"The Truman Show" - The Shaping of a True Man’s Reality

Dear Reader, before you dive into this essay, I strongly advise you to watch the movie. This is an in-depth analysis - being familiar with the plot and storyline will only make this reading all the more enriching. But it's your free will, after all.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

    you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

    you are familiar with all my ways.

-Psalm 139

When Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) goes for a walk along the sea to ponder the mundanity and grayish hues of his life, the authenticity of the scene, brought about by the genuineness of his thoughts and actions, is disrupted by the interference of a stream of rain falling exclusively on him. It does not take much time for this glitch to be fixed by those who are responsible for it; however, it is long enough for Truman to realize something in his life is happening that has not happened before. Thrilled by his discovery, he screams with joy and proceeds to play a game of cat-and-mouse with the stream, thus unwittingly revealing the ending of The Truman Show. 

Truman under the spotlight-rain, a true adventurer's discovery.

“The Truman Show” (the show within the movie The Truman Show) is a 24-hour, world-broadcast reality TV created by Christof (Ed Harris) - a self-proclaimed demiurge, living by the dogmatic notion that people accept only “the reality with which they are presented.” The show’s transmission has begun with the conception of Truman in his biological mother’s womb, through his little baby body being placed in the hands of two actors who are from then on to become his ‘real’ mom (Holland Taylor) and dad (Brian Delate), to its current 10 909th day of streaming, where we find Truman in his early thirties, working at an insurance company, happily (so it seems) married to Meryl (Laura Linney), and occasionally grabbing a beer with his best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich). How do we know this? There are thousands of cameras placed everywhere to ensure that every angle of Truman’s life is captured, observed, and open to commentary.

The movie The Truman Show follows Truman’s journey from his ignorance of the false world he lives in to his self-actualization as a free man. What is interesting is that these two forms of narrative (motion picture and television) both show us this journey. The only difference is that the movie, unlike the TV show, opens up a window to another view- the behind-the-curtains mode of each actor, where we get to see that they, too, like Christof, blur the lines between facts and fiction. Meryl claims that “there is no difference between private and public life,” and Marlon goes to an even bigger extreme: "It's all true. It's all real. Nothing here is fake. Nothing you see on this show is fake. It's merely controlled."

What the movie also shows us is Truman’s fan base around the globe (they are looking at Truman through their TVs, we are looking at them through ours), and the control room, filled with diligently working bright minds, albeit with rather questionable morals. That is because the movie’s goal (one of them, at least) is to see Truman free. The TV show, though being broadcast 24/7, presents to the viewer a puzzle already put together. The movie shows us that the puzzle has been put together wrong. And because it is natural to want to make things right, and because we cannot unlearn the truth once we have seen it, of course, we also wish for Truman to escape. We should want that, else what does that have to say about our own lives? 

Naturally, the viewer in the real world (that is, the world you are sitting in right now, reading this) is inclined to judge those who support the captivity of man in an idyllic-looking prison, and they would be right to do so. But because the experience of watching the movie is not unlike the experience of watching the TV show, it turns out that, paradoxically, all viewers, no matter them being supportive of this project or not, are acting in violation of every man’s right of privacy and free will. I, the watcher of the movie, am not only the judge of the voyeuristic inclinations of Christof and all the other watchers of the show, I become part of a second, deeper layer of voyeurism. I watch the watchers watching Truman. It is a great experiment, indeed, but there are many questions that linger, none of them being answered by the movie, because the movie is simply a mirror; we should be asking ourselves what it is about it that keeps us watching.

Many critics of The Truman Show turn to the concept of the panopticon to try to figure out not only the premises of the show, but also how such an intricately woven machinery of surveillance and control acts upon the individual, on their understanding of the world around them, and, more importantly, on their understanding of themselves. 

The panopticon (from Greek - “all seeing”) originated as a concept by Jeremy Bentham, an English social theorist and philosopher from the 18th century. Bentham designed the perfect prison, one that allows for constant supervision of its inmates, thus resulting in the inmates’ constant awareness that they are being watched. The revolutionary element of his design is that it allows the guards to see everyone, while the prisoners cannot see whether they are being watched or not. The prisoners, then, consciously or not, internalize the ever-present figure of the surveillant and begin to self-regulate their behavior. They do not know when and if they are being watched; therefore, they learn that they have to always be on their best behavior. They adapt to being constantly watched. 

