Exegesis 'The Truman Show'

Dylan Provost
Dr. Peter Neumann
GE4300
Dec 8th 2014
Take Home Exam
Section 1: Philosophical Movie Exegesis
The Truman Show: The Truman Show is a movie based out of California featuring actor Jim Carey based on a real life television show about Truman Burbank’s life. The place that Truman lives is in fact a studio with over five thousand cameras capturing every minute of Truman’s life. Truman believes he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea how he is exploited, but one day he realizes that a man named Christof (the creator) has been controlling his reality and life. The questions that came up while watching these movies were are we truly free? Do we as humans have free choice in choosing how we live our everyday life?
At the end of this film I was looking around my entire room for cameras just to be safe because I believed I was being controlled and watched as well. In order to answer the Truman Show’s first real philosophical point is how a person could be radically mistaken in his beliefs about this world. Now I am not saying that we are all on live television living in this alternate reality, but it appears Truman is an authentic man living in an inauthentic world. Determinism is the Philosophical position that for every event, including human action, there exists conditions that could cause no other event. An example of an event in the Truman show would be when Jim Carey leaves his house for the day and says in case I don’t see you good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight. Truman is not sure if he will see his neighbors for the remaining hours of the day Truman leaves this event to chance. Also every moment of Truman’s life is going to happen despite the choices of right and wrong because the answer has already been predestined before it was chosen. This theory then does imply that there is no uncaused event, since all actions are events and we are not free in a radical sense. That being said every event must have cause, so there has to be a purpose of the things that happen in our everyday lives. Therefore every human action is an event, which makes determinism possible and our lives are already predestined without us even knowing. This would be the same scenario in the Truman Show, where everything is already predestined. Some of the strengths in this argument are this world is governed by laws, given enough information about an object and relevant to other objects like the laws of nature. This also makes humans feel like they are a key component of the bigger picture than the world is. Another example would be how Christof makes in impossible for Truman to live the life he wanted without Truman even knowing. Even Truman’s best friend was an actor named Marlon who helped Truman make decisions based on Christofs script. Truman’s entire life is predetermined for the sake of ratings and the success of this 24/7 television show. Does this mean that this is Truman’s fault? It would be quite difficult for this scenario to be the fault of Truman because he was taken at such a young age. Not being Truman’s fault shows signs of individualism because Truman cannot be blamed for his actions living a predetermined life. It would be a different story if Truman did something to deserve this, but that remains to been seen when this film showed how early Truman has been on the set. Which brings back the original question, if we are truly free in this world and do we make our own decisions. Not if this life is already determined for us, it would be our lives but controlled by something else. Truman’s actions are unrehearsed and superficially take on the appearance of his free choice; the manipulation by the unseen environment makes them predetermined by Christof or the creator. It does not take a genius to figure out that Truman could be portrayed as Christ and Christof is the idea of God. Christof decides the direction of the show and in one particular scene; Truman has begun his escape for Fiji out on the water. A side note on Truman being afraid of the water is also predetermined because of the scene where Truman’s father is killed off the show, but actually isn’t killed in real life making this an event controlled by the cause. With that being said Christof brings a huge storm to stop the rebellion of Truman once he figures out that he actually is on a television show. At one point Christof requires bigger waves and no one wants Truman to die on this show because of them, but Christof then takes control of the scene and shows signs of being God or a creator. The bible talks about free will and how we choose daily with the choices we make. Mark chapter 1 talks about choice to either follow Christ or not to follow Him. This would mean God had not predestined us to follow Christ and does not mean that He will have everyone follow Christ on this earth. The word of God is something Christians follow daily and clearly states that we have free choice and always had this freedom on His earth. Truman discovers the truth about what is real as early as when the set lighting fell in the middle of the street before he went to work. Also another hint to Truman discovering his reality is false would be when he realized everything in his day is on a time loop, like the Volkswagen bug or the twins never signing the contract for Truman’s job. This is based off Plato’s analogy of the cave, which prisoners observe shadows on the wall of a cave, as they have done for all their lives and believe their shadows are real. One of the prisoners breaks free from his bonds and notices that the shadows are only mere imitations of the very reality they live in and are being caused by puppets behind him upon leaving. This goes very well with Truman’s final moments of this film where he is leaving and realizes that his reality has been controlled by puppets. Truman and the prisoner both accept the reality of the world with which they are in even though they discover this is not reality in the end. To conclude I would suggest as a Christian response to some of the problems with this film that have been discussed. We are free, free to make choices in our daily lives and free to be in relationship with Christ or not. Even though there might be a possibility we are all on television show controlled by someone else, we still wake up each morning with the freedom to follow Christ. Now with that being said this movie is not an excellent example of that very point due to Truman never becoming a Christian or talking to God. Christof says at one point in this movie that we accept the reality we are presented, which is true in our everyday lives because we accept what is in front of us even if we are somehow being controlled. This film is a critique of our media environment and the Truman show also demonstrates individual’s struggle to gain his true self. Finally there are a number of Christian symbols that were portrayed throughout the movie that are not technically philosophy worldviews, but do appear to be important to conclude with. It begins early on in the film where Truman sees a light in the middle of his street, which is a lot like when Sail sees the light on the road to Damascus. Also like it was said before Truman is like Jesus who can be seen twice in a crucifixion pose throughout the movie or how Truman is walking on water to end this film.
