The Truman show

. What kind of person is Truman?

Truman is by nature, a very cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy. It is possible this is due to the fact that he was brought up in the idyllic setting of Seahaven, and ‘taught’ to feel this way about everything. He probably is also a very organized person and is most comfortable with regular routines, and this aspect of his character shows very strongly when he never gets bored of doing the exact same thing everyday.

Another adjective to describe his character would be ‘strong’. To me, it means even when the rest of the world seems to be against you, and you are still able to believe in yourself as well as take charge of your life/destiny instead of ‘following the sheep’ and risk getting humiliated or marginalized for what you believe in, demonstrates an immense will to live for yourself. This strength is seen in Truman when he believes something is wrong with his perfect world and is determined to find out what it is, even confronting his, albeit excellently engineered, childhood fear (which is very real to him). More so, as aforementioned, that he is a man who is comfortable with routines and probably unwilling to accept change or generally uncomfortable with changes.

. Why has he been chosen as the star of a media show? Why doesn’t he know about it?

Truman, the main character in this movie, is an orphan being the first one officially adopted by an organization. He lives innocently and quite comfortably in a world created by the media while he being the main character in his own real life show, a carefully planned show that is televised day-and-night to others living in different parts of the globe. He is a tool that the media grabs attention of the audience. He is a person who totally does not know that his own life is just surrounded by actors and actresses who are designed to come and paste on fake smiles and cheat Truman so as to convince him that his world is normal and real. Even daily newspapers are specially printed to create the illusion. In the well-concealed world, he is kept from going out of the town as he became afraid of water after his father’s death and not being able to go across the water body that surrounds the town. When he wanted to take a flight, he could not get a single ticket. The bus which he then chooses to take breaks down. All possible kinds of obstacles appear when he tries to escape from the fake town. Moreover, he has actually no one to turn to since his relatives and friends will not tell him the truth about his life and so on. He becomes even more suspicious when he realizes that someone he has never met before calls out his name. Therefore, he has nowhere to get the truth.

.In what ways is he influenced by the media?

Truman lives in a world which is totally made up. Each and every thing around him are planted—the people are paid actors and actresses, the environment he lives in is a whole “recording studio” in its own. Hence, Truman’s perception of life is influenced so much by Christoff, who is the backstage narrator of The Truman Show. We can say that media is part of Truman’s life. The newspaper he reads, the television he watches, the people he talks to, they are all fake. Christoff, being the “dictator” in the show, can simply decide how Truman leads his life. Without knowing it, Truman is surrounded by what the media wants to portray to him. It’s an inherent part of his life. For example, he reads the newspaper every morning and reads magazines during work hours. Yet he does not realize that the content being fed to him is all for the purpose of creating effects for The Truman Show. The world surrounding him can be referred to as a “world within a world”, a world entirely made up by the producers of the show. The information that Truman has access to are all fictitious. However, he does not know this and believes whatever he sees.


. How does this reflect how the media influences us?

“The Truman show” is trying to send a message that no one can escape from the media today.

Truman, the main character, was watched by the whole world 24/24. Every moment of his life was shown on the televisions without him even know that. That is the intrusion of the media in the lives of celebrities, or in our own lives. Imagine one day your pictures or videos are seen on the internet and become the topics for criticisms without your notice, how would you react? That is the case of Truman, in which people looked at him as a famous actor but he did not know that he was the main character in the show.

If we look closer to the movies, there is a bigger picture that the movies want to convey. In the movies, Truman lived in a totally fake world with simulators and high-tech manipulators. The people around him, his family and his friends are all actors. Despite being taken great care in a peaceful place, he was just a caged animal, an experiment. The media is no different from the big cage that encapsulates our thoughts and ideas. It is everywhere, on televisions, on the internet, on the streets, in shopping malls and in schools. We are all facing the media every day. “The Truman show” is a warning to all of us about the effect of the media, for us to try to escape from the huge cage that it puts us in.