The "all-seeing" architecture of the panopticon

One could describe the panopticon as the prototype of “Big Brother,” though the advance it took in terms of applicability is rather striking. The panopticon was created with the idea to enhance, refine, and economize the workings of the disciplinary institution. With the advance of technology and the entertainment industry, people from all over the world, with all types of backgrounds, choose voluntarily to be locked up in a house alongside a bunch of strangers, to be filmed everywhere and at all times, and to be shown to their families, friends, and millions of other total strangers. Of course, most, if not all, of them are doing it for fame and money. Today, there is no need to audition for a popular reality TV show; the panopticon has entered social media, unlike any other hidden camera could. But the paradox is that it does not demand to survey us; we ourselves demand to be watched. 

The prisoners do not know when and if they are being watched; they must always act as if they are.

In The Truman Show, the panopticon is certainly present. Interestingly, it not only puts the prisoner (who realizes he is one much later than the others) under the spotlight, but it also sheds light on all the ‘guards’ around him as well. The act of self-imposed regulation does not exist in any of Truman’s words and actions - he does not know he is being watched. But it is definitely evident in the calculated choices of the actors playing his wife, mother, best friend, co-workers, neighbors, etc. 

For example, when Truman sees his father on his way to work years after he had drowned in the sea, naturally, he goes to talk to his mother about it. Of course, she, being an actress playing his mother, who has to make sure he stays oblivious to the truth, comes up with some lousy, yet plausible, explanation: “It doesn’t sound insane at all, Truman. I see him 10 times a week in a hundred different faces.” What I find more important, however, in the context of the panopticon, is the interior of the room. 

A wider shot reveals the dynamics of Truman and his mother's relationship.

At the beginning of the scene in his mother’s house, we see a close shot going back and forth between the two to capture their respective emotional states. If you look closely, you will see that the close-ups are taken by the TV camera, with special emphasis added through the dark vignette angles. But when Truman gets up, we are now getting a wider shot captured by the movie camera, which, as we already established, shows us things Truman is unaware of.  His ‘mother,’ however, is not.

The diagonal composition of the shot directs the gaze towards Truman's mother's portrait.

Like all of the other actors in the show, Truman’s mother knows the exact spots where the hidden cameras are, i.e., she knows from where she is being watched. And even though she may be following a very clear path in terms of what she is supposed to say and do, she is also a person, playing in a TV show, which makes her rich and famous. If you look closely at the arrangement of the shot, you would notice that there is a very clear direction as to where the viewer’s gaze is intended. There is an invisible diagonal line starting from the lower left corner, moving past Truman’s mother, Truman himself, and then landing on a portrait with her face on it. In this particular shot, I do not see Truman as the main character; it is his mother who takes up most of the space, even if it is with a painting of herself. But it still shows a lot about how she wants to be perceived by those who watch her. We like it when celebrities post pictures of themselves on social media, don’t we? She may be doing the same to draw attention to herself. Even if the main focus is supposed to be her son, just the fact that she knows she is being watched prompts her to make the best out of her screen time. And I would not argue that that makes her an inherently bad person - we have seen thousands of people in reality TV shows doing their absolute best to stand out, too.

We can also take a look at Meryl. Meryl (whose real name is Hannah) is one of the most important characters when it comes to plot devices since her main role is to distract Truman from his true desires. Her first appearance on the show is not only so she becomes Truman’s love interest, but also to divert him from Lauren (Sylvia, played by Natascha McElhone), whom Truman actually falls in love with. Throughout their marriage, Meryl consistently reminds Truman of why he cannot and should not leave Seahaven, even for a while, which at some point becomes all he wants to do. She goes on and on, as if prompted by a lullaby learned by heart, about his fear of water, the mortgage and car payments they have, and her desire to have a baby with him. All of this while looking impeccable, since she is not only playing Truman’s wife, but she is also one of the show’s most valuable advertisement strategies. Her gestures resemble a Disney princess from the 50s, gentle and gracious while floating through space, never offering the camera an unflattering angle, because she does not seem to have one. Once again, she knows exactly where to look; she is probably more aware of the influence she has on the viewers because of the products that often end up being promoted by her. I even find her one moment of being authentic (panicked after Truman confronts her about the conspiracy around him, she runs into Marlon’s arms screaming: “How can anyone expect me to carry on under these conditions? It's unprofessional!”) somewhat melodramatic, too. I guess she ended up living by her own assertion - at some point, there really is no difference between private and public life. 

Meryl always looks impeccable, just like an advertising model.

Though I find these two examples particularly important to support the concept of the panopticon, one can find it prevalent even in the most miniature acting choices of the extras, or their lack thereof. Often, when Truman is about to trespass into an uncharted territory in terms of script - be it going to visit his wife in the hospital, drive away from town, slap a repairman’s butt, go buy tickets to Fiji, or do anything outside of his normal schedule, we can see that the extras are barely managing to catch up with him. Their reliance on Truman’s predictability and Truman’s actual unpredictability result in situations in which they simply do not know how to act ‘naturally.’ 

