Philosophy on screen: film and visual media analysis

Doubt Leading to Knowledge in the Truman Show

In the film The Truman Show, actor Jim Carrey portrays a man living within a controlled environment where every action, every word, and everything he and others do, is recorded and beamed out to the world through a TV show. However, Carrey's character is the only one on the show who does not know his experiences take place within this controlled, confined environment. His lack of knowledge is the basis for the film's main conflict, where he begins to doubt that his surroundings are as natural as they seem. This reluctance to accept reality for what it seems to him gives Carrey's character, Truman Burbank, the initial strength and inspiration that eventually leads to a better understanding of who he is and what the world around him means.

The ability to question one's reality is important in life, just as it is in the film. Truman's questioning, though initially painful and hard to sustain, leads him to understand that his entire life has been a show, filmed since birth. At the beginning of his questioning, he began to look at small things in life like the timing of cars as they passed around him or the conversations that people had in his presence. Once he figured out that everything was choreographed, he began to play with this environment. This is akin to the moment when people realize they have a controllable presence in the world. Had Truman not questioned these things in his life, he would not have bee able to truly understand his place in the world and, ultimately have fun with these things until he breaks out of the environment's boundaries via sailboat. Truman set out to prove that his world was a fantastic creation, and in doing so, garnered the attention and admiration of his fans and the show's producers. Character Christof says, referring to Truman's capacity for questioning his own reality, "If his was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there's no way we could prevent him." (Weir, 1998). Christof is in charge of the entire show, and as Truman learns of the fantasy, he begins to push Christof further and further to help ascertain the limits of his own reality. Here is where Truman gains true knowledge, at the edges of his existence.

Philosophically speaking, Truman was unable to understand the world around him until he began to deconstruct it, one moment, and an interaction at a time. This is perhaps one of the ultimate American paranoiac fantasies and one that surfaces time and time again in modern film and stories (Zizek, 2002). This is perhaps due to the fact that many people feel their own life is a pseudo-reality were people and events are not always as thy seem. As people become more and more personally detached from one another through technology, this fantasy may indeed follow Americans within their psyche and everyday thoughts. Interestingly enough, the questioning of one's reality is the only remedy for such feelings of fantasy, and in the film, Truman's own questioning finally led him to the truth. This path was painful for him, as every step of the way his friends were unwilling to help him uncover the truth, lest the show be ruined.