The Truman Show- Seahaven

Seahaven is a shore town serving as the "film set" of Truman Burbank's life, which the inclusion of his home and workplace. It is an island "paradise" where the weather is always mild and no unpleasantness intrudes. The town has over 5,000 live cameras to capture Truman's every move, with numerous actors paid to play townspeople, friends and relatives of Burbank. The town is watched over by a giant window inside a moon in the dome; also inside the moon is a control room, where the cameras are viewed and managed.

Seahaven is portrait as an idealistic place in The Truman Show, much akin to a "perfect world", where everything is fine and dandy, every building seems newly painted, every sky is clear blue, the sunsets are always beautiful, all the people are wonderfully friendly and everybody is more or less happy. And indeed, in Seahaven, everyone appears to be happy, wealthy and trouble free. The whole of Seahaven is set in the 1950s, which were seen to be a prosperous time in American history. It is a place that embodies "The American Dream”. One specific scene that depicts the American Dream well would be the opening scene where you see the neatly arranged houses white picket fences and neatly mowed lawns on a sunny day, on a straight road. The effect it gives is that of a peaceful utopian era where all things go your way and there are no troubles. Seahaven is a portrait of an ideal classic lifestyle which the average American would hope to live. The effect is that is leaves the audience a false impression that there is actually such a wonderful and perfect place in existence, when Seahaven does not exist at all but is actually created and fictional. However, people are attracted to watch “The Truman Show” and watch Truman live in the world that they all yearn for.

Christoff, the designer and show creator, states that "Seahaven is the way the World should be". Seahaven is also labeled as “The best place on Earth”. Throughout his life, Truman has also indicated a conflicting wish to explore the world, to travel, and to leave Seahaven. Attempts to keep him on the island (and thus unable to discover the truth of his TV-show existence) include the staged drowning death of his father, others' explicit discouragement of his wishes to be an explorer. Also, the general media consistently presents the good points of staying home. Through the show, the makers of the programme attempt to tell the world that this is the best way of life, and that everybody should follow it. This would appeal to the type of people that would "watch" the Truman show. They would look back on that period as "the golden years" and therefore enjoy watching someone who lived there. In short, it is a money-making ruse to keep the show’s ratings high.
Through "The Truman Show", and "Seahaven", the makers of the reality TV programme were trying to communicate to people a type of lifestyle that they should aspire towards. By watching "The Truman Show", audiences would be absorbed by the quality of Truman's life, and simultaneously associate his environment, Seahaven, to such a quality of life ("The American Dream" lifestyle). This would thus make product placement in the reality TV programme an effective marketing technique because the audience, being so engrossed in Truman's life, would want to drink whatever coffee he drinks, wear the kind of clothes he wears, use the same lawnmower he uses, and so on. By making Seahaven such an idealistic place, and giving Truman a rather good life, the makers of the reality TV programme are positioning the reality TV programme as a prime marketing avenue, due to its effectiveness as audiences aspire to live as people do in Seahaven. Examples of product placement in "The Truman Show" would be when Truman's wife, Meryl rather blatantly advertised the coffee she was going to make for Truman, and when she described to him the new all-in-one kitchen tool she had bought.
The makers of the reality TV programme are trying to show that reality TV does not really depict reality because the entire show is scripted. The scriptwriters write the reality TV script so that it appeals to the audience and gives them entertainment, and reality TV does not really reflect reality.
Many aspects of Seahaven are very similar to the real world. What, is different, is the essence of this reality. Is it the real world out there, or is it an artificial construct of the real world out there? In the show, Christoff tells Truman that he is the creator of a show which gives hope, joy and inspiration to millions. He warns Truman that "there is no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you – there are the same lies and deceit, but in the world I created there is nothing to fear." The makers of the reality TV programme are thus trying to portray a ‘perfect’ lifestyle to the audience and encouraging it, as it will bring benefit to everyone. There will not be chaos and everything would be in an orderly fashion. The modern world is like the average movie, where everyone in it is faking their emotions and mindsets, to achieve various purposes and wants and also to get yet another faked response from another. Even places like Disneyland market themselves as an escape from the real world by their "fantasy theme park" emphasis, though it is not free from the conventions of the real world e.g. queuing up and paying money to buy tickets to enter Disneyland is still a must.
Reality TV influences us in this way. We might idolize the characters so much that we wear what the characters wear, following their style and even mimicking the way they move or talk. We may even take on their habits. This is because we tend to aspire towards the lives of characters in movies, and television shows. This is why MTV’s product placement in their music videos has been such an effective marketing tool. Suddenly, a lot more people want to have that Nokia handphone or Samsung MP3 that made an appearance in that music video. For example, we may even be tempted to adopt Truman’s catch-phrase “in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.” We develop the mindset that “since this is reality tv, this is the way we should live.” And to feed this mindset, we might tune in to the programme more, resulting in a vicious cycle. Reality TV could be said to have an even greater impact. Because reality TV features ordinary people who audiences can better associate themselves with, reality TV is all the more inspiring to audiences. In this way, people might find it even more feasible to achieve similar lifestyles to what they see in reality TV shows, and thus be even more influenced by reality TV shows and their content.

Fang Ting, Bryan Cai, Min Jia, Kim, Junling!
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