There is a flashback scene of Truman as a little boy on the beach with his father. He sees a big pile of rocks and, being the explorer he is, he goes to climb it. His father then runs to catch him, shouting that there is nothing to be seen. That is probably all that Truman remembers, after all, his attention was on the great beyond. What he missed was that all of the other people who were at the beach stood frozen, looking at him, waiting for a command to come through their headsets. It is only inevitable, then, that sooner or later, Truman was supposed to find out that something is off with the world he used to see as natural.  

When unpredictable situations occur, the extras surrounding Truman do not know how to act.

Finally, there is the question of the ultimate guard, Christof. The movie poses a very direct question, a Frankenstein-esque inquiry into the relationship between the creator and his creation. Of course, the Biblical allusions are also clear - Christof (Christ) as the God of his little universe, Truman (true man - Adam) as the one who escapes Seahaven (Paradise), and is left to his own devices. And it would be fair to say that, in one way, this movie shows the ridiculousness of certain religious beliefs. But only because the self-appointed god is not god at all. Christof claims that Truman can leave when he wishes, thinking that Truman will never do it, at least not when he does not know there is a world outside the one he has lived his whole life. Looking at it this way, yes, the idea of free will sounds bizarre. After all, what free will of Truman brought him to such a life, what kind of free will is responsible for the life he will carry outside Seahaven? 

Christof's character could wrongly be perceived to epitomize God - he turns out to be just as limited and prejudiced as any other human being.

The truth, however, is that Christof is no god, and unlike a real panopticon, unlike a real god, he cannot control and observe everything about his creation. I would even argue that he has no creation, at least not in the way he wants people (and Truman) to see it. The moment Truman steps outside the fake city, he enters a realm over which Christof has no power. The success of his show cannot be accounted for by any genius of his own, because it ultimately failed, which only frames Christof as the only one who does not know what the real world is all about. There is no genius per se, for the show maintained its existence solely on the unsubstantiated assumption that people will never question “the reality they are given.” But we all question our lives. We are so good at it that there is no other species like us.

Truman is the only ‘character’ in “The Truman Show” who acts outside the realm of the panopticon. The moment he finds out about all of the cameras, about all the lies he has been fed with, he too becomes a strategic player, though only for a bit, a winner even, for there is really nothing he could lose by trying to break away. 

The ending, I believe, could not have been better. Truman enters the dark corridor, leaving Christof unbelieving, and the whole world cheering. Interestingly, we do not see the reactions of the actors on the set. But what is more important is that we do not see what happens with Truman afterwards. We get a shot of Sylvia putting on her coat and running outside of her apartment, probably to go get him. But the movie’s last glimpse of Truman is explicit - we do not get to see what happens to him. It is not our business.

Our last glimpse of Truman before he leaves Seahaven

And I guess something positive we can all take away from such an extreme example of hyperfixation on one single person is that everybody’s life is interesting. You just have to spend enough time in it. Still, let’s make sure they let us in first. 

If you would like to read more about The Truman Show, here are some sources that I found very helpful. 

Douglas, James Robert. “Live Transmission: REVISITING THE TRUMAN SHOW IN A PANOPTIC WORLD.” Screen Education, no. 92, Dec. 2018, pp. 62–69. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f92fe7b5-0613-31c1-8c12-2022a0732f0b.

Foucault, Michel. "Panopticism." Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995, pp. 195-228.

Galagher, Nola. “THE POWER OF THE IMAGE: THE TRUMAN SHOW (Film).” Australian Screen Education, no. 34, Mar. 2004, pp. 111–13. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=61734736-fecc-3645-b907-92e038578a55.

Internalized Authority and the Prison of the Mind: Bentham and Foucault’s Panopticon. www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/13things/7121.html.

Knox, Simone. “Reading The Truman Show Inside Out.” Film Criticism, vol. 35, no. 1, Sept. 2010, pp. 1–23. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=11bdd7e0-1c8b-309e-901b-c9cd2ea49977.

MakeBetterMedia. “The Truman Show: A Cleverly Disguised Tragedy.” YouTube, 25 June 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAX9qWiJxvU.

McGregor, Peter. “The Truman Show as a Study of ‘The Society of the Spectacle.’” Australian Screen Education, no. 32, June 2003, pp. 112–15. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=13dc9621-8ca5-3598-818b-f691d96f3347.

Images used:

Weir, Peter, director. The Truman Show. Paramount Pictures, 1998. (screenshots)

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