Everything in my reality—the activities I engage in, the friendships I acquire, the family I love, the beliefs I form (about art, politics, religion, morality, the afterlife)—are predicated upon the assumption that my life is truly and authentically mine to live, not something counterfeit or staged. I am the author that gives meaning to my reality. I am, so to speak, the star of the show. In Peter Weir’s film about the ultimate “reality” TV show The Truman Show (1998), the ever ominous “what is real” question begs the assumption that the lives we live are really ours. It is an important text to consider with respect to those other difficult questions we all seem to either explore or avoid: Who am I? Why am I here? What’s it all about? Am I living in a counterfeit world where my choices ultimately bear no significance? If so, is a meaningful life even possible?
These are crucial questions that pertain to humanity, ones that The Truman Show seeks not necessarily to answer directly but rather explore through speculation, inquiry and character/plot subtext. They are also questions that lead us to consider how Truman’s awakening into “the real” is a type of our own awakening, and why opting for reality over appearance is something worth striving for. The great difficulty of the film regards the term “reality”—1). What it means in context of Truman’s world, 2). Christof’s world, 3). The audience-within-the-film’s world, 4). The spectators who watch the film’s world, and 5). The overall statement Weir is making about reality in general. That is five different realities, each which carry delicate nuances about its semantically complex nature. Indeed, spectators are left to question like Truman does when he discovers the fabrication of his existence, “Was nothing real?” Well, what is real in The Truman Show? Who or what social forces construct his/our reality? Weir seems to intentionally leave open gaps in answers to these types of questions to involve spectators more in the process of constructing the film’s textual meaning. He also seems to posit a “real world” of some sort beyond Truman’s manufactured one, but is unclear as to what that “real” one is and why Truman/spectators should want it. The ambiguous challenge of the film therefore inevitably forces us to dive into the precarious realm of metaphysics—the realm where we ponder what reality is like. It is in this realm where Weir asks us to become metaphysicians in order to explore what this nebulous term “reality” even means.
One film theoretician whose ideas can help dissect the subtle nuances of how reality is played with in The Truman Show is Nick Browne. To provide a brief caveat on Browne’s theories, it is pertinent to understand that he explores the ways in which film form (camera angle, mis-en-scene, dialogue, etc.) relates to film content (theme, moral order, etc.). He views the director as a narrator who invites the spectator into the text to partake of a certain relationship not only between the characters and their beliefs, but also the director and his beliefs. According to Browne, certain narrators have been known to override the traditional meaning of filmic codes (e.g. IMR) by using formal methods to make a statement about the film’s moral order. In what he calls “the power of the gaze,” the narrator demonstrates that the person who holds the most powerful point-of-view—or gaze—over another character, according to the traditional codes is, in fact, wrong in his/her judgment. Browne therefore emphasizes the narrator’s role as using the conventional language of film “against itself” in order to make a provocative statement about the film’s content (13).
Peter Weir plays the role of what Browne calls the “narrator-in-the-text,” one who has invited us to ascertain the “moral order” of the film. The moral order of The Truman Show pertains to the five aforementioned levels of reality and how spectators are to interpret them. Using Browne’s updated version of formalism, the essay will argue how “Weir” steps into the text using dialogue and camera angle to present the great moral order of the film—the issue of what it means to see reality truly. Aspects of Browne’s “power of the gaze” will be useful to bolster the fact that although spectators identify with Truman throughout the film, their identification with him cannot help but be predominantly filtered through Christof’s all-powerful, watch-tower gaze; a perspective that Weir-as-narrator-in-the-text is ultimately going to argue, using neo-formalism (e.g. specifically camera angle), as being wrong in judgment. In particular, the essay will provide concrete examples from the film of how Weir uses shifting camera perspectives of how spectators view Truman, whether through Christof’s autocratic gaze (what I will argue as the “despotic perspective”) or through the omniscient perspective that frees Truman from Christof’s “intricate network of hidden cameras” (TS). The shifting camera perspectives will create what Browne labels “the plural subject”—the notion that forces/leads/or guides spectators not only to identify with certain characters, but also “to be at two places at once, where the camera is and ‘with’ the depicted person” (127).
