The Truman Show Comparison

The film, The Truman Show, follows the life of Truman Burbank, a man who has had his entire life fabricated, filmed and aired without his knowledge. Everyone in his life is an actor, and his entire world is encapsulated in a dome in Hollywood. He begins to realize that his life is not what it seems and he escapes by the sea, despite the creator of the show, Christof, creating a storm to stop him. While watching the film, it struck me how similar the situation was to We, but how different the protagonist was. In both, they are living in a society where everything is closely monitored, glass houses in the novel and constant filming in the film. As well, many of the characters are extremely similar, the creator of both societies, Christof and the benefactor, have the ultimate power. As well, there are love interest who wants to rebel against the society they’re apart of, Sylvia and I-330, and a love interest who is more supportive of the society, Meryl and O-90.
This parallel made me realize that The Truman Show was evil. Since the ‘utopias’ are based on ‘Soviet ideals’ in We and off the ‘American Dream’ in The Truman Show, which makes the utopia in the novel so much more alien. The ideals in We, based off communism, are so foreign to me, which made it easy for me to see how the flaws of the system could easily become a toxic problem and ruin the society. While watching The Truman Show, I did not even think that it could be a critique of western society, or the ‘American dream’ because of my ethnocentric view. This correlation caused me to come to the realization of how normalized I am to the flaws of capitalist society and how I perceive them as part of any normal and functioning way of