The Truman Show: The Nature Of Reality

Truman was an orphaned child who was adopted and raised from birth by a large corporation to star in a hit T.V. show entitled ‘The Truman Show.’ The entire show took place inside of an artificial city, and was orchestrated by the show’s producer, Christof. Every single person in the city, except for Truman, was an actor. Christof controlled every aspect of the show, from how the other actors interacted with Truman to the weather of the city. In order to keep this system contained and Truman’s life as realistic as possible, Truman was never alluded to the fact that his entire life up to this point was a T.V. show. Truman’s ignorant nature raises many questions about the nature of reality. Was Truman’s reality ever fully real? Was Truman perceiving
the truth? What role did Christof play in all of this? First of all, Truman’s world that he lived in, the artificial city of Seahaven Island, is arguably a staged version, a mere projection, of the outside world.
Any actor that worked on the show would believe that they are just that, actors acting out a life written out for them on a stage that isn’t real. However, Truman saw Seahaven island as the real world. Because Truman was never influenced much by outside dissenting opinions, he never learned that his world was fake, at least until the latter half of the movie. The fact that the actors’ and Truman’s views of reality clash so much brings up an interesting fact about the nature of reality. What one perceives as reality is only what they are able to see is their reality. That is, one does not consider there is more outside of the world we see because it is impossible to comprehend an existence that is outside what one has experienced so far. This is a difficult concept to grasp, and is better illustrated by Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” In it, prisoners are chained in a cave, never allowed to leave, in a way that they can only face one wall of the cave. Behind them is an elevated walkway, which a fire far behind the walkway. Characters walk in front of the fire, casting shapes and forms that dance in front of the prisoners. The prisoners see these distorted shapes as
reality, unable to comprehend the true reality of the walkers as they have never seen them before. Truman, controlled by the T.V. show cast, is only able to see the dancing shapes. The cast chains him down by never allowing him to leave, and physically stopping him from seeing any of the production crew of the show. The allegory of the cave is further extended by the concept of an ‘escaped prisoner.’ In the allegory, plato hypothesizes a scenario where a prisoner leaves the cave. The prisoner is amazed at the outside world and runs back to tell him prisoner friends. However, the freed prisoner is incomprehensible to his friends, and thus they ignore him and don’t believe his fantastic tales. People from outside Seahaven City, people who wish to free Truman, constantly break in and warn Truman directly. However, each time Truman is baffled by their shouts of “Your life is a T.V. show!” The cast sweeps all these incidents under the rug, and Truman moves on with his life. It is in this way that Truman’s view of reality is also greatly warped.
Following the fact that Truman never saw reality as it was, the cast members constantly had to warp his perception in order to deceive him like this. The cast did this in many ways, beyond merely acting out their parts and never acknowledging Truman’s true existence. Near the beginning of the movie, Truman begins to get some doubts about the world he lives in. While driving his car to work, Truman’s radio accidentally switches to a frequency that is broadcasting a man tracking Truman’s current location. Truman is perplexed by this, and very quickly realizes what he is hearing on the radio. However, the show’s producers soon realize that Truman is hearing this, and switches the frequency back to music. This means that most of what Truman sees is just smoke and mirrors. Although he truly believe what he is seeing is reality, his reality is warped by the constant efforts of the show’s producers, namely Christof. This is how perception plays into one’s sense of reality. One develop’s what they believe to be reality through their senses, which is further filtered into their perception of reality. Thusly, one’s reality is completely affected by their perception of the world around them. By constantly monitoring how Truman perceives the world around himself, the cast turns Truman’s sense of reality against him to control his reality and in turn make the show more
realistic. Lastly is how Christof plays into all of this. Christof is the main producer of the show, and thus can be seen as the orchestrator of all that happens to Truman. He calls all the shots and is in charge of the major creative directions of the story, such as who Truman falls in love with and what Truman does day to day. Although all the cast members are the ones that are directly tricking Truman, Christof can be seen as the main cause of this deception. Descartes, in his Meditations I and II, writes about a ‘Great Deceiver.’ This Great Deceiver is what Descartes believes to be a tiny devil or all powerful being that could possibly be feeding his mind constant lies. Like Descartes believes the Great Deceiver is warping the truth of any belief Descartes holds, Christof is feeding Truman constant lies about what reality is. Although Christof is hiding the true nature of the outside world from Truman, Christof himself believes that the Truman Show is a noble effort. Christof warned Truman that the outside world is cold, unforgiving, and much harsher than Seahaven Island. Christof begs Truman not to leave, as he sees himself as Truman’s father. By playing this role, Christof is a puppeteer of Truman’s perception and in the end his sense of reality. In conclusion, The Truman Show is a powerful portrayal of humanity’s frail sense of reality. Truman, raised from birth in a controlled environment, was enculturated into the Truman Show and had no concept of an outside world. This was achieved by the cast warping Truman’s perception through the environment around him and the people he interacted with. Through all this effort, Christof was able to masterfully craft a false reality within the world that society normally considers real. In the end, one conclusion can be drawn. Humans will never be able to know for certain they see the world as it is, as there always could be some Christof out there pulling the strings.