As applied and will be argued in this paper, the filmic spectator is the “plural subject” that is consistently sutured or locked between the “despotic” and “omniscient” perspective when viewing Truman, thereby creating a “double structure of viewer/viewed” (127). These structures inevitably challenge spectators to wrestle with how reality is portrayed in The Truman Show and how the varying lenses of representation regarding “reality” carry certain implications under the despotic perspective, and likewise under the omniscient one. Understanding how “Weir” uses these ambiguous camera perspectives (i.e. structures) will help us further see how reality operates according to the film’s five aforementioned realities. They will also help clarify what Browne means when he says “such structures, which in shaping and presenting the action prompt a manner and indeed a path of reading, convey and are closely allied to the guiding moral commentary of the film” (131-132). Certainly The Truman Show is complex and ambivalent, one that demands a sensitive read. We will therefore begin with a brief plot synopsis of the film, move towards the evidence that shows how Browne’s neo-formalist theories of the “power of the gaze” and “plural subject” relate to Weir’s use of “despotic” and “omniscient” camera perspectives, and overall tie-in how these ideas pertain to the five levels of reality in the film.
The Truman Show depicts the life of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), the first child legally adopted by a corporation for the purposes of filming his entire life “recorded on an intricate network of hidden cameras, and broadcast live and unedited twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to an audience around the globe” (TS). Christof (Ed Harris), the show’s creator, lives in a reality governed by “television ratings” and media hype. He convinces Truman that he inhabits a benign and ordinary world, but little does he know that everything he does is monitored, controlled and manufactured under the totalitarian gaze of Christof. While the world he occupies is virtually counterfeit and full of actors—even his wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich)—Truman is unaware that his life is being used to entertain humanity in a non-stop reality program. Audiences within the film glue themselves anxiously to the screen wondering “How will it end?”—a slogan captured on buttons, T-shirts and posters purchased by fans of the show. Their reality revolves around watching Truman live out his happy clichéd existence in the idyllic hometown of Seahaven until gradually certain events cause him to question the perception of his alleged reality: camera lights fall from the sky, actors fail to follow their cues, backstage set dressings are exposed, etc.
These curious events begin to awaken Truman to the constructs that have sought to blind him his entire life. He realizes that something is wrong and goes to great lengths to break free from his contrived world that was invented by Christof and the scheming media. At the climactic end of the film, Truman reaches towards an open door that will lead him into another world, but is cautioned by his Creator not to leave for fear that he will “not like what [he] finds” (TS). In the end, Truman rejects his counterfeit heaven and chooses an authentic, although unknown and presumably difficult, life as substitute.
Using certain aspects from Browne’s theories, let us now consider how Weir-as-narrator-in-the-text carefully crafts the meaning of Truman’s, Christof’s, the audience-within-the-film, and the audience outside the film’s reality. The film opens with Christof talking directly to the camera in Brechtian style to the spectators in the theater. He admits that while Truman’s world “is in some respects counterfeit,” he assures us that “there’s nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards…It isn’t always Shakespeare but it’s genuine. It’s a life” (TS). Christof suggests here that while Truman has been duped to believe he is living a “real life” he has chosen for himself, the life he has given Truman is better than what he later calls the “sick real world”—the one outside Truman’s studio. Paradoxically, he claims that there is “nothing fake about Truman himself” yet in the same breath admits that the reality he occupies is counterfeit. For the Marxist critic, Christof’s philosophy might beg the question of how a person can be “authentic” or “real” if human identity is nothing more than a product of the economic environment he/she lives in. In fact, Marx’s statement that “man’s social existence determines his consciousness” seems to expose the very flaw of Christof’s viewpoint that Truman is somehow a true-man despite living a social sham.
