'Pleasantville', a postmodernist film by Gary Ross, tells the story of David and Jennifer who are living in the 1990's and are teleported into the 1950's utopia TV show 'Pleasantville' (50s sitcom David enjoys...). Ross employs the element of Intertextuality to to convey change and how to deal with it. He incorporates allusion, parody, pastiche, cinematography and character referencing or alluding to other works of fiction, and successfully highlights his ideas about dealing with change through the events occurring in Pleasantville after the arrival of Jennifer and David.
One of the major changes that occur in 'Pleasantville' is the exposure to knowledge which leads to breaks in traditional values, after Skip takes Mary-Sue to Lover's Lane.…show more content… Racism and racial segregation is experienced amongst the coloured citizens of 'Pleasantville', and this is especially highlighted through Ross's use of intertextuality. After the 'true' citizens of Pleastanville create a 'Code of Conduct', then when Mr Johnson and Bud do not abide with it and get arrested, we see them in court where the coloured citizens of Pleasantville are seated on the balcony, while the monochrome citizens are seated at the bottom, exactly how the courtroom scene in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is portrayed at the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl. In both texts, the coloured people are being convicted by an all white/monochrome jury and judge, which Ross has used to highlight inequality. There are also shots towards the end of the film showing signs on shops which bean coloured people from entering, an allusion to 1950s-1960s, to highlight the racial segregation experienced by the coloured people in Pleasantville and alluding to widely known historical events in this case the Jim Crowe laws which treated coloured people in America unequally to the white
