The Truman Show: All Bubbles Pop
Until I was eight years old, my life was limited to the bubble that was my childhood. Whether it be ignorance or innocence, the thought of my existence mattering never once occurred to me. Children live in a beautiful bubble of purity; secular affairs do not yet deface their virtue. But bubbles pop, and something must act as the thorn. The Truman Show popped my bubble ten years ago and again when I was 18.
As I watched as a child, I knew something was off with Truman. Truman possesses many of the positive qualities of a child, but he is a grown man. He is positive and acceptive of the world until he realizes he’s trapped. I spent the whole film feeling a strange tension between Truman and the rest of the characters, but it wasn’t until a particular line that everything clicked for me. “Was nothing real?”
Truman didn’t know the difference between what is real and the fabrication of reality, and neither did I. Although I was reasonably sure I wasn’t the star of a hidden reality TV show about my life, the movie forced me to think about my place in the universe. At eight, I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I felt after watching, but I felt detached. What’s the point of doing all this if I didn’t even know what real life was. This movie succeeds because no one can prove that what is happening to Truman isn’t happening to them.
Christof is the television show’s creator that is Truman’s life, which makes him both the villain and a Godlike figure. He has created a cultural touchstone for people across the United States who live vicariously through a man who does not question his reality as artificial. Christof says, “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that,” he benefits from the natural human response to the direct realism theory, the basic idea that we accept what our senses are delivered. Truman grapples quite literally with this as he lives on a reality TV set, but the rest of the world lives through this as well because the show’s audience accepts the media construct of their own reality.
We buy and watch things to make our reality meaningful, which directly benefits people like Christof, who capitalize on human emotional vulnerability. Christof explains to Truman that part of the show’s genius is that “I know you better than you know yourself.” This film’s observation of existentialism and the power of the media is so slick that it’s almost burdening. This film shows that we are all susceptible to a slave-like existence like Truman or the show watchers. The question of “real life” instead of Truman’s show-life encourages more conversation on fate versus free will. Fate is what you are given in this life, and free will is what you choose to do with it. Is Truman’s life real if he isn’t genuinely making decisions for himself? Does his life only truly begin when he realizes that he is in a TV show?
When Truman puts all the pieces together about what is happening to him, Christof realizes that it’s impossible to fully control a person once they use free will instead of stoically accepting their fate. “Say something, goddammit! You are on television! You are live to the whole world!” Christof realizes that he is about to lose his most incredible creation, which brings us to existentialism in Truman. Truman loses everything he thought was real, and he is free in some senses but completely trapped in others. Truman’s childlike qualities stem from the fact that he is spoon-fed fabricated authenticity from those around him, similar to how young children are regarded by the people close to them.
The obstacles that Truman faces suggest truth in philosopher Blaise Pascal’s work. “I have discovered that the unhappiness of men arise from one single fact: that they cannot stay quietly in their chamber. I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.” This essentially means that when humans are given too much time alone with their own thoughts, they start to question their own reality and insignificance. Truman starts paying attention to every little monotonous detail in his life, leading him to find out the truth, which Christof didn’t expect him to do, showing that even Christof didn’t think of Truman as a human being with intelligent thoughts. Christof had cameras everywhere, but Truman found a fault in his system when he said to him, “you never had a camera in my head.”
Truman is never truly happy in the film, and it takes him a while to recognize the emptiness he feels inside. His life is so perfect and predictable that it doesn’t satisfy the basic human need for a sense of purpose. Going back to the work of Pascal, “when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him.” This quote is often used to explain why celebrities aren’t happy. While Truman is just a “regular guy,” he is extremely famous and has every materialistic and foreseeable necessity handed to him.
Film is a beautiful medium, certain films are made to distract us from reality, and others are made to make us look at our existence in a new light. Film provides viewers with entertainment that reflects and reacts to cultural phenomena. The Truman Show was one of the first pieces of media I remember causing me to think about the world differently, and as I revisit it ten years later, I feel the same detached feeling I did when I was a child. Media controls society in visible and invisible ways, and when it takes forms like The Truman Show, it reminds us to open our eyes and look past what we think we know. The questions this movie poses within me are broad and chilling, and the energy Truman has in the last scene when he leaves the set is inspiring. “In case I don't see ya . . . good afternoon, good evening, and good night.”
