There was a movie that came out in 1998 called Pleasantville. It was a funny story about time travel. But it’s also about how we decide what is wrong and what is right.
There are two teenagers, David and Jennifer, who are siblings. We see in the first few minutes of the film that their lives are fairly unpleasant. They’re coping with some of the complications that might confront middle class kids: social status, drugs and alcohol, parents who have their own troubles and are mostly unavailable to their kids.
Jennifer, who is played by Reese Witherspoon, is navigating these issues with some success, but David, who is played by Tobey Maguire, seems mildly depressed and spends most of his time watching reruns of an old 1950’s sitcom, Pleasantville. It’s a “Leave It to Beaver” kind of program. Way out of date, but there is something about it David just loves. Life is somehow better in Pleasantville, and when he comes home from a tough day at high school, David just wants to immerse himself in this other world.
One day, catastrophe strikes – the TV remote control breaks.
A mysterious TV repairman appears – played by Don Knotts. No one called him, but he’s there. He’s like this wise, magical imp. He sees the trouble Jennifer and David are in, more than they themselves can see. He gives them a new remote control, which magically transports them right into David’s favorite TV show. Suddenly, David and Jennifer are characters in a black & white 1950’s TV world…
…where life is perfect. The family all sits at the breakfast table together with huge platters of hot eggs and bacon and pancakes, orange juice and milk. You know, healthy. Everything is perfect. Mom is a fulltime homemaker, Dad goes to his 9-5 job and is always home by dinner, except maybe on bowling night. The kids, David and Jennifer, who are now called Bud and Mary Sue, trundle off to high school in their penny loafers and poodle skirt, where they now have to learn to navigate life in this black and white TV town.
Where everyone knows their place, everyone knows the rules, and everything is perfect.
But it’s not as perfect as it seemed.
For one thing, there are no bathrooms. Think about it – did you ever see Donna Reed or June Cleaver step into the powder room? Nope.
There are other difficulties too. David and Jennifer have all sorts of clashes with the people of Pleasantville because they’re not the same. They have been shaped by the real world – the real, colorful, 3-dimensional world. They don’t quite fit in.
But then, we discover, their mere presence in Pleasantville begins to change the place and the people. They begin to have subtle influences on people, and the influence becomes visible. In this black and white world, one by one, people begin to show some color, like a rosy flush in their cheeks or lips. The color blooms as they take on some depth in terms of their emotions, their values, their perspectives on the world.
There is, of course, the predictable backlash. Those who have not been colorized lash out angrily against the colored ones, victimizing them. There is definitely a nod here to the real clashes that were occurring in our country around that time having to do with skin color. But the issue is even broader than that.
It has to do with sexuality, gender roles, openness to cultural differences and new ways of seeing things, doing things. Books, art, music that are all new to them. It has to do with becoming more fully human. And this blossoming into full humanity is threatening for those who can’t understand it.
You might be wondering what this extended recap of the movie Pleasantville has to do with the scriptures for today. It’s all about how sometimes a new thing can be very challenging or threatening, even while it is ripe with new possibility.
The people in Pleasantville were learning that there was a whole big undiscovered world outside their town limits. They were discovering that there were other possible ways of being outside of the well-worn routines of their lives. They were discovering the limitations of Pleasantville.
But at the same time, David and Jennifer were learning to appreciate the genuinely good qualities of Pleasantville. Again, it wasn’t all black and white. New things were happening for everyone.
And basically, newness was what Jesus was bringing to Israel. He had been traveling around the Galilee and surrounding regions teaching, healing, and feeding, and doing these things in radically new ways. As the Pharisees watch him, they are less joyful about the good things he is doing than they are concerned about the ways he is doing them. They say to him, “Why don’t you follow the traditions of the Elders? Why don’t you all wash your hands the way you are supposed to?” To the Pharisees, their carelessness about this detail is a signifier of what is wrong about Jesus.
The Pharisees are seeing all these things through the parameters they have set for defining what it is to be a Jew. Jesus doesn’t fit in these parameters – even though he is as authentic in his faith as a man could be. It’s the challenge of encountering something new. And figuring out what changes are okay, even good, and which ones are not.
They accuse Jesus, saying, “You are ignoring the traditions.” And Jesus responds to them, saying “But you abandon the commandment of God.”
The truth of the matter is we often struggle to discern one from another.
When I lay the story of Pleasantville over the gospel, I see something similar: Pharisees, looking at the world through a black and white lens, insisting that the right way of doing things is the way they have always done things. And then these kids come along, who are just different, and seem to challenge the traditions just by being who they are. They’re not opposed to the rules, in general. But they aren’t willing to be less than who they are, for the sake of a rule. They don’t want to be harmed – or for anyone else to be harmed – because of a rule that maybe doesn’t even make sense.
In the film, it seemed as though when David and Jennifer appeared in Pleasantville, there was an invitation to discernment. Some of the residents of Pleasantville began to reflect on the ways things were done and begin to recognize areas of injustice that they could no longer ignore.
I don’t want to go so far as to imply that the Pharisees were just like two-dimensional TV characters. But I will suggest that perhaps their application of the law was a two-dimensional collection of rules and traditions that had, in some ways, lost their connection to the commandment of God: to love the Lord and one another with heart and soul, mind and strength.
Love is the commandment, and everything must begin with that. As Jesus said, It is the things that come out of a person that matter. Those things can be love or they can be evil. Think about it and learn to recognize the difference.
And, as James says, when we are caring for one another, particularly those who are most in need of care, when we are acting out of generosity and not selfishness, then we are in accord with God’s desire.
The law of love is the lens through which we interpret all else. Let everything be filtered through love.
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
