Let Your Colors Shine Through

In the short clip from the film "Pleasantville", we are transported into a world from a 1950's sitcom where most of the characters are not living their lives to their fullest. The characters are shown in black and white in their conservative, nostalgic existence, but once they become self-aware and begin to feel real emotions the colors of life start to shine through. A book of well-known, beautiful art pieces is the only color in one of the scenes.

The art is shown in color because they're such beautiful, unique and inspirational pieces. The man working at the diner is so inspired by the art, that he decides to try to recreate some of it and display it for the town to see. When one woman sees the sadness in one of the paintings, she begins to cry, washing off the black and white and exposing her true colors.

Another scene that shows the beauty a song and nature can bestow takes place when two characters are driving down a black and white road and the radio plays Etta James' "At Last". The flower petals from the dogwood trees lining the road appear pink at first, then as they drive to a beautiful park, the world around them begins to be colorized. The two characters; however, continue to be shown in black in white because they are not living to their fullest potential, they are holding certain things back.

In Oscar Wilde's short story, "The Shelfish Giant", we learn the story of a greedy giant who is enraged when children continually play in his garden. The giant decides he wants to have the beautiful garden for himself, so he builds barriers to keep the children from enjoying it. The garden becomes lonely without the company of the children, and during the winter it freezes over like normal. But once the spring arrives, the giant is alarmed when the snow and frost doesn't melt like it normally would. After a long while of missing the songs of the birds in his garden, the giant looks out his window and notices the kids had crept back into the garden. He is overjoyed when he realized their presence has thawed the winter and welcomed spring, but there is still one corner of his garden that spring hasn't touched. When the giant sees a young boy that is too short to climb the branches, he helps him up and becomes a much more unselfish person. The garden is thawed. When winter comes and goes again, the corner of the garden is left unthawed again and the giant wonders what happened to the young boy who used to play there. Many years later, the giant discovers the same child with nail wounds in his hands lying underneath a tree with white blossoms, golden branches and silver fruit. The giant asks the child why anyone would wound him, and the child responds "these are wounds of love" and says "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden - which is paradise." The other children who play in the garden dissevered the giant lying dead in the garden, covered in white blossoms. The colors play a very crucial role in this story; the garden is represented by spring and pastel colors, life is represented by the fruit in the garden and gold colors, and death is represented by winter, blossoms, and the color white. These are also the same colors mentioned in the "Mythic Cycles" by Geoffrey Hill.

Color plays an important role in storytelling and almost anything, it can depict emotion, beauty, vibrance, and life. A personality can be described as 'colorful' if the personality is lively and fun, a vocabulary can be described as 'colorful' if it has a wide range, a person's imagination can be described as 'colorful' if it is very creative, and a rainbow can be described as 'colorful' because it has a variety of colors. There are many things that color brings to life. Living life to the fullest and expressing creativity is a great way to let people see you in your true colors.