Nevertheless, backstage interviews with Truman’s perky wife, Meryl, and best friend, Marlon, are then juxtaposed together that reinforce the paradoxical nature of Christof’s philosophy, “It’s all true, it’s all real. Nothing here is fake, nothing you see on this show is fake…it’s just merely controlled” (TS). Upon the closure of these lines, we immediately cut into Truman’s phony world where Christof’s pervasive surveillance equipment watches his every move. Using Browne’s “power of the gaze,” we can see how spectators are thus sutured into Christof’s powerful, Big Brother gaze over Truman. In fact, spectators cannot help but see Truman through Christof’s point-of-view throughout the majority of the film since the studio cameras record and reveal everything he does. However, even though we might be forced into Christof’s POV, it is debatable whether “Weir” is asking spectators to agree with his schemes as morally laudable.
For instance, given Christof’s demeanor of totalitarian spectatorship over Truman, the spectator watching The Truman Show the film might feel unsure if whether to trust his perspective; whether he/she is seeing truly through his perspective. After all, Christof’s reality is centered on the fabrication of Truman’s entire reality: his childhood, his job, even his marriage. He even goes as far to manufacture his fears, like his fear of water, which is used to keep Truman from escaping the studio of Seahaven, escaping from his false self. As Kimberly A. Blessing observes, “Everyone, including his adoring television viewing audience, is complicit in the lie…” (5-6). One possible meaning that we can extract here is that “Weir” is crafting Christof’s reality in a way that challenges the public’s perception of how the media operates. The media, like Christof, would have us live inside a fictitious world governed by commercial glamour that fuels their sales, ratings, product placement, etc. Just as the creators of Truman’s world commercialize his life with product placement ads, like when Meryl showcases the wonders of a new kitchen utensil to Truman but is really advertising it to the millions of viewers watching, so too is “Weir” making a satirical commentary on how the creators of media attempt to commercialize our lives by getting us to buy their products. The question becomes, then, whether a person who lies even for an allegedly noble cause can be trusted. How noble are Christof’s intentions anyway if he is deceiving Truman in order to receive higher television ratings? There seems to be no escape from Christof’s questionable morality or autocratic gaze, but it is here that “Weir” carefully steps into the text and shows us through camera angle and plot progression that Truman and spectators alike can escape from Christof’s duplicitous schemes.
No sooner when the camera light falls from the sky and Truman begins to sense something is wrong with his reality that “Weir” intermediately switches from Christof’s camera perspective (the “despotic perspective”) to the omniscient perspective when viewing Truman. The omniscient perspective is void of the studio camera’s edges that remind spectators they are sutured into Christof’s POV. Instead, the omniscient perspective is transcendent, clear and fledgling as it frees Truman and spectators from Christof’s gripping surveillance, but it also is transient. Just as it will take the entire film for Truman to realize the extent to which he is being deceived, it will also take the entire film for “Weir” to gradually overwhelm the despotic perspective with the omniscient one. As a result of these double-shifting, ambivalent camera POV’s, we can see by using what Browne calls the “plural subject” that “Weir” is asking us to be at two places at once: where the camera is and from whose perspective we’re seeing Truman from. The difficulty here is that although spectators are implicated into Truman’s life and naturally yearn to identify with him, it is imperative to remember that “the logic of the framing” and our identification with him has already been subjugated primarily through a liar’s eyes (Braudy & Cohen 127). Consequently, it becomes tricky to discern whether we’re ever actually identifying with the “real” Truman or just Christof’s deceitful version of him.
But of course, this is what the film is about. It is about asking us what it means to see with eyes truly, whether we’re all being duped inside Christof’s matrix so to speak, and whether it is possible to awaken from counterfeit reality to something truly authentic. The presentational structure of the film argues that although we identify with Truman through a liar’s eyes, we do not have to accept that POV as morally commendable, but can reject and feel liberated from it when viewing Truman omnisciently. Because of these presentational structures that Browne argues “convey a point of view” and are “fundamental to the exposition to the moral idea” of the film, Truman, like spectators, must achieve awareness of their constructed or controlled-by-another’s kind of existence, and choose to embrace a “reality” that is not manufactured by another individual or economic system (131-132). In several instances of the film, Truman tries to gain this awareness by escaping from Seahaven. He drives his car to the edge of the forest and sails through a massive typhoon but gets blocked at every turn. Christof, like the media, has trapped Truman inside his false reality and does not want him to leave. Truman even receives help from certain cast-members of the show who try to reveal the truth to him, whether flying over head with signs reading, “Truman, you’re on television,” or jumping out of present boxes screaming the same. Weir-as-narrator-in-the-text is “telling us,” as Ken Sanes argues, “that we too have to take a journey—of mind—and distance ourselves from this media landscape, if we want to secure our freedom” (Sanes).
