How does the film The Truman Show tell the audience about the influence of the media?

The Truman Show features Truman Burbank as the main character of a reality TV show. Chosen by the producer Christoff from birth, Truman is thrown into some sort of a ‘fishbowl’ world known as Seahaven. From then, everything about his life is part of a script that is plotted by Christoff and his team. With the aid of over five thousand pinhole cameras carefully installed all around Seahaven, Truman’s everyday life is captured and shown to audiences all over the world.

The Truman Show shows us the intrusive nature of media, as well as its overarching power on us. The media nowadays has managed to enter our lives so much, our lives are very much influenced by it. For example, we are bombarded by all sorts of advertisements everywhere we go. Companies such as Nike, Sony, and Apple have managed to persuade us via their advertisements to purchase their products. They try to convince us that their products are the trend, and by using these products, we can follow the trend and be ‘in’. This is in a way similar to the Truman Show, whereby Truman’s life is planned and decided by Christoff to attract the many viewers into watching it. By manipulating various events in Truman’s life, Christoff manages to get the attention of the viewers to continue watching it to find out what will happen to Truman and his life.

In addition, the Truman Show tells us about the ability of the media to exert its control over us without us even knowing. This is particularly shown in the beginning of the Truman Show, when Truman has not yet discovered anything wrong about the fake world that he is living in, and accepts it for what it is. In reality, we are also controlled by media. Many of our opinions are directly or indirectly influenced by news reports that serve to inform us of all that is happening around the globe. While we think that all that is reported to us is real, there are many news reports, especially political ones, which have been edited such that what we know can be entirely different from the actual facts. However, until any notation that that piece of news might be false pops out, we really have no idea what is real and what is false.

Moving on to Seahaven, the enclosed world in which Christoff can manipulate Truman’s life, it is actually similar to the real world that we live in, a world full of illusions created by the media in order to gain control of us. For example, quotes can be taken out of context so as to create an entirely different meaning from what was originally intended. These fictitious information then serve to mislead us and affect some decisions that we will make. In Seahaven, events are manipulated to keep Truman inside the place itself, such as the sudden lack of flights to Fiji, as well as a synchronised traffic jam to prevent him from exiting his town. This shows us the efforts of the media to keep us trapped within it.

The Truman show also tells us the undeniable fact that media works for its own benefit. With the media being so pervasive that we cannot live without it anymore, it now tries to force us to use it even more, in the process earning itself tons of money. This is cleverly shown by the man in the bathtub, who decides to put a television set inside his bathroom so that he does not miss out on the Truman Show, which has no commercial breaks. If not for the show, he probably would not have spent the effort to get another television set so that he can watch television while taking a bath. In our lives, television shows are also televised on timeslots that are readily available for many people, thus encouraging them to tune in regularly for the television shows. This in turn causes rises in viewership ratings, and thus allows the programme makers to earn lots of money.

Also, the Truman Show tells us of the cruelty of the media by their willingness to exploit people for their own benefits. Truman is the victim of such media cruelty in the show, where he is used as a child to attract viewers to the show. Currently, there are also many reality TV shows that exploit people to attract viewers. TV producers create new shows with innovative ideas that can temporarily satisfy the insatiable appetite of the audience. In order to beat each other in attracting viewers, these producers have no qualms forcing participants of the show to do many revolting things, such as Fear Factor which frequently requires the participants to perform dangerous stunts or eat rotten foods. In the Truman Show, Christoff tries everything he can to keep Truman in the set so that the show can go on, to the extent that he contemplates killing off Truman via bad weather to end the show completely. This scene clearly shows us the utter cruelty and ruthlessness of the media.

Yet, the Truman Show also tells us how we can challenge the media and try to overcome the various illusions created. Truman, upon realising something wrong with the world he was living in, tries to escape from it. Although he faces many obstacles, he manages to see through the many minute details that Christoff has placed into his life, and finally manages to walk out of the set that was his life for twenty-odd years. Similarly, we can try to shrug off many of media’s control over us by being media literate, and choose which information we want to take in, and which information as merely fiction masqueraded as facts in an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes.
Done by: Charmaine, Nicole, Xiaodi, Genevieve, Marvin 09S03K