Black-and-White versus Color (Allegory)
In the film, black-and-white is the palette of societal repression and maintaining the status quo. Those residents of Pleasantville who remain repressed remain portrayed in black-and-white, while the appearance of color represents the release from repression and expression of desire. Color becomes an allegory for progress, curiosity, and forward-thinking. It symbolizes the ways that people are jolted out of their preconceptions and compelled to take a more colorful perspective on the world. The Technicolor palette is much more varied and diverse than is the grayscale of the black-and-white world, which represents the ways that the "colored" community members are opening their eyes to a wider range of emotions and perspectives.
Double Bed (Symbol)
At one point, as the perspectives of the Pleasantville citizens begins to widen, we see a group of townspeople standing outside a mattress store that is advertising a full-sized bed. In contrast to the sexless society that has existed in the town hitherto, one in which husbands and wives sleep in separate twin beds, the full bed symbolizes a sexualized marriage, which in turn symbolizes changing attitudes and morays. Indeed, the individual beds of Pleasantville are not simply a device of the film, but a reality of the 1950s household, in which husbands and wives often slept separately, an outcropping of rather strict ethics about sexuality.
The Apple (Symbol)
At Lover's Lane, Margaret, David's girlfriend, brings him some berries to eat, and then tells him about all manner of fruit that is growing in the area. She plucks a bright red apple from the tree and brings it to him, and he takes a bite. This apple symbolizes change, experimentation, and liberation, and acts as a kind of stand-in for the Biblical apple, the "forbidden fruit" that gets Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The apple symbolizes desire, sexuality, and a general ripening of attitudes.
The Fire (Symbol)
After Jennifer tells Betty all about sex and masturbation, Betty locks herself in the bathroom and gives self-stimulation a try. As she reaches climax, a tree outside the house bursts into flames. The fire that spontaneously starts in the tree symbolizes Betty's sexual awakening, a literal fire to accompany the burning desire she feels as she discovers sex.
The Mural (Symbol)
When Bill discovers his love of painting, it corresponds with him falling in love with Betty. She becomes his ideal subject, and he paints a large and colorful nude of her on the window of the soda shop. For Bill, and those other citizens of the town who have become "colored" and are sexually liberated, the mural is a symbol of desire and aesthetics, a positive image meant to celebrate the human form. Additionally, it represents change and female liberation, as Betty has gone from repressed housewife to muse. For the more conservative black-and-white members of the community, the painting is a negative symbol, something to fight against and of which Betty should be ashamed. The painting, an innocent representation of Bill's admiration for Betty, quickly becomes one of the most controversial symbols in the film.