The strategy of despotic/omniscient perspective in particular helps “Weir” establish these moral orders by focusing on the relationship between Truman and Christof, truth-seeker and pseudo-truth giver, for it seems as though he subverts the traditional IMR codes of who spectators are supposed to identify with. Again, despite seeing the majority of Truman’s life from the despotic perspective, the sparse use of the omniscient one is where “Weir” is actively engaged in the text and leading us to accept Truman’s final choice of rejecting his manufactured reality as indeed the correct choice. Weir uses the cinematographic apparatus to lead spectators to see the truth about Truman, to become more aware about their own susceptibility to “false realities” and in doing so uses the conventional language of the film as Browne would argue “against itself” by reversing the traditional meaning of form to make a statement about content. He shows through the despotic perspective that although Christof’s version of pampered reality for Truman might hold noble intentions—indeed, Christof is convinced he is actually helping Truman by sheltering him from the “sick real world”—he is in fact wrong in his judgment because reality, even if unknown or “sick,” must be preferred to some counterfeit version of it.
We might now argue what kind of reality “Weir” suggests Truman has chosen during the climactic ending when he ascends the stairwell to a door marked “exit.” In the following exchange of dialogue, Truman realizes for the first time that he is inadvertently the star of his own reality TV show:
CHRISTOF: Truman, you can speak. I can hear you.
TRUMAN: Who are you?
CHRISTOF: I am the Creator of a television show that gives hope, and joy and inspiration to millions.
TRUMAN: Then who am I?
CHRISTOF: You’re the star.
TRUMAN: Was nothing real?
CHRISTOF: You were real. That’s what made you so good to watch. Listen to me Truman, there’s no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you. The same lies. The same deceit. But in my world you have nothing to fear.
(TS).
Up until this point Christof has desperately tried to secure his world of smoke and mirrors for Truman, “sheltering” and giving him a “normal life” as he says on interviews. Christof is convinced that Truman will simply “accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented” despite him now standing before the exit that leads into “the sick real world” (TS). But when Truman surprises Christof and leaves behind the comforts of his invented reality to venture into the unknown, we might wonder what kind of reality Truman in fact traded his life for. Outside of Seahaven, “Weir” only allows us to speculate upon two types of realities: 1). Christof’s scheming media reality, and 2). The audience-within-the-film who watch “The Truman Show” reality. “Weir” shows us that the reality outside “The Truman Show” is full of passive spectators who watch the show in bars, homes, bathtubs and security guard stations; ones who are simply content to live out their lives glued to the television and have it dictated to them by society, media, advertising, culture, etc. The metaphor that “Weir” seems to craft with these realities is indeed a compelling one that satirically illustrates the attitude that we, as movie/TV-going crowds, have taken towards the media: to become absorbed by its hypnotic spells simply because it occupies our view.
Of course, The Truman Show the film is a form of media; one that tries to draw us in and shape our perceptions. It conveys, as film theoretician Daniel Dayan might argue, specific ideology/values that operate upon spectators without their awareness. Like Truman, the spectators both within and without of the film are trapped in a system that “inscribes” them to view the world presented in certain ideological ways (Braudy & Cohen 113-114). While Truman’s happy-go-lucky perception of reality is manufactured by a wily television producer, spectators are equally placed into a pseudo-reality effect where the film itself has been produced, selected and ordered in a certain way, and has invisible thematic operations working upon them to foster a given ideological position. That position, with respect to the film’s moral order, invites us to see through the media-fabricated illusions of pop-culture, to cultivate a skeptical attitude towards how it operates, and ultimately free ourselves from its flowery suggestions. Since we identify with Truman and forge an emotional connection with him, “Weir” ironically uses media manipulation to make us aware of and deliver us from the dangers of media manipulation. He is Browne’s active narrator-in-the-text who attempts to awaken us through Truman’s awakening, to distance ourselves from the media, think about its meaning and effect upon us, and use it to amplify our perceptions of it rather than it use us.
