Comparing John Milton’s Paradise Lost to Pleasantville Essay -- Compar

Comparing John Miltons Paradise Lost to PleasantvilleI dont know if I connected the experiential dots with any dexterity regarding John Miltons Paradise Lost until I visited Disney World recently. It wasnt until Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, Cruella De Vil, Jafar the evil sorcerer, the Beauty, and the Beast came down Main Street, U.S.A. that I was more able to appreciate the prodigiousness of the procreative masque within Paradise Lost. Panorama grabs the viewer and, with a mere touch of the remote control, it thrusts him/her into Eden, Main Street, or Pleasantville. Panorama doesnt settle for facile spectatorship it demands the viewer into the action and synchronizes the viewers pulse with the pulse of its panoramas own creative slide show. To ignore that invite is to not only avoid the tree of knowledge, but to refuse its existence. That tree was not put in the garden to be ignored but to be avoided a challenge of our obedience towards a sovereign, a tempter of our curiosity, a pulse quickener.And so we sat there in the cool of the shade from our own tree, asquint of Main Street but within reach of the remote. We were just far teeming away to observe the parade with condescension and just close enough to feel the discomfort of the sorcerers leer. First the big mouse, then the princess, then Goofy, then the sorcerer, then the beast always the beast. I watched the 5-year-old near me and wondered if he felt like Adam may have felt on that lofty mount, as Michael revealed one dramatic historical upheaval after another. I was glad that I didnt have to worry, didnt have to get involved. I was happy to know that this bit of fancy was but a guinea pig of reality, scripted by that master of artifice, Walt Disne... ...ly delivers both of his worlds by becoming part of the panorama. He pushes the remote button and affects the circumspection of the real with the creativity of the originative. The real and the fanciful have an almost singular or codepende nt relationship with one another neither can be ignored in attending to the health of the other. In Buds situation, the absenteeism of his corporeal nature is illumined by the activism of his panoramic experience. At the end of the movie Pleasantville, Bud is able to take a satisfying musical note into the television screen, the conduit for his panorama, and know that he was taken out of the shade and into the light. He risked joining the pageantry and ended up having a good day. Next cadence Ill sit closer to the parade. Work CitedMilton, John. Paradise Lost. 1674. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York W.W. Norton & Co., 1993.