Once upon a time
there was a boy and a girl
who found themselves in a strange new world.
They were brother and sister, twins,
children of the 80s, teens in the 90s,
faced with bad news at every turn:
divorced parents
continual decline in available jobs after graduation,
ozone depletion and the HIV epidemic.
Jennifer found her sense of identity
in being one of the “bad girls,”
smoking and sleeping around,
while David took refuge in watching endless reruns
of a black-and-white 1950s sitcom
called Pleasantville.
Pleasantville depicted a world so much more… pleasant
than reality:
It was neater, cleaner, more polite and more predictable,
where mother starts each day
by preparing a big hot breakfast for her children and husband:
mountains of pancakes and waffles,
eggs and bacon and ham,
and each night father comes back from work
and announces, “Honey, I’m home!”
Through a strange turn of events,
David and Jennifer find themselves suddenly transported
inside the world of Pleasantville: they become Bud and Mary Sue,
straight-laced 50’s teenagers,
as monochromatic as everything around them.
David, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the show,
finds it easy to interact with others
in the role of Bud, the boy next door,
and does all he can to encourage Jennifer –
now Mary Sue –
to stick to the original script.
But where Bud sees innocence to be preserved,
pleasantness to be protected,
Mary Sue sees potential for people to escape their geekiness
and become “attractive” and “cool.”
And in spite of Bud’s warnings and pleas
to just “go with the program,”
Mary Sue goes out with Skip,
the captain of the basketball team,
and on their first date, she takes him to Lover’s Lane
where they do a lot more than just hold hands!
On his way home from this novel experience,
Skip sees the strangest thing:
a single red rose,
brilliantly scarlet
in the midst of the grey rosebush.
It doesn’t take long before Skip tells all the boys about his experience
and Mary Sue shares her knowledge and attitude with the girls,
and little by little, starting with bubblegum and taillights,
spots of color start to appear in Pleasantville.
The color is seen as an aberration, a freak occurrence,
and one young woman whose tongue has turned pink
is told kindly by her doctor,
“It’s probably nothing to worry about.
Just cut back on greasy foods and chocolate.”
With the excitement of the color
come some unexpected consequences.
The boys’ basketball team,
the undefeated Pleasantville Lions,
formerly could not fail to shoot the ball
directly into the basket every time.
Now they all miss.
Bill Johnson, the “soda jerk,” –
the guy who works at the soda shop –
discovers that he does not have to do every task
in exactly the same order every time
and starts thinking about how meaningless it is
to make hamburgers all the time
and how much he enjoys painting a mural
on the windows at Christmas.
Mary Sue had discovered early on
that the reason the firemen in Pleasantville
are always rescuing cats
is that nothing there will burn.
Yet one night,
after Mary Sue explains to her Pleasantville mother
all about Lover’s Lane and sex,
the tree outside their home
bursts into Technicolor flame.
Bud is the one who gets the firemen to come –
finally figuring out
that although they don’t respond to “Fire!”,
they get going in a hurry when he yells “Cat!”
and Bud is the one who has to show them
how to use the hoses to put out the fire.
The town experiences rain –
real rain –
for the first time.
The more time David and Jennifer remain in Pleasantville
as Bud and Mary Sue,
little by little revealing more of what they know
of the possibilities of life beyond Pleasantville’s script,
the more choices people have,
the more color appears,
in people and in the world around them,
and the more the men of the town are greatly concerned
by the changes occurring around them.
Pleasantville is, in part, an intentional parable
for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
It’s not an exact parallel,
and there are other layers of meaning
that enrich and deepen the symbolism of the film.
But David/Bud is, perhaps like Adam,
satisfied with the status quo:
content to keep the pristine world within its narrow limits,
trying not to upset the apple cart,
accepting of the order of things
as the way they’re supposed to be.
Jennifer in the place of Mary Sue
is the stereotypical Eve:
although the story in Genesis does not identify sex
as part of the “original sin,”
that is what most people think of
when they think of sin, Eve, and Eden.
And sex is what Jennifer brings to Pleasantville,
to the delight of the boys and girls at school,
and the consternation of their parents.
The imagery of the forbidden fruit –
in our culture assumed to be an apple –
shows up at the lake at the end of Lover’s Lane,
where Margaret picks a bright red apple
and gives it to David.
The image comes up again
in the mural that David/Bud and Mr Johnson paint
on the wall of the police station later on.
There’s no real “snake” in this story,
no external trickster
convincing the unsuspecting innocents to choose disobedience.
