“Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. Now, it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.”

- Big Bob; Pleasantville (1998)

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Welcome to Pleasantville, USA

There is no deviance here in Pleasantville.

There is no crime, no drugs, no violence, and everyone gets along “just swell”. Everything you do, everyone you meet, every single aspect of your life runs smoother than a chocolate milkshake from the old soda shop. A basketball game is never lost, you always win without a hitch. Mother’s more than happy to stay home with a constant smile on her rosy-cheeked face as she bakes her chocolate chip cookies, humming a cheerful tune as Father sits in an armchair puffing his pipe awaiting his hearty breakfast, the king of his castle ruling over a happy family. It’s a place where the most prevalent dilemma you can ever face is whether Mary Sue will hold your hand at the spring dance. The main task of a fireman is to rescue kitty cats from the tops of trees; there are no fires for him to fight. Not even a rain cloud is present here.

On the surface this place seems like a paradise, the peaceful Shangri-la that so many of us envision and long for. It’s a happy place, a safe place, and yes, a pleasant place. But look a bit closer. Look in the books, there are no words. Drive down the road in your fancy new car and eventually you came back to a sign that once again welcomes you to Pleasantville. All the roads go in a circle. And everything, everything is in black white, and gray. No color.

Summon that image to the palate of your mind and take a look. Take a good, long look. Not simply at the good, not only at the bad, but all of it. This is the place that the censors, the editors, the ones who leave every mention of death, violence, swearing, smoking, drinking, larceny, disrespect, change, civil disobedience, and anything else with the evil power to corrupt innocent minds envision. A wondrous paradise concocted by the swell people who delight in smoke rising from the corpses of books as their wisdom lifts into heaven. Pleasantville is the place that these gosh-golly swell folks have chosen for you to live in.

For your own good. To protect you. To keep you safe.

Now, how do you feel about that? Relieved? Disappointed? Bored? Cynical? Confused? Or you feel frightened and irate, perhaps?

But why would you ever feel frightened or unhappy? This is a good place, a safe place, a place where no bad or evil things can ever, ever touch you behind your white picket fence. Nothing bad ever happens in Pleasantville. Everyone’s happy. You should be happy too. But you are not. Why?

After all, you’re safe. And that’s all anybody wants. Or at least, that’s what most want for you. Nothing shocking or appalling can storm in with baseball bats forged by the trees that grow new, frightening, disturbing ideas that could rip through your paper-thin psyche like machetes. What are machetes, you say? They’re bad things used by bad people that you don’t need to worry about. Why would anyone use a baseball bat to hit anything other than baseballs? Because, it’s like I TOLD you, they’re used by bad, bad people. And bad people bring bad things, and before you know it, you’re just as bad as they are. So don’t ask anymore about them. Ever. That’s not pleasant.

But thing are beginning to change in good ol’ Pleasantville. People are discovering things. New things. Frightening things. Confusing things. Disturbing things. Bad things. Things like inconsistency, fires, rock and roll, and devilishly tempting tales of places where the road does not go in a circle, does not take you back to the same place you came from, but instead it just keeps on going and going.

Chaos. We now have chaos, people. You see now what happens when these lecherous things are let in?

Suddenly kids are making pilgrimages to Lovers Lane, people are carrying umbrellas to stay out of the rainstorm, wives do not have dinner steaming and waiting for their husbands, little black letters are swarming across once blank pages like a plague of locusts devouring the white space on paper and all the white space in the mind that sees them. And everywhere, all across Pleasantville vivid, vibrant, living color blossoms out of the gray, a myriad of hues introduce themselves to the naked, virgin gray eyes of the town’s citizens.

And things, they just go from bad to worse.

Oh, but there’s no need to worry. Pleasantville doesn’t exist. It’s only a worthless, old movie almost a whole decade old! We know that nothing like that could possibly happen here. Not in our world, not in our country. Our pages have words. We have color, we have fire, and we have rain. No one ever tries to murder the written word, or banish them from libraries. Not here. Nobody takes a work of art and snip, snip, snips until what’s left is not art but a bland, tasteless blob with all the flavor and vigor’s drained. No one ever tells you that there are things that you can’t show, sing, say, write, broadcast, discuss, nitpick, complain, protest, or watch. Not here. Not now, in this day and age.

It’s not like in that horrible movie. It’s better here.

Much more pleasant. Ain’t it swell?