One of “Weir’s” intentions in making the film seems to incontrovertibly harp upon Malcolm X’s provocative remark about learning to think for one’s self:
“You’ll be surprised how fast, how easy it is for someone to steal your and my mind. You don’t think so? We never like to think in terms of being dumb enough to let someone put something over on us in a very deceitful and tricky way…One of the best ways to safeguard yourself from being deceived is always to form the habit of looking at things for yourself, listening to things for yourself, before you try to come to any judgment.”
(“At the Audubon”, 1964)
This statement in conjunction with the subtext of the film seems to answer at least in part the opening query, “Who am I?” In Marxist fashion, “Weir” shows us that human identity is, to a great extent, shaped by economic circumstances. And who is Truman? He is the man who thinks he has a good job, a nice house, a beautiful wife with the white picket fence, friendly neighbors, a best friend and a loving mother. But how can the authenticity of Truman’s identity be any of these things if he is ignorant of the truth that he is surrounded by actors, not to forget the star of his own reality TV show? Does Christof’s claim that Truman is “real” therefore even hold any veracity? It is difficult to believe. Truman’s character, much like our own, cannot hold truth or meaning if he/we are merely puppets on a stage play. In order for his/our life to be meaningful, he/we would have to exercise control over it, which gradually he does. “Weir” guides us to see that we are all like Truman, the amalgamation of certain social forces in which we either allow to think for us, or learn to awaken from their soporific spells and think for ourselves. Thinking for one’s self is the crux of human freedom, and it is only when Truman begins to think for himself and notice the peculiarities of his reality that he begins to take back his autonomy which was congenitally distorted.
The British philosopher Allan Watts augmented the freedom principle in his famous “God lecture” when saying that “man is only free to the extent that he knows who he is, and he only knows who he is to the extent that he knows where he wants to go” (Watts). Truman and spectators alike live in distorted realities where knowing where they want to get to is not always easy to see. For Truman, his desire to get to the island of Fuji might run parallel to the spectator’s desire to get to heaven, for both are thought to be blissful and exist beyond the confines of their accepted realities. But as Christof confesses in an interview, “He can leave at anytime. If it was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there is no way we could prevent him from leaving” (TS).
Indeed, nothing could stop us from divorcing ourselves from the symbiotic relationship we have with media companies, news organizations, media-politicians and those who seek to act upon us if we were “absolutely determined to discover the truth” of our own reality. The journey to semantically discern the truth of our reality is no doubt a lifelong process, one that requires just as much effort if not more than what Truman gave to discover his. Peter Weir’s commentary on reality shows us that, yes, the line between fiction and fact, fantasy and reality, entertainment and commercialism is greatly blurred in our day. However, we also have the ability to escape from those despotic powers that spin falsehoods and try to prevent us from reforming their systems. We must, therefore, as “Weir” demonstrates through camera angle, become omniscient in a sense—to gain awareness of how we have been misled from what is actually happening.
WORKS CITED
Blessing, Kimberly. MOVIES AND THE MEANING OF LIFE: PHILOSOPHER’S TAKE ON HOLLYWOOD. Chicago La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2005. 5-6.
Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. FILM THEORY AND CRITICISM, 6th EDITION. NY: Oxford University Press, 2004. 113-114, 127, 129, 131-132.
Browne, Nick and Swenson, Sharon. “The Spectator in the Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach” Study Guide from TMA COURSEWORK. UT: BYU Publications, 2009. 13.
Sanes, Ken. “The Meaning of the Truman Show.” Transparency, 2001. http://www.transparencynow.com/truman.htm
Watts, Allan. “Allan Watts is God for 10 Minutes.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1LzVN8nqg0
Weir, Peter. “The Truman Show” (TS). Paramount Pictures, 1998.
X, Malcolm. “At the Audubon” (1964)