Section 2:
The Existence of God and the Problem of Evil To begin this segment we find ourselves looking at the story of Noah who had great faith in God. Noah was a believer whose faith led him to obey God’s word and the book of Hebrews explains how Noah was saved by faith. Our Christian foundation is build off faith and not what we see because it has always been a challenge to put into words just how real our relationship with God truly is. You see Noah had been warned of God, but even with fear still prepared the ark by faith and faith alone. This could be related to our everyday lives when we are listening to the radio about the Toronto traffic report telling us it is moving very well today, which is why you are able to leave you house a little later than the average day because you trust the professionals that do there job well. We believe the traffic report even though we do not have a clear visual of the traffic ourselves, which could also be related to believing there are rocks on the moon even though you and I both have never been to the moon to see these rocks ourselves. Although we cannot see God, we as Christians still believe He is real and he loves us enough to give us His only begotten Son. The same thing would occur when I ask Jacob what he would like as a beverage from Starbucks. What I mean by that is when he orders the peppermint mocha and receives it from the barista, his faith is in the barista that when he takes the first sip from that cup it will taste like the drink he ordered. There is a lid on the cup when he gets it from the barista and cannot see every single ingredient inside this cup, but is trusting that the maker of that drink is going to provide it for him. When it comes to anyone proving the disbelief or the existence of God there is only one full court press attack against it. The argument against evil begins with a paradox presented by an omnibenevolent, omnipotent deity allowing the existence of God. We as Christians believe that God is all-powerful, God is perfectly good, and evil does in fact exist. However the argument that atheists or any other belief proving the existence of God with unnecessary evil in the world, God does not exist, and if God exists there would be no evil in this world. Pojman believed that when the argument against God begins with God knowing the future, how could we be free to act because He already knew the future. The problem with this argument would be that God and evil are incompatible, but the problem is that no one has ever been able to identify these premises. Therefore, the problem of evil fails to prove any sort of inconsistency between God and evil. Generally, in today’s culture distinguishes two types of evil. Moral and Natural. Moral evil covers bad things for humans that are morally responsible. Natural evil stands for all events that nature does on its own accord. An example of this would be any extreme weather or natural diseases that brings suffering to any human or animal. Bad things happen everyday on this earth because of the sinful world we live in. This dates back to the fall in the book of Genesis and God could not remove evil without removing good at the same time. However God gave us free will and due to sin in this world He allows these things to happen. This is not because God does not exist or cares about his creations, but rather He loves us enough to walk with us in those times of suffering. Some of the questions that Jacob might ask after this conversation could be, what if this God I decide to worship my entire life turns out not to be real? Well would you not rather live a life in obedience and develop character that so many people of this world will never amount to instead of leaving this up to chance. I take this question back to the Starbucks analogy because this could be a lot like taking that first sip of the peppermint mocha and realizing it is a pumpkin spice latte. You ordered the peppermint mocha and would rather enjoy that first sip of refreshing peppermint delight instead of committing to the drink and realizing it was all for a disgusting pumpkin spice latte. You can spend your days like Richard Dawkins trying to disprove something that have truly hurt in on a deeper level or you can have these type of conversations about the amazing things and the lives that are being changed by God.