Just David and Jennifer,
who drop into this world of monochrome pleasantness,
the only ones who know there is any alternative,
the only ones with the ability to choose something different.
And the choices they make
set in motion a chain of events
and opportunities for others to make choices
that turns the whole world of Pleasantville upside down.
The movie has a largely positive view
regarding the freedom to make choices.
The story acknowledges that the openness
the teenagers bring to Pleasantville
includes the possibility for anger, violence, and fear
as well as love, learning, and passion.
And there are many who are threatened by the changes.
They react first by violence:
breaking the windows of the soda shop
where Bill Johnson has painted a mural of a naked woman;
vandalizing the colored booths and gumball machines;
and burning the books that are no longer blank,
but filled with stories of love and learning and freedom.
And when things settle down,
the powers that be respond by trying to control the town,
laying down a code of conduct
that includes closing the library,
limiting the music that may be played,
prohibitions on the sale of umbrellas
or other preparation for inclement weather,
mattresses of greater than 38” wide,
and paint in colors other than black, white, or grey;
and a “non-changist” school curriculum
that emphasizes continuity over alteration.
Yet ultimately the changes cannot be stopped or controlled
and Bud makes an impassioned case for the positive value
of recognizing the capacity for all kinds of feelings and choices
that exists in each person.
It turns out that sex isn’t the only, or even the primary, reason
that most of the people change to color.
For Jennifer, who in her own words, has “had more sex than anyone,”
the change comes when she sends her boyfriend away,
turning aside from her former sense of identity through sex,
and stays in her room, wearing her glasses, reading.
For David, the defining moment is when he stands up for his mother
who is being harassed by a group of teenage boys,
and it is his punch that both brings violence to Pleasantville
and brings out his own willingness to engage with the world
and to take risks for others.
The choice to turn aside from the obvious path
and the very ability to make a choice freely
comes with a variety of complex and interconnected consequences.
But what is the alternative?
There are many other creation stories in the world,
some ancient, some recent.
Some scholars have explored ancient texts
and developed new interpretations of these old, old stories.
One version of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden
describes the tree from which they eat as the Tree of Life,
and their transgression is in eating the fruit before it is ripe.
As a consequence,
they are confused at the sense of separation they feel
from the animals, plants, and the rest of creation.
But God assures them that although the fruit was not ripe,
the seeds of learning and caring will grow inside them
as they travel the path of wonder, the path of emptiness,
the path of making, and the path of coming home.
At its heart, the story of Eve and Adam
is an attempt to answer the questions of
why we suffer, why we die,
why life is not as good as we think it could or should be,
why we do not feel as close to God as we long to be,
why we humans interact with the world, with God, and with each other
in a way that seems so different from all the other animals.
The story tries to answer these questions
by saying that Once Upon a Time,
things were the way we imagine they could and should be.
Once Upon a Time,
life was perfect. Flawless. Pleasant.
And people did what they weren’t supposed to do
and that’s why life isn’t so great now.
There’s a lot of shame and guilt put on the choice of freedom
over blind obedience
but what kind of life would we have,
what kind of world would we have
if we never knew we had another option?
The story of Adam and Eve in the garden,
like the story of Jennifer and David in Pleasantville,
is a story of moving from a very limited awareness
of the options available in one’s life
to a recognition of the broad and abundant scope
of what life in all its fullness
might mean.
We might not agree with the choices people make,
but how could we choose good
if we were not free to make a different choice?
Redemption in Pleasantville
isn't primarily about being forgiven for one’s sins,
but instead is about the opening up of one’s life
to the possibility of wholeness:
pleasant is all well and good,
in fact, it is very pleasant… up to a point.
But there is so much more than pleasant
in the life abundant that God offers us in Christ.
There is room for silly, and sexy, and curious.
There is room for anger, and passion, and grief.
There is room for God in every part of our lives.
Nothing is too small, too big, too shameful, or too private
to bring before God.
We get to choose how we will live:
no script, no set plot or secret plan for our lives
that we will be punished for not figuring out
and following to the letter.
It can feel like a curse at times,
the freedom
the not knowing how things will turn out.
We have the option of turning toward God
or turning away.
Sometimes we don’t know which way a path will lead
until we have followed it a little while.
But the good news is that God is always available to us,
always walking with us along the road out of Eden,
always willing to help open our eyes
when we are ready
to see the Technicolor world that surrounds us
and the colors that sprout and bloom like seeds
within our hearts.
Amen.
[Preached at The Open House at Montclair UMC, October 12, 2008]
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