The Truman Show :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesThe Truman examine is a profoundly disturbing movie. On the surface, it deals with the worn out issue of the intermingling of life and the media. Examples for such incestuous relationships abound Ronald Reagan, the cinematic president was also a presidential movie star. In another movie (The Philadelphia Experiment) a defrosted Rip Van Winkle exclaims upon seeing Reagan on television (40 years after his forced hibernation started) I know this guy, he used to play Cowboys in the movies. Candid cameras monitor the lives of webmasters (website owners) almost 24 hours a day. The resulting images are continuously stick on on the Web and are available to anyone with a computer. The last decade witnessed a spate of films, all concerned with the confusion between life and the imitations of life, the media. The able Capitan Fracasse, Capricorn One, Sliver, Wag t he Dog and many lesser films have all tried to tackle this (un)fortunate state of things and its moral and practical implications. The blurring zephyr between life and its representation in the arts is arguably the main theme of The Truman Show. The hero, Truman, lives in an artificial world, constructed especially for him. He was born and raise there. He knows no other place. The people around him unbeknownst to him are all actors. His life is monitored by 5000 cameras and broadcast live to the world, 24 hours a day, all day. He is spontaneous and funny because he is unaware of the monstrosity of which he is the main cogwheel. But Peter Weir, the movies director, takes this issue one metre further by perpetrating a massive act of immorality on screen. Truman is lied to, cheated, deprived of his ability to make choices, controlled and manipulated by sinister, half-mad Shylocks. As I said, he is unwittingly the only spontaneous, non-scripted, actor in the on-going soaper of his own life. All the other figures in his life, including his parents, are actors. Hundreds of millions of viewers and voyeurs plug in to take a peep, to jab upon what Truman innocently and honestly believes to be his privacy. They are shown responding to various dramatic or anti-climactic events in Trumans life. That we are the moral equivalent of these viewers-voyeurs, accomplices to the same crimes, comes as a shocking realization to us. We are (live) viewers and they are (celluloid) viewers.