Pleasantville Myths Of The 1950s

Unit Question: Myths of the 1950s

1. Pleasantville Pleasantville is a movie that depicts the life that most people had in the 1950s, except it does also deal with many things that are not true about that time. The most significant myth about the 1950s that was shown the movie was the myth that woman’s job in the house was to cook and clean and that they have to do these things. This myth was shown throughout the story except towards the end of the movie this myth started to unravel and made the audience realize that this is not how people lived at that time. At the beginning of the movie the mother cooked all the meals in the house and cleaned everything. That was her job and that is what most mothers did in the 1950s, or so the movie wanted

After WW2 life was pretty good for most people. They were happy, had big families and a lot of money however in many movies about the 1950s these myths are shown too much. In this episode of Leave it to Beaver at the beginning of the episode the whole family is eating dinner together and talking about friends, school and how their lives are. This is a reality of 1950s because it was true that most families were close and often had dinners all together as a family. Each person in the family had a job and each member followed it. The mom cleaned and cooked, the dad worked and the kids went to school and that is mostly how life was in the 1950s, which was properly expressed in this episode. Although I would say that most of the things portrayed in this episode were true to the 1950s there were a few small things that were myths of that time. In the 1950s most people were pretty conservative and followed the norm of that time. In this episode one of the characters, Eddie drops out of school and gets a job instead. His parents did not really mind and they just went with the flow and were not that upset. Because most people followed the norm and getting a job at 16 was definitely not what most people did this would be considered a myth. If this tv show accurately depicted what life was during the 1950s the parents were have been angrier. They might have not even given Eddie the choice to drop out of school. School and education were very important during that time and you couldn't really do anything without a high school diploma. Where he worked probably would not have hired him knowing that he dropped out of school which is why this plot in the episode was not so realistic when it comes to the reality of the 1950s. Overall, this episode of Leave it to Beaver was realistic in terms of keeping to the reality of the 1950s and what life was like during that time. It