A world of color

I have been pondering over the mythic cycle that we went over in class last Thursday and the simple profoundness of it has had me at a loss for words. But let me try to explain what it's got me thinking.

After our discussion on the cycle we watched some shots from Pleasantville. The characters learn that living a "perfectly pleasant" life in their black and white world is no life at all. And with the use of expressive emotions such as passion and despair, many of Pleasantville inhabitants find themselves transformed into beings of real color. Admittedly, it has been a while since I have watched the movie but this idea of coming from a life of monochrome, which symbolizes death in the mythic cycle, to one of vibrant pastels, which symbolizes life, seems to be deeper than just breaking the forth wall in a movie about living in a tv show. This is life. Coming from nothingness and being born. This is the Gospel. Coming alive, in a spiritual sense, out of the death of our sins and into the colorful world we were meant to live in. But that's not all. Still we eventually die as the cycle comes around. However, the dead living again, beating the cycle, is what Christianity sings about. This is the ultimate rebirth, the ultimate recolorization. The birth into a world with more colors than we can imagine. This imagery in Pleasantville evokes a strong feeling in the viewer because deep down we all hope for a rebirth, regardless of religious differences. We all cling to the hope of someone recoloring us that we may come around in the cycle again. But for now we wait. We wait and watch the colors fade around us as the cycle completes. We can watch death and tragedy play out around us because there is comedy. It makes life worth the living.

"So don't forsake the colors, stop to smell the roses. There will come a day when all you love will be gone. But do not weep, there is a hope, yes a hope of things to come. That we shall one day dance among the stars." -A lullaby my sister made up years ago