Since its premiere in 1998, it seems as if reality is becoming more and more like the plot of The Truman Show. We might therefore be inclined to see the film as timeless, or rather just consistently timely, as developments in reality television, social media, and live-streaming bring us exponentially closer to the world imagined by the film. Some have painted The Truman Show as some kind of prophecy — or perhaps an omen depending on the way you look at it — uncannily predicting the future reality of our entertainment culture, despite initially being seen as “the ultimate paranoid fantasy.” Who would want to watch the day-to-day existence of an ordinary individual doing ordinary things? Turns out, a lot of us would.
As Truman’s story is characterized by deceit, manipulation, and distress at the discovery of his manufactured reality, it is easy to pinpoint the real-world similarities to The Truman Show as being soaked in that same darkness. However, this current period of isolation brought on by a global pandemic recontextualizes some of these things prophesied by Truman’s story, and now we might consider changing some of our negative opinions.
Jim Carey is Truman Burbank, a wonderfully ordinary insurance salesman who, unbeknownst to him, is the central star of an immensely popular reality television show. Since birth, his life has been documented by 5,000 hidden cameras and broadcasted across the world to millions of fans, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Following a series of unusual incidents that make him suspect all is not as it seems, Truman eventually discovers the truth — that the world around him is pure artifice — and hatches a plan to flee his eerily idyllic home of Seahaven. After confronting Svengali showrunner Christof (Ed Harris), who attempts to convince Truman to stay in the artificial world that he is so familiar with, Truman sings his swan song of “good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight,” and bows out into the unknown of a new reality.
Even upon its initial release, audiences and critics were quick to draw parallels to contemporary popular culture. Roger Ebert’s review notes that the film’s themes links the rise of paparazzi and how the inner private lives of celebrities are transformed into consumable commodities, writing “If you think The Truman Show is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles.” As time passed since its premiere, the less impossible The Truman Show becomes.
The film is often viewed as having forecasted the huge boom of reality television that quickly followed its release. Television shows like Big Brother and Keeping Up With the Kardashians continue to be hugely popular, proving Christof’s belief that there is an immense audience demand for watching “reality” as entertainment. In accordance with Christof’s philosophy, viewers have grown “bored with watching actors give us phony emotions” and are “tired of pyrotechnics and special effects”.
The Truman Show even managed to predict particular trends within not just the reality television industry, but in the world of film and television as a whole, such as the oversaturation of product placement. Just like Truman, moments of shameless quasi-diegetic advertising remove us from the authenticity that the show is attempting to sell us, revealing its own artifice. This kind of cognitive dissonance is shown when Truman’s wife Meryl (Laura Linney) pauses in the middle of an intense argument to plug a new kind of instant hot chocolate drink, complete with the cliched final disclaimer “no artificial sweeteners!”
Over 20 years later, reality television continues to prevail, with newer incarnations such as Love Island and The Bachelor demonstrating an audience’s desires to watch “real” people do “real” things, like fight and fall in love.
Another way that popular culture has shifted since the release of The Truman Show came with the advent of the internet. The birth of social media and video sharing platforms like Instagram and YouTube can be likened to the plot of The Truman Show in that they allow people to fabricate their own perfect reality and perform it for the world to see. These developments have inspired much healthy debate and cynical discourse, similar to that had by characters in the movie.
The movie explores the opinions of cast-member-gone-rogue Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), who vehemently opposes the show’s manipulation of Truman and how his life is on display without his knowledge or permission. This parallels conversations around the ethics of young children having parent-run, highly public (and profitable) social media accounts, becoming commodified without their explicit consent or a discrete understanding of the repercussions.
What’s most disturbing about Truman’s story is that he was born into this life, indicating a complete and utter lack of consent on his behalf, just like the young children we see on Instagram who grow up in front of an audience. For children who were born into the life of an influencer, I wonder what will be the moment — the studio light falling from the sky — that wakes them up to the truth of their very public existence.
From here, The Truman Show’s legacy transcends being relevant only to media and entertainment, as an ever-growing surveillance culture consumes wider society. Where before it was considered a delusion to believe that you’re constantly being watched — so much so that they named a psychological disorder after the movie — we now live in a world where this has become a begrudgingly accepted reality.
