Pleasantville Biblical Refrences Essay

In the movie “Pleasantville” two kids named David and Jennifer, living in the 1990’s get sucked into to a tv show called “Pleasantville” which takes place in the 1950’s where everything is “perfect”. Now living in a completely different era and being named Bud and Mary Sue, they must try to adjust to this new culture while attempting to find a way to get back to their present day. Through the whole movie they realize how much that the world has changed in 40 years. The town of Pleasantville is set in black and white, but as people start to change and feel more emotion they turn into color. While watching the movie it was interesting to watch the characters learn more about the past from different perspectives.

Dated back to the 10th century B.C., the story of Adam and Eve is told in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 of the Christian Bible. The creation is the main focus of chapter 2 and their fall and punishment is the main focus in chapter 3. God creates Adam in his image from mud, he blows to his face and gives him life. God presents all of the animals of the land to Adam and he is not satisfied, so God created Eve out of Adams rib as a companion and helper for him, and he is satisfied with Gods work. God commands Adam and Eve to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But, the serpent persuades Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and she persuades Adam to do so as well. After they eat the forbidden fruit they realize they are naked

betrayed on Pleasantville that David was fascinated with. Life is in fact perfect in Pleasantville;

However, evil soon entered the garden in the form of a serpent. One day when Eve was walking in the garden she encountered the evil serpent who encouraged her to take a fruit from one of God’s forbidden fruit trees. The serpent succeeded in deceiving Eve to take a fruit; she then ate the fruit and shared it with Adam. Then God became angry with Adam and Eve for betraying Him. To punish Adam and Eve, he ejected them from the garden and subjecting them to mortality, painful childbirth, sin and shame.

Eve’s hunger to become independent from Adam and all she is commanded to do is similar to Satan’s situation in that their yearn for power and singular identity lead them to revolt against their creator. Her desire to separate from Adam is first seen when she is introduced to the audience in her state of narcissism. She sees a reflection of herself in a pond and is in awe of her beauty “of sympathy and love,” (IV, 465) which shows the parallelism to Satan’s own arrogant vanity. He catches on to this similarity they share and decides she will be an easy target of persuasion. He quickly takes charge and plans how he will lead her to eat the apple from the “Tree of Knowledge,” which is the only tree that God prohibited to pick fruit from. Satan first catches her attention by being a serpent who speaks; something she had never encountered before. He smooth talks her into really listening to him by focusing his words around her and how much better life could be if she just took a bite

In the 1998 film, Pleasantville, the idea of defying a supreme leader and exploring new taboo ideas is demonstrated by the rebellious mural painted by Bud/David and Mr Johnson. This mural painted in vibrant colours explores ideas that are nothing short of unthinkable to the bland citizens of Pleasantville. The elements painted on the mural include representations of sex, knowledge and music, which is against the core values of this idealistic town. While Pleasantville seems to have the all-american dream with white picket fences and nuclear families, it is evident that they are lacking many of the vivacious elements present in a normal flawed life.

The film Pleasantville shows the changes in American society over the past 50 years by placing two teenagers into the Pleasantville show, which was from the 50’s. The movie depicts how there is no longer the “American Dream” and no longer a perfect way of life and the changes the world has made. The world that the teenagers come from is filled with sex, drugs, money, and is very different from the way the world was in which the Pleasantville Show took place in. Morals and values have changed in the people and in society that the teenagers came from and shows it would be impossible to return back to the kind of life style the world had in the 50’s.

The film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross is about two modern teenagers, David and his sister Jennifer, somehow being transported into the television, ending up in Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white sitcom. The two are trapped as Bud and Mary Sue in a radically different dimension and make some huge changes to the bland lives of the citizens of Pleasantville, with the use of the director’s cinematic techniques. Ross cleverly uses cinematic techniques such as colour, mise-en-scene, camera shots, costumes, music and dialogue to effectively tell the story.

Thesis Statement: The characters and events of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe have symbolic similarities to events described in the Bible.

The novel, East of Eden, by John Steinbeck references to the bible quite a bit when describing some of the characters. Steinbeck refers to the story of Cain and Abel, two brothers who lived in peace until Cain slaughtered Abel. One day the two boys were to offer sacrifices to god; Abel offers his best lamb and Cain offers grain to god. God prefers Abel’s gift over Cain’s and in a jealous fit of anger Cain murders Abel. After this God comes to talk to Cain about what he had just done and in doing so he banishes Cain to “the land of Nod, east of Eden”(Genesis 4:16). Steinbeck uses a few Cain like characters throughout the novel to illustrate the reality of humanity; jealousy and favorability shapes our society and the way people act. There is no place to escape one's baser nature besides death’s home; steinbeck shows this through Cal Trask, Charles Trask, and Tom Hamilton.

As Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they became naked and god cursed them by banishing them from the Garden of Eden and placing a guard around the Tree of Life. The serpent is pre-existent evil and is considered a proto, a type of Satan (devil).

The first sense of scripture is the literal sense, which can be viewed as a historical view of ancient Jewish and early Christian history. The reason it can be viewed that way is that it is also found in other historical texts. The story of the Great flood that is depicted in genesis 6 is also mentioned in the ancient Babylonian story of Gilgamesh. And also in the story of the restoration of the temple by Nehemiah, in Ezra 1, it is also found in the edict of Cyrus, on the Cyrus cylinder, which is a clay cylinder from ancient Persia. This literal sense of scripture tells stories of what happened to the Jewish people, and tells the reader of the deeds of Christ, his friends, and the millennial of holy people who set the stage for the messiah. If the literal sense is the only sense of

Blomberg, Craig L. The New American Commentary: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture: Matthew. Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1992.

Created by Johannes Gutenberg, The Gutenberg Bible was the first mass produced book through the use of a moveable printer. Known for its artistic Latin writing, the Bible only has forty-nine copies remaining, one residing at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The Gutenberg Bible exhibits religious qualities from the message, directly from God, and the original purpose of the creation of the Bible.

Some of these references to the Bible include a snake hanging around a tree. This scene is very similar to a passage in Genesis. In the passage within Genesis a snake attempts to tempt Eve, the first women, so commit a sin. There is also a scene within where Phoenix is making her way through a field and she is "parting her way from side to side with the cane," (Welty). This is symbolic of Moses parting the red sea, so that the