Otherworldly dimensions in young adult literature

¶ … films: Pleasantville, Donnie Darko and Edward Scissorhands, showing how they take the viewer into another world and how these alternative realities bring real world issues into focus for the young adults who view them.

Pleasantville is a TV series that reminds the viewer of "Leave it to Beaver," a show that originated in the 1950's and starred a "typical" American family with two boys. "Pleasantville" is the same, only the family has a girl and a boy, who are teen-agers.

In the movie "Pleasantville," a TV repairman, played by Don Knotts, by magic gets a boy and girl in a contemporary family, where the mother is divorced and has custody of the teen-aged children, to go back into time and into the series "Pleasantville." The boy, Bud, knows all of the episodes and all of the people in the series, so is familiar with the life and fits right into it. But the girl is not, so begins to cause problems. Her knowledge and contemporary spirit of rebelliousness and curiosity get her and, by association, the other teen-agers into trouble. She starts getting the students to read the books in the library, which had not had words in them until she started telling the stories that they held, and the teen-agers lined up at the library to read about things outside of Pleasantville and to experience emotions and situations outside of their little world that they would otherwise not have been able to experience, through the books.

Since the world of "Pleasantville" is black and white, the way the viewer and others in Pleasantville know the people who have begun to have emotions and follow their own pursuits (rather than sticking to their scripts in the series) are that they begin to turn Technicolor. In fear of the changes, the townspeople smash in a colorful mural on the front window of the soda shop and burn all of the books in the library. After this, a town meeting is called, to determine what to do with the "coloreds" who are now barred from stores and discriminated against in the streets (even to violence). The town meeting decides that no one is allowed to play any music other than "pleasant" music, and that no paint of any colors other than black, white and gray are allowed in the town.

Bud reads the edict to the other ostracized teenagers and adults, and declares that they don't have to follow the orders. They deliberately paint a mural of all of the "forbidden" things that have happened on the outside wall of the Police Department during the night. In the morning Bud and the soda shop owner, Bill, are arrested. A town meeting is called to judge the two. All of the people of the town are still black and white and sit in judgment on the two, who begin to defend themselves. Bud, realizing why some people are turning colors, begins to provoke emotions that have not been allowed in the series from the participants of the meeting. He gets his series "father" to cry for love of his wife, who has left him, and the father turns into a Technicolored man. Then he gets the Mayor, who is running the meeting, to become so angry that he also turns into color and runs out the back door. All of the people in the meeting start to laugh and they turn colored, too. When they go outside, the whole town is now in color, rather than in black-and-white. Bud goes back to contemporary times, but his sister stays and goes to college, since she has been reading so much that she has gotten smarter.

The movie is actually preaching the message, which is repeated quite often near the ending, that change is not always bad and often is good. It is a parable, showing a parallel to contemporary times where conservative values that resist change and innovation in society take control and try to enforce traditional family values by legal or other means. Although religion and church are not mentioned in Pleasantville, the whole town reflects the morals and values of contemporary conservative churches, where handholding is considered the ultimate sign of love between a couple (kissing and "sex" being forbidden and not even spoken of), and there is no drinking, drugs or wild, unbridled emotions. One of the symbolic acts in the movie is when the girl Bud loves runs over to a tree, picks an apple and brings it back to him, urging him to take a bite. They are Adam and Eve and Pleasantville is Eden, where no bad thing is allowed. No individual human will is allowed in this town. Everyone is acting out their script and cannot vary from it. As Bud explains to someone who asks what life is like outside of Pleasantville, life outside of perfect little Pleasantville is dangerous, scary, but exciting. As Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, so the people of the town are introduced to the scary, new, unpredictable, and emotion-filled life of the real world, where people make decisions on their own. It is more beautiful (colorful) and bigger (there are now buses coming into town and taking people away into other cities) and somewhat sadder but wiser. The "mother," who has left the series "father" ponders "Now what?" As she contemplates the future (Berger 2005).

Donnie Darko, by Richard Kelly, concerns a giant bunny named Frank and time travel. The story concerns a schizophrenic boy who is convinced the world is going to end in 28 days. Donnie is an extremely brilliant student bored with school. He takes medications and sees his therapist for depression, but he keeps on waking up out in the street. When a jet engine falls through his roof and smashes his bed while he is out sleepwalking, he is even more terrified, believing that Frank has saved his life. His favorite teacher loses her job as a self-help guru begins to affect the school. He meets someone to love and finds understanding in a new girl.

This film is a parody of the Reagan era, where ambition does not strive too high in suburbia, and then fails. Kelly also makes jokes about Dukakis and Bush. But the story (taking place in 1988) is about a teenager who may have the ability to warp time, brings the viewer into the conflict over good and evil. This story, like "Pleasantville," debates the ability of the characters to have free will. The film is saying that nothing is as simple as it appears (as politicians want the public to believe). While the tie to the Reagan-Bush era isn't a secret, it is harder to find out what the director is trying to say about it: that the world is superficial or that there is a feeling of oncoming disaster? Both of these became real in real life and the viewer is reminded that this movie came out just as 9/11 happened. That was also the reason for its not being as popular as it should have been for a time-travel, social commentary about the treatment of the mentally ill. In the end, Donnie saves the world through his sacrifice, though no one will ever find out, as they found out about Jesus. (Berger 2005)

As in Pleasantville and Edward Scissorhands" suburbia is the setting, as it has become the image of America itself. That this dark movie takes place in sunny suburbia makes the viewer nervous from the beginning. That a 101-year-old neighbor in the movie has written a book on time travel and leaves the message "everybody dies alone," makes it science fiction brought down to earth. America, it seems, is stuck in a world that Americans have made and if some Americans choose to see it through the eyes of a boy who is being guided by a mad rabbit down a wormhole, then someone had better start doing something about it.

