The Truman Show was the first movie that I had watched while I was in the US, just before I started my studies. It wasn’t my favourite film of all time, although I did like it.
In a way, this was one of many films in the late 90s to deal with the issue of an illusory world, and breaking out of that illusory world. There would be other films like “American Beauty”, “Fight Club” and “The Matrix”. Maybe this was a period when people looked forward to a futuristic dystopia where our minds would be controlled. It’s pretty astounding that some aspects of this prophecy has come to pass.
What has come to pass is that there is the simultaneous existence of several planes of reality, and there are different adherents to those different planes of reality, and each of them are accusing each other of having their heads up their asses.
The problematic aspect of these “illusory world” movies is that it is perfectly clear to the movie audience which is the real world, and which is the world of illusion from which the protagonist seeks to escape from, and that is not always true in the world outside the cinema.
I watched this video essay about the Truman show and it reminded me of what the gist of that movie was like. It was touching, although I wouldn’t have identified with every single aspect of that movie.
It’s really striking, firstly, that Truman had the same name as a former US president. Also striking that the first 4 letters of his name would be part of a future US president. Trump had yet to start his reality TV series. And for that matter, reality TV had yet to catch on. But what’s truly astounding about the “Truman Show” is that it anticipates the advent of reality TV. (Although the conceit was that a person could live his whole life in a reality TV show and not realise it).
And since I watched this movie around the time when I was moving to a western country, there was a poignant parallel with my situation. This movie followed a myth that was prevalent in a sort of hero’s journey. It was the quest for freedom, the quest for truth. And at the same time, it was also a quest to break his shackles from the society that he came from, that he was fighting for the right to start a new adventure for himself, and venture into the unknown. There was something pretty western about the notion that breaking away from something is some kind of a good.
Contrast that with, say “Crazy Rich Asians”, and the heroine moves in the opposite direction. In effect, she is a debutante, and her quest is to achieve acceptance and entry into a society. Where “Crazy Rich Asians” is an acceptance of fate, and trying to find a modus vivendi with a new life and a new society, “Truman Show” was about walking away from a cloistered existence, away from the only life he had known, maybe from the innocence of a small town to the world at large.
The difference between these two attitudes in life does illustrate some kind of divide between the east and the west. For the westerner, the ideal is for the individual to determine his own fate, and not be bogged down by society. The westerner believes in democracy, in which his place in society is fluid and is to be constantly negotiated. Society is something that’s going to hold you down, and it’s slightly sinister and is this big evil machine from which it’s imperative that you escape.
The individual is the innocent, inherently good. Otherwise he’s the guy who has to be saved: the one that you root for. Everybody else around him – who you thought his wife was, who you thought his best friend was – is a corrupt influence. Maybe Truman is flawed, but his instincts are in the right place, and it’s his adventure, so you root for him. Inasmuch as he’s been manipulated, he’s the victim who has been wronged. He’s friendly, and while he’s totally credulous and gullible at first, he’s starting to realise that he’s embedded within a web of deceit.
Because, in this moral universe, the truth is paramount, and the truth lies outside this corrupt universe. The values that make a man worthy lie in some wonderland outside of your corrupt little bubble. Outside this bubble is honesty, freedom, adventure, possibly true love. But the most important thing is to leave this bubble.
And the Asian will have a different attitude. Society is what it is, and you will achieve some kind of self-realisation by finding your place within the existing framework. Quite likely, you might have to make peace with other people around you. Ties with people are important: relationships are imperfect but worthy of preservation.
Sometimes I think about this mentality, and I wonder if this moral equation led Americans to entertain the fantasy that Trump was this wonderful new thing, this panacea who would magically make your life better? I wonder if it was this mental habit of thinking that something novel, something you’ve never seen before, will magically – so to speak – trump everything familiar that you’ve known before, that things in your life was so broken that it couldn’t be fixed, except by rejecting the old and the familiar?
Jim Carrey has this incredible duality. One one hand, he’s a total freak who can contort his rubber face into whatever you want it to be. And on the other hand, he could still project this all-American everyman quality. In the Truman Show, you somehow need both sides of the Jim Carrey to make his character work. Of course, the all-American Jimmy Stewart regular dude is the main part of who he is, but he also has to be whimsical enough for you to believe that he could be a TV star with a rapt TV audience.
All this is not to say that Truman wouldn’t have been better off living in the real world. Once he decided to get out of his fake world, that bridge was burned. He could no longer remained as he was. But that question is a little loaded. If you put a person in an untenable situation, then it’s a foregone conclusion for him to get out of it. But that’s because it also conforms to the western mentality of constant flux, that life is progression, that there are new experiences to be had, and new worlds to live in. It teaches you to dream and then to chase after that dream, to conquer and to achieve. And crucially, not to accept your status quo.
But when he reaches the edge of the world, something else becomes apparent. He is looking for / longing for escape, and most alarmingly, he’s giving up everything he’s ever known for something he knows nothing about, but which might be better. He’s dreaming of some El Dorado. Throwing away that bird in the hand for some bird in the bush. In fact that sounded a lot like what I was like while I was taking my first step into the unknown. When I was young. When I had nothing, and nothing to lose. But what is it, exactly? Well we never know, because that’s when the movie ends.
Music Composition 