Of course, Pleasantville , being slick as lard, makes Allen's transformation from neutered housewife to potential adulteress a quick process. The film's faith in the transformative quality of good books is bound to be mocked as middlebrow. Pleasantville can be read as an artistic backlash against the loathsome Starr. The film celebrates sex, art and passion, promising the audience that the solid gray America of the '50s will never return. Solondz wouldn't buy a story like that.
Happiness aspires to shock audiences with the unnaturalness of man.
But as the Roman poet Terence wrote, If you're human, nothing is foreign to you.