Films have the unique opportunity to give voice to social problems people may have a hard time discussing in real life.  They take us into an alternate reality where we can see things from the outside looking in without having to commit to much. Viewers can simply sit back and enjoy the entertainment and be influenced by what they see wether they realize it or not, and with little effort. The two films Pleasantville and Avatar are great examples of how the directors and writers used their narratives to incite and influence social change. They are both visually amusing and tell a likable story with relatable characters. Although they are from different time lines and use different types of technology, they are very similar in that there is a moral lesson to be taught by watching them. Pleasantville and Avatar prove to me that films can be a way for social, political, and cultural struggles to be acted out as well as an art form created by several individuals to express themselves and making money is the reward for their creators’ hard work.

 

In Pleasantville, director Gary Ross tries to give us his representation of how life was portrayed in television in the 50’s and how it compares to the late 90’s, around the time the film was made, in which ideas about sexuality, education and freedom had since evolved. Two teenagers magically get sucked into this retrograde, black and white world and start to introduce the people they meet here to these new ideas as they also begin to discover themselves. An interview shown below with Reese Wittherspoon who plays Jennifer, one of the teens from the 90’s, explains how the director was trying to portray the 50’s in the way television did so back then. She says that “this was sort of the way people wanted to look at the 50’s.. at that time.”  Using the television version of the 50’s helps offer even more satire on the social problems that were happening then.

Through their adventures in this new world, the two 90’s teens begin to change in the roles they were forced to play. Gary Ross shows us what he thinks was wrong in the past by using color to change the town little by little; the color signifying positivity. The teenagers’ non conformist attitudes in their roles shows us that the director is trying to express his political and social views. Critic Phillip French from the Guardian says, “The film becomes a deadly serious fable about the current conflict between the free-thinking liberal heirs of the Sixties and the right-wing adherents of family values and religious fundamentalism who wish to restore an innocent prelapsarian America that never really existed,” which ads weight to my claim that this film is made to engage viewers politically. (The Guardian) The fact that the town gains color as they gain the new characters’ influence and knowledge is a symbol that this change is good because color is better then black and white. The movie even shows us how some people experience shame form being different then the others in the scenes where people try to hide their color as they gain it. As well as how some people take longer to gain color because they are resistant to the change happening in the town. An analysis on the movies notes that, “The signs discriminating against non-monochrome people even read “No Coloreds.” (TVTropes) Ironically, the slow but persistent gain of color is a metaphor for how change is inevitable but is done so in a  way to help viewers examine the problems we can come across is real life when things do change, even for the better. Pleasantville leaves us with a very literal way of viewing and examining these human and societal conditions, thus being a prime example for how films can be a way for people to express themselves and push for change in society.

In the movie Avatar, director James Cameron creates in a world in which humans are colonizing a distant habitable moon called Pandora in order to mine a certain mineral that they want. The existence of a native local tribe is threatened by this and they are not willing to give up their home. The main character “Jake Sully” is sent as an “avatar” to this planet to disguise himself as one of them in a mission to discover their weakness. As a review on The Guardian explains how “Sully’s position is made considerably more tricky by the genocidal glee of his human military commander, who – in a plot move shamelessly similar to Cameron’s earlier film, Aliens – is prepared to cause mass casualties in the service of the sleazy mining-corporation executive.” I agree that the plot is very similar to other movies made before, but nonetheless is an attempt by the writer to express a basic social problem. (The Guardian)  In 2009, New York Times author John Anderson wrote, “What Mr. Cameron wants now is the world to thrill at both the fireballs and other visual marvels he’s concocted, and the story they’re in service to.” (NYTimes) This also shows us that in this film the director wants to expresses his political and social views. He does this by making this human avatar fall in love with the native creatures of Pandora and inevitably believe it will be wrong to destroy their home. This has happened in the real world a lot, just like beautiful natural parks are destroyed in order to make dams for water or native peoples are pushed out of their homes in order to build pipe lines for major corporations. In the end the main character has to make the difficult decision to betray his fellow humans to do the right thing and help avoid the destruction of this natural habitat and community. A professor from Gettysburg University explains how the environmental issues expressed in Avatar are lessons to be learned and talked about in politics. “We often think of nature as separate from society and that it’s not about people. But when you look at people and different cultures, you start to realize that nature is very much about people.” (Gettysburg: Lessons from Avatar)  This shows how Avatar is similar to Pleasantville in that they both deconstruct social and political issues. Both films use technology and entertainment to help the viewers potentially see these problems from a different perspective and delve deeply into a different world in an attempt to agree with the directors point of view and learn a moral lesson.

Pleasantville was written in 1998 and Avatar in 2008 so the technology available during the time both of these movies were created was vastly different yet they both used the most advanced versions of it they could attain the convey their message. For example in a review for Pleasantville on CNN, the author says, “The film was shot in color then the hues were drained out and replaced bit by bit. First a rose, then a tongue or a character’s eyes. The movie was also lit for both black and white and color, which is nearly impossible. In all, more than 1,700 computer-generated visual effects were used.” (CNN) In Avatar, director Cameron used technology that no one had seen in movies yet in order to captivate the audience. “Avatar takes things a step further by using both computer generated imagery and advanced stereoscopic filming methods to create the illusion of reality. (The Guardian) Although both movies made a lot of money from their debuts and obviously part of a larger business and industry, the creators used them as vehicles for social change by using technology and entertainment as the motivators for the viewers to connect to these problems in real life. Pleasantville and Avatar are both successfully “food for thought” movies in my opinion.