Edward Scissorhands is about a boy whose inventor dies before completing him. A sad, romantic tale of his attempt to live in the real world make him the object of pity and ridicule in the world of suburbia. Until he finds his calling he is tortured and in agony. This film has a happy ending, but not before we find out that it is wrong to bully those who are different and weaker than we are. This is a parable and a morality play that brings the viewer into the life of someone who (being the good actor Johnny Depp is) convinces the viewer that everyone may be a lost and misunderstood child at heart.

As Posch said in 1994, "Soon we can say we are an unwired society. it's the age of emancipation. Time and space will collapse, and the barriers to communication will fade away." (Burke 1969) Films seem to bridge the gap between the ages, as young people find meaning in these communicated values.

When we see movies that tell parables and fairy tales like these three movies, it is no wonder that young people respond. With their favorite actors and story lines lifted from the ancient myths, as well as old movies (such as "Harvey") and books (such as "Alice in Wonderland"), how can they resist the whole? The viewers understand what is being said through the medium of film. They enjoy the movie, discuss the tension and the romance and then begin to think about the parallels to their own lives. Film is the key to understanding the problems and issues that young people face today. Film and music (and both combined) are the main channel to young minds and in discussing the films, the young mind reinforces the message that the film has delivered. The ideas of stereotyping, bullying, discrimination and intimidation by authority are all treated in the three movies reviewed above.

The young person, seeing a film about another world, or someone else's world, attaches their psyche to that of the hero or heroine and feels the emotion of the actor. This puts them in another world, setting the stage for mind alteration.

The film media usually reinforces the powers that be in its treatment of society. However, these three films find society lacking in one way or another. Pleasantville finds society unwilling to change or bend. It researches the dynamics of change and of resistance to change. It finds that when authority refuses to allow change, as a conservative party in power usually does, there are consequences not so desirable to the weakest ones in the community. The lowly servant (the soda jerk), the housewife, the young people who are not going along with the popular kids all pay for their desire for change. They pay by being ostracized when they find that changing their world betters their situation. Liking the situation, they decide to continue and to persuade others to change as well, even forcing change upon those least willing to accept it, such as the Mayor and the "good ol' guys" in the community.

In Edward Scissorhands, a fairytale, the change comes into the hearts of those who reject the one unlike themselves. When Edward finds love and acceptance, support and a creative outlet, he thinks the world is wonderful. This is how things should be. But the perfect world does not last and he finds it is not as easy as just finding love and support, to make it in a real world.

In Donnie Darko, a mentally ill boy is misunderstood all the way around and, in trying to warn the world that it must be kinder, more loving and accepting, he loses himself. This film is not a happy-ending type of film, but is thought-provoking. Revealing the character of a brilliant schizophrenic, the main character tries to find out how to survive and fails. This is a condemnation of the creative and well-meaning, but misunderstood in the world by society. It does not say much about how much the world has advanced since the Dark Ages.

Films usually tend to favor the articulate, as Stuart Hall warned us (Hall 1974, p. 10), as well as the consensus. These films, however, go against the experts, against the organized majority viewpoint, the sacred institutions of society. These films, instead support the idea that the experts are wrong if they demand conformity. The majority is wrong for believing that just because they outnumber the minority doesn't mean they are right. They attack the sacred institutions such as "tradition." And the popular, accepted viewpoints are wrong if they are applied with pressure to the weak and defenseless.

Communication is the key to understanding what the film is trying to tell us. We believe, for instance, in Pleasantville, that the parents are communicating with the teenagers. Most families believe that they are communicating comfortably with the other members of their immediate family, and not communicating very well with outsiders. Whether communicating with their children, their parents, or brothers and sister, or even others, people feel very comfortable talking to people they know intimately. However, it appears that in most families, though many words are passed between the members of the family, there is very little communicating going on. In Pleasantville, the parents in the town think that they know their children and their gentle admonitions to "eat your breakfast" are taken quite differently when the teenager looks at a table piled high with pancakes, waffles, bowls of scrambled egg, oatmeal, toast, bacon, sausage, and griddle-fried ham steaks.

While the parent seems to thrive on the ritual of feeding their child, the child looks at the breakfast ritual as being forced to do something they would rather not. After Peggy Sue eats the enormous breakfast, topped with a half-gallon of imitation maple syrup, she wants to throw up. The father, happy in seeing his children eating at breakfast and wife cooking and serving the enormous meal, reads his paper, unaware of what is really happening. It is only when he comes home, calls out "Honey, I'm home!" several times and walks through the dark and empty house, hears his wife telling him that she is going out and then is gone for three days, that he realizes that the ritual is not going to happen again. There was no communication between the couple or between the parents and the children. Ritual does not take the place of verbal communication.

Verbal communication is not enough to pass along the information that the children have and feel to their parents, even though parents and children seem to feel comfortable talking to each other. Survey results from Roper Starch Worldwide say:

very sizable majority of people are comfortable communicating with their "significant other": 87% of those who have one say they are "very comfortable" when it comes to their spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or partner. Most people also believe their communication with that person to be effective: 73% say they are "very effective," and 24% are "somewhat effective."