world, things begin to change. One of the siblings, Mary Sue, begins to introduce other teenagers in the town to drinking, sex, and other 'non-traditional' activities that are unspoken of and unheard of in Pleasantville. As this starts, all of the people who were once in black and white, are seen in color. The men of the town are apprehensive to this change and try to make things stay how they were, but as it becomes more prominent and the town becomes more colorful. The wife of one of the very traditional and conservative men, Betty, turns into color after experiencing creativity and freedom. This image portrays the other sibling, Bud, applying his mothers (Betty) makeup in fear that her husband would find out about her becoming colorful and experiencing the world outside of the traditional narrative.

        Marianne Weber began exploring ideas on the traditional marriage and the way women were treated in these arrangements in the beginning of the 20th century. She found that the typical power dynamics in couples were always male dominated, and that most women had become complicit and dominated by their husbands out of tradition and not having equal opportunities in the world. This goes back to Pleasantville, looking at how Betty fears for her life and acceptance from her husband after experiencing life outside of the home and non-traditional ways of living. The domination and ideas of women not being able to exist within certain spaces without making them inherently 'non-traditional' is an idea that Weber explored, looking even at how other women viewed each other in terms of these ideas.

        By comparing both theory from Marianne Weber and looking at Pleasantville, the roles women take up in society are shown to be inherently male-controlled and creates a narrative of complicity. I believe that Weber would be in favor of the narrative of change and growth in this film, and it is interesting to see something that was once very prominent, such as being a housewife and not having equal opportunities, to be turned into something that was almost satirical in this film. 

Weber, Marianne, and Craig R. Bermingham. 2003. "Authority and Autonomy in Marriage." Sociological Theory 21(2)