The Truman Show

What if every detail of your life was broadcasted for the entire world to see? Everybody knew about every mistake and every failure. And you didn’t even know it was happening. This kind of invasive exposure is exactly what Truman Burbank experienced in “The Truman Show”.

“The Truman Show” reveals a lot about the impact that mass media has on our society. It shows that we are willing to humiliate another human and turn them into an animal at a zoo so that we can have entertainment. That is a scary thought. They use product placement sarcastically to show how a person would react to someone enthusiastically recommends a product like they always do in commercials. It does a fantastic job of showing how manufactured and unnatural it really is. I don’t think I would be an actor, but I think I would watch a show like this. I enjoy watching people and trying to figure out why people do what they do and this would give me a great outlet for that. It would do wonders for the study of psychology. This movie has a similar sarcastic take on social media as “Anchorman”. They both show how ridiculous mass media can be. Both movies use sarcasm to present the idiocy of mass media.

Many philosophical ideas are presented by the characters in “The Truman Show”, some of them are true, and others are completely false. Christof made one such statement when he said, “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.” This idea is the main reason why Truman took so long to realize that his world wasn’t real. For all we know we could be living in a world that was designed just for us and we would probably never know. It is kind of scary to think about. A similar idea was presented in “The Matrix” when Neo said that nobody questions the world they live in because they just accept it. Their conscious minds don’t remember anything different, even though they are living in a computer. When Truman was about to escape from Seahaven, the world in which his show takes place, Christof made this statement to Truman, “there’s no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you. The same lies, the same deceit. But in my world you have nothing to fear.” This statement is very false. Truman’s entire life in Seahaven was fake. Every little aspect was a lie, designed for people’s entertainment. While our world may have a lot of lies and deceit at least there is a lot of things in our world are genuine. Many things are true. However it was quite a compelling statement.

I really enjoyed the ending of the movie. I thought it was humorous while being kind of philosophical. I love that Truman decided to leave in spite of Chritsof’s compelling words. I loved that he said, “in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night,” right before he left because it was kind of his catch phrase in the show and something that people knew him by and now he was poking at Christof with it. When Christof took the show offline he probably went and looked for some other producing or directing job. He showed that he was very good at it and I am sure plenty of studios would want him. I think Truman went looking for Sylvia because he realized that she was the one true thing in his life. When everything else was fake his and Sylvia’s love was true. The viewers of The Truman Show probably just went back to life as normal, and probably are watching some other show right now. I think the sequel would be about Truman suing Christof for exploiting him. Truman would sue him for all he’s worth and Christof would be shamed.

The invasive exposure that Truman experienced shows us a lot about the function of humans. Everything from mass media to our acceptance of reality, but it doesn’t excuse invading someone privacy.