Pleasantville and The Scarlet Letter The movie Pleasantville, directed by Gary Ross, and the novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, both were stories focused on outcasts in society. Though they were written generations apart, they share similar illusions of society, and judgments or actions from society. Both societies had their strict visions of a Utopia. Pleasantville was a society based on a classic, but unrealistic, 1950’s television show, where everything is perfect, and every day is the same. It was their perfect and pleasant utopia. The Scarlet Letter’s Utopia followed the Puritan’s strict