Section 3:
Postmodernism and Christian Ministry Postmodernism came after modernism which was a continuation of the Enlightenment.
The enlightenment attempted to value logic and reason over all else and put many doubts to ideas that relied on metaphysics such as God, existence, and the meaning of life. Postmodernism is frequently used to explain a contemporary culture and began from the death of Christ. Sire says, that postmodernism is not post anything; it is the last move of the modern, the result of the modern taking its own commitments seriously and seeing that they fail to stand the test. Postmodernism no story can have more credibility than any other even though all stories are equal by the communities that they live by. When we learn language we learn by the context, historically speaking. Postmodernity rejects the idea that either religion or reason is decided what is meaningful and wrong. The postmodern worldview is difficult to define, because to define it would violate the postmodernist’s premise that no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truth exists. The concern with Christianity in a postmodern worldview is that it centers around the reliance on ancient and traditional religious morals, nationalism, and capitalism. To the postmodernist, the Western world today is an outdated lifestyle disguised under impersonal and faceless bureaucracies. The postmodernist endlessly debates the modernist about the Western society today and may need to move beyond the primitiveness of traditional
thought. Modernism describes a movement in the arts, a set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements, originally arising from a wide-scale and far-reaching chafes to Western society the 19th and early 20th centuries. The term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who fell the traditional forms of architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life we becoming outdated in the new economy. Postmodernism and modernism appear to be different, but at the same time are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspectives. Morals and values of the Biblical standard are followed by traditional Christians today and may seem outdated, but still have a place in the church today. Morals and values differ between different individuals, but these standards respect the teachings of the bible, which most people are not taking the time to care or want to be a part of. Christian witnesses in our world today are demanding that we should be up to speed with postmodernism. Postmodernism ideas and motifs dominate the intellectual landscape that shape public opinion. Understanding postmodernism requires major changes in religion have some sense of the major changes of philosophy in the last hundred years. Postmodernism attempts to remove all the preconceptions and assumptions that we have, which is why there is no objective truth in postmodernism. It is very much based on the subject, as in the persona and their individual thoughts. Postmodernism is a philosophy that affirms no objective or absolute truth.
When dealing with truth in ministry or the reality of God, postmodernism’s viewpoint is exemplified saying it may be true for you, but not for me. This would be appropriate for a discussion regarding a favorite band, but makes things a little more difficult regarding matters or truth or the existence of God. Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism’s failed promise of using human reason alone to better mankind and make this world a better place to live because postmodernism seeks to correct things by eliminating the absolute truth and making everything relative to an individual’s beliefs and desires. The problem with this view starts with the rejection of absolute truth, which then leads to a loss of faith in a ministry point of view. Pluralism says no faith or religion can be objectively true and therefore no one can claim religion is true and another can be
false. To conclude students today are hungry for Jesus and the danger of postmodern Christianity is that we become focused on making God culturally relevant and we risk the making the gospel about our own experiences. When this happens the gospel becomes dangerously close to self-centeredness and based on an experience of God. The postmodern emphasis on experience should enhance our faith. Christians experience God in a number of different ways that shape lives, but our experience has never been the anchor of our faith and becomes dangerous. Our calling as followers of Christ may rest on our experience, but in terms of ministry we should be careful not to overemphasize the experience of church over how good the worship team or light productions come across. The Bible in a modernism’s worldview may be untrue and easy to convince others that it should be viewed as this and faith can only lead you so far in life. However when talking to a new believer or even someone who has followed Christ their entire life experience is everything. We are relational beings and every single person will experience the gospel differently, which is where communication of this unique experience comes into play. The biggest part of ministry should be communicating that each individual has been built like a snowflake, meaning that we are look similar and deal with the same life situations, but still remain unique. This is a key weapon when dealing with postmodernism in a modernism world for Christianity because it does not matter how many people are trying to prove God exists or not. You need to experience God for yourself through a spiritual encounter that cannot be proven by science or any other explanation
3095.