In this blog I will be exploring the similarities and connections between the film Pleasantville by Gary Ross and Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave. There are three main types of people that the allegory mentions. The slaves who are chained to the wall. The people who walk in front of the fire and cast shadows on the walls and the freed people who live outside of the cave. All of the characters in the Pleasantville show can be likened to the slaves in the Allegory of the cave. Their whole world is just a small town that loops back to itself, they don’t have any literature, color, art, heck they don’t even have toilets. In the case of David and Jennifer they can be compared to the people who live outside of the cave, they know the full extent of the world and have been born into enlightenment. When David and Jennifer are transported to the world of Pleasantville they completely alter how the residents of Pleasantville see themselves. 
The residents learn about sex literature, color, art, self pleasure, love and many more emotions. In the Allegory of the Cave it mentions that when one slave escaped from his chains and got outside he was in serious pain as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight. This emphasizes the point that enlightenment will be painful at first, but eventually we adapt. This is very true for the case of Pleasantville. There is a massive split between those who have already been enlightened and those who refuse to accept their already changing worldview. It goes so far that the separation between those two types of people turns into segregation. There are book burnings in the streets, vandalism of shops and just general aggression towards the enlightened people. In the end though, everyone’s eyes metaphorically adjust to the light. They accept their completely altered mindsets and realize how much better their lives are now that they have been enlightened. Overall Allegory of the cave and Pleasantville have some minor differences, but most of their main points can be translated between both pieces of written works.
https://theasc.com/articles/pleasantville-black-and-white-in-color
https://www.arcstudiopro.com/blog/platos-allegory-of-the-cave-explained