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The thing with Pleasantville is this. Anyone could see the vile propaganda laced throughout this film.

It takes a town, designed to portray the idealic 1950s and, or, its many sitcoms.

As the movie goes on, spots of color start to appear as the character played by Reese Witherspoon starts degenerating the high school boys. Once they "lose their virginity" or move away from a clean lifestyle, they turn to colored versions of themselves, unlike the "boring and blase" black and white, "old fashioned" individuals that they were.

Gradually, the whole town is less Pleasant, everyone is turning into color, and segregation ensues amongst the "black and whites" and the "coloreds".

This whole film has propaganda on various levels. For one, the colored versions are viewed as the liberated versions of their black and white selves. They're viewed to be free, not uptight, not conservative. They're viewed to be having sex outside of marriage, if need be. In essence, they're viewed to be acting like the typical liberal. On the other hand, the black and white figures are viewed as the villians, conservatives, individuals who are resistant to change, those who are prejudiced and "racist" against people who are different; "the coloreds". They go to show this by indicating that the black and whites are putting up "no colored" signs around town. They go further by indicating that the black and whites are hateful in that they would go so far as to go to court to outlaw "coloreds".

Another area of propaganda is the vile slanderization of the traditional mother. In the beginning of the film, when everyone is black and white, the main mother role in the film is all happy, etc. Yet, later, it becomes evident that the mother is oppressed in her housewife duties, and that she yearns to be free, to be a colored. She later goes on to have a fling with someone other than her husband, she turns to color, and she tells her husband that he can fix his own dinner. If I'm not mistaken, I believe at the end of the film she leaves her husband and goes to be with her lover. The film portrays the relationship with her "lover" (played by Jeff Daniels) as being a wonderful thing, while her marriage is viewed as an oppressive slave system of which she has to do everything for her husband at every whim. This is so pathetic, for it's not only degenerated, sick and twisted, but it's also illogical in its live for the moment, don't worry about the future, I don't care if I hurt anyone, I want what I can get episode.

So, these are the areas of propaganda:
1) Traditional Marital Roles are all Wrong, Oppressive, etc.
2) Those who are resistant to moral and social change are insane, ridiculous, etc.
3) Those who are resistant to change are akin to oppressors, racists, zealots, etc.
4) Open Sex, pre-marital sex, Adultery, etc. is okay.

While "Pleasantville" does has some nice scenes of a 1950s way of life, before it is messed up, the propaganda is easily seen, and it makes it hard to watch if you know what message the producers were trying to convey.

Pleasantville is a good choice for a classically liberal movie, and you've listed all its moral claims for liberalism over Ozzie-and-Harriet "retro" America. The film would have us believe that, before liberalism arrived, the country had never had a generous impulse. It also slips a punch, in that the Ozzies and Harriets the film vilifies......also voted for Franklin Roosevelt four times. How do you square that with what Pleasantville says about America in the Fifties?

For nastiness, though, Pleasantville is far outstripped by the contemporary Arlington Road, which is just vile and slanders straight, conservative America as a bunch of car-bombers. Tim Robbins has done a number of portrayals like this, and rivals Gary Oldman (The Contender, JFK) as an enthusiastic portrayer of bad guys generally, but never with more relish than when they are played as "conservatives" or authority figures (The Player).