The static people in a 1950’s TV show start to really live for the first time.

##What is Paradise?

I remember back in college when I took an introductory
philosophy course we studied the nature of heaven. What would it be like.

Let’s say that heaven (as seen by a teenage boy at the beginning of the
movie) is a town called Pleasantville from a fictitious 1950’s TV show of
the same name. Everything is as it should be there. There’s no conflict,
parents love and respect their children. In short, everyone is happy all
the time.

But is this really the way it should be? Can you truly delight in your joy
if you never exprience sorrow?

##The allegory of the TV

The people in this movie are living in a “perfect” world. There’s no
crime. There’s no local disasters (the fire department doesn’t even know
how to deal with a fire. All they do is rescue cats from trees). All the
kids are nice to each other. All the people are fine upstanding citizens.

Then the two new kids arrive from the real world in 1998. Suddenly, the
people there start to see the world outside the TV show through books,
art, sex, etc.

##Ism’s suck

When it looks like it and smells like it, you call it what it is…
fascism.

*- Jim Garrison’s character in the movie JFK

Midway through the movie, the towne eldars decide that “colored” people are
bad. They start in institute local statues descriminating against coloreds
and encourage shop owners and people to do the same.

This is simply a beautiful comment on todays racist society, using the
same buzzwords to talk about descrimination, but in a way that makes it
obvious even to the stupid how stupid it really is!