Friday, July 31, 2026

Pleasantville 2

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been any kind of sequel planned to the movie Pleasantville.  But I sure love that movie.  Grew up watching Nick at Nite in the early 90's, and so it reminds me a lot of that channel.  

I imagine the sequel would be the citizens of Pleasantville slowly realizing  more and more of the problems that come with open-mindedness that encounters no resistance.  Things like struggling single parent prevalence, profane language dominating entertainment media, addiction to technology, etc.  And then they'd slowly become more open to some of the ideas behind self restraint again.  

And when some small behavior exemplifying restraint is accomplished, a small part of the world would lose its color and return to black-and-white.  Even though not everything would return to what it once was as far as culture and behavioral customs go (racial integration in particular would remain), enough things would revert so that eventually the entire world would turn black-and-white again, slowly biding its time over the years before it becomes open to introducing color and a spirit of open-mindedness once more.  

So it's kind of like a reversal of the main idea of the first film, which focused on the problems with restraint and how the world became more colorful when restraint was cast aside.

I like this idea because it shows that to everything there's a season.  There are seasons of opening up and there are seasons of restraint.  Pros and cons to both.  Open up some, step back a bit, open up some, step back a bit, and keep the pattern going.  The cycle repeats, probably indefinitely.  I believe there are historical examples of this cycle in the past, but at least for the time being, there does not seem to be a prevalence in literature of periods of voluntary self restraint dominating a culture.  Temperance movements have popped up here and there against alcohol, but that's all I'm aware of.

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