From the installation of CCTV cameras on every street corner, to the Edward Snowden leaks that proved telephone records were being collected by the NSA, many people are forced to confront the idea that they are being watched just like Truman. The Truman Show appropriately conveys the enormous distress of making this kind of discovery, learning that your privacy has been entirely dissolved without your knowledge, and the memefication of an FBI agent watching you through your webcam shows our collective approach of “you have to laugh, or else you’ll cry.”
Up until now, many have concluded that life becoming more and more like The Truman Show can only be a bad thing. It’s not an unfair assessment to see the uncanny similarities between our lives and the movie as something tragic. The film’s darkest narrative moments have manifested in popular culture — from the dissolution of the divide between private and public, to the transformation of people’s real lives into consumable entertainment, and the constant bombardment of advertising in the form of product placement. Now, rewatching in the midst of a pandemic, it’s becoming easier to see even more The Truman Show-esque qualities emerging in our lives. But, maybe in this unprecedented context, it might not be such a bad thing after all.
Lockdown procedures have meant that there is a halt on the production and release of many fiction-based films (when, oh when, will we get to see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet), as most aspects of the conventional movie-making and movie-going experience are rendered largely impossible. In turn, creators are finding ways to produce their projects while adhering to social-distancing guidelines, which for the most part means an abundance of DIY and homemade productions, made and broadcast from the comfort of their own homes. Some television shows were forced to adapt to our drastically different environment mid-season, most notably the season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race saw the remaining queens lip sync for the crown in their tiny living rooms. 90 Day Fiancé even made a specific spin-off show that followed the couples as they self-quarantined. During the height of the pandemic, the media being made and consumed is more reality-based than ever, out of necessity rather than profitability.
The tools that allow us to continue making and consuming art — as well as being able to interact with the more intimate aspects of our lives that are now suddenly out of reach — are tools that were predicted by The Truman Show: namely, the livestream. Once again, the legacy of The Truman Show transcends pop culture and has now spilled over into our everyday existence, as the video call or livestream format is for many of us, the only way for us to continue to work, continue our education, or just spend time with our loved ones. Where before seeing inside the homes of others through a screen evoked a feeling of discomforting and sometimes unnecessary voyeurism, now that we physically can’t enter the homes of others, video live streaming has become the only way to enter other people’s private spaces.
We not only find a small joy in peering into celebrity’s natural habitats — the atrocity that is Gigi Hadid’s kitchen permanently burned into our memories — but we have discovered even more joy in being able to see what houseplants our professors have in their home offices, or what uncharacteristically loud wallpaper our therapists have as their backdrop. Even better, we might be able to see the familiar sight of our childhood home, or our best friend’s dining room table, or your partner’s bedsheets. Where we once detested the idea of something like The Truman Show becoming a reality, now it’s all we have, and we’re so grateful for it.
When Truman’s wife, out of character, tells us “for me there is no difference between a private and a public life,” we once may have shuddered at the thought. Then it became a shocking reality, one that we contested but ultimately had to accept. Although we still have little choice in how our private lives can be consumed by outsiders and are unable to freely give consent to this in some cases, now that our other freedoms are so limited our ability to share our private lives in this way is fundamental to how we live our lives.
In the age of isolation, the public encroaches on the private in a way that is wholly necessary in avoiding inevitable, crushing loneliness. Like Truman, we may not have had a choice at the start of this, but now we have the ability to use these progressions in reality entertainment, social media, and live streaming to our advantage.
Maybe the film’s relationship with our real lives can be oddly comforting to us as we transform the things it predicted into a force for good, as broadcasting your life from your bedroom has become fundamental in participating with the outside world. Post-COVID-19, it’s easier to see The Truman Show less as a paranoid omen of a dark future, but simply a blueprint for a new, ever-changing, and frankly very enjoyable form of screen media. It has transformed the way we create and consume entertainment, as well as having forecasted the very things that have allowed us to remain connected in a time that otherwise would have been devastatingly lonely.
We’ve come to accept — resentfully — that the distinction between public and private is largely dissolved, and we’ve learned that when done with our explicit consent, video live streaming can help nurture a new socially distant reality, enabling us to access our outer world even without going outside. Things are closer to the movie’s ending than the beginning, where, like Truman, we are all forced to confront the idea of a drastically different future, a new normal, and we must embrace the unknown with hope and glory.
Or maybe it’s just that we hope that we will discover that none of this is real, and that if we sail out to the edges we will find ourselves passing through that blue-sky exit into a better place.
