Many people have a nostalgic feeling about American television of the nineteen-fifties and sixties. They point to an innocence often missing in the nineties. At the same time, it's fashionable these days to look down on family programs from that earlier period as out of touch with reality.
The television picture may have been black and white in the fifties, but there shouldn't be an oversimplified, black-and-white analysis of the quality of TV from any period. We can find worthwhile programs today as well as yesterday, and, of course, a good deal that's disappointing. But the argument that television in earlier decades was out of touch raises the question of what it means to be in touch with reality. Is it being in tune with promiscuity, infidelity, cynicism —elements that are more evident in many of today's programs? Is this the basis of a colorful, enriching life? Is a portrayal of contented family life synonymous with a static, unprogressive existence? Does it represent dullness and lack of freedom, a repressing of true feelings?
Pleasantville, a movie that attracted a lot of attention last year, inspires such questions by sending a teen-age brother and sister back in time to a black-and-white town considered a model of fifties television values. As the pair's nineties perspective influences the people of Pleasantville, their lives take on color— literally and figuratively. The questions implied in the story are worth looking at more closely, although this isn't a recommendation of the film itself.
