Remote Control
Free Will and The Truman Show
The Favourites
The Truman Show
Few films have been able to capture lightning in a bottle like Peter Wier’s The Truman Show. Many elements seemed to have come together in the perfect time and place, like a celluloid lunar eclipse. Themes predicting our constant monitoring and mass enjoyment of the mundane everyday. The sharp comedic and dramatic capabilities of a peak-form Jim Carrey. Utopian facades cover up a bitter underbelly. These and many other ideas captured the cultural zeitgeist on the brink of a new millennium, and still resonate deeply in a world that has changed in superficial ways but at its roots is still deeply troubled.
All of these themes come down to one core element: control. It is the control that Christof exerts over the world he’s created, down to the most minute details. It’s the control that Truman exerts over his life, both his perceived life and his true life. And the control we’re willing to give up, as seen in the characters of Meryl and Marlon. If everything around us is preordained, are we true ourselves? Or simply a reaction, an inevitability? Who is Truman if not for those around him? It may not be until the final frames of the film that we truly find out.
We see Truman living his everyday existence for the first hour of the film, aware of the premise but the filmmaker allows us this time to get to know him. From the outside he first appears to be the model citizen, a cornball Sunday morning comic strip come to life. He lives in a nice house, drives a nice car with a nice wife and a nice job. Everything around him is the repressive insistence of normality. It’s only in the quiet moments, the ones he thinks he is only sharing with himself, that we can see the light through the cracks of his grey existence.
Whether it be his wishes to travel away to a far-off foreign land, or his secret treasure trove of lost love, it’s Truman’s secrets that make him such a compelling figure to both the audiences within the film and outside of it. Secrets are an act of defiance in a life so constricted, a quiet defiance, one that Truman doesn’t even know that he is participating. He actually feels shame for these thoughts, as in the world that has been created for him he feels these secrets are a betrayal to everything he has been given. He has the white picket fence, yet he yearns for more and does not know why. These secrets prove that the will of Truman is stronger than the forces around him.
That’s what gives Truman the ability to not only discover the falseities of his world but the courage to rebel against it, even when he doesn’t know what he is rebelling against. He actually proves Christof right, but not in the way Christof had intended. Christof insists throughout the film that Truman is real which is what makes him so enjoyable to watch. But it’s not the mundane constructions that have brought the world to Truman, not his fake marriage and lying friends, but his secrets and his self-reflection. It’s in rebellion that Truman takes on the mantel of the “true man”, and it’s in this that Christof proves that it was never his intention to show the world reality. Christof wished to play God and tries to drown the world he created when his creation chooses free will.
The God complex that Chistof harbors is one of the more obvious themes of the film but that doesn’t make it any less compelling. I’d argue the world he has created as a God is very representative of Christof’s conservative mindset. He could’ve created any world, any utopia. In his mind, the perfect world is cookie-cutter 50s Americana. Even though this creates massive problems for him in regards to keeping Truman naive to the true world (explaining planes, making him afraid of water so he wishes not to travel), Christof’s ego made him believe that these issues were not as important as placing Truman in his idea of perfection. When Truman wishes beyond these ideals of middle America milieu, Christof does everything in his power to quell Truman’s desires. Christof wishes not to have a man but a figure, a clay figurine in his giant snowglobe.
Christof’s obsession with Truman is undoubtedly compounded by his significant lack of talent. He constantly insists that Truman is real, Truman is the show, and because of him creating the world around Truman he also carries a belief that he created Truman. But if we look at the world he has created, it is a desperate facsimile, a bland mirage. Christof is a hack. He forced Truman into a boring life, with a boring job, a dull wife, and an idiot best friend. When confronted with the reappearance of Truman’s father, Christof’s answer is to explain it with “amnesia”, the most cliche and uninspired choice a writer could make. Christof lacks the ability to create someone as complex as Truman, and it’s in his discovery of this that he feels betrayed, and is when Christof tries his hardest to end Truman’s freedom.
“We can’t let him die in front of a live audience!”
“He was born in front of a live audience.”
This line fully encompasses Christof’s idea of affection. He has his staff wearing shirts that say they are to “love him, protect him.” But this forces us to ask, protect Truman from what? The world he exists in is sterile and safe, the people who love him are liars and cheats. It’s a false God’s idea of love and protection, an artist protecting his craft, not a father protecting his child. It is not until near the end when Christof nearly drowns Truman, is he even capable of seeing him as a person. In their final scene, even here, Christof is unable to separate the character from the man, referring to real moments in Truman’s life as “episodes”. It’s in Christof’s own humanity that we see his failure as a creator.
This failure extends to and infects the cast of the show within the movie as well. The “roles” of Truman’s best friend and wife are both deeply disturbing in their execution. Both characters are heavily conflicted in their roles in the betraying of Truman, yet continue. They find comfort in this world, but only because they recognize its falsehoods. But even in this comfort, they must find coping mechanisms. This can be seen in Marlon’s alcoholism, as he is seen drinking in nearly every scene he is in. While this can be played off as simply being part of Christof’s nostalgia-filled fantasy, I believe it has developed and exists as more.
Meryl’s place within the show is even more complicated than Marlon’s, and she has all but lost her mind by the time we are introduced to her. Meryl is constantly disassociating from the world around her. She exists with a fake, plastic smile, too much lipstick, and cold eyes. The only time that Meryl seems alive before Truman’s breakdown is when she is pitching products, where she becomes a grotesque masquerade of all-American goodness. Meryl's separation from the world around her likely has much to do with Christof’s insistence on the couple conceiving a child. Meryl, an actress, is essentially forced into sex work by Christof in order to please his desire for the “story”. This traumatic life has taken its toll on Meryl, and when Truman begins to question his world she quickly unravels as well.
For all the harm and trauma that comes from the Truman Show, it is worth looking at the people who watch the show. Throughout the film, we are given brief vignettes into these people’s lives, from a bar that shows it 24/7, to a pair of security guards, to an elderly pair of women. Everything Christof puts Truman through is under the guise of doing it for these people, yet they are far more interested once Truman begins to question his reality. The bar goes from a somewhat busy place to exploding with people, the elderly women go from sleeping to riveted, the security guards eschew their job in order to watch. And, once Truman has chosen to leave, the audience goes as well. The final line of the film, as a security guard changes the channel, is “what else is on?” Nothing Christof did mattered, nothing about his world was engaging, and the only thing that kept people interested was the unpredictability of Truman.
In Christof’s final pleas to Truman, just before he leaves the bright, fraudulent world of Seahaven and enters the black void that is the real world, Christof comes close to an epiphany. Truman asks “was any of it real?” to which Christof responds “you were real.” This is Christof realizing what made his show work, what made his show compelling. It is the only time that Christof is able to see Truman as a real person, not simply a character in his fantasy. But Christof is unable to fully let go of Truman the character, reverting back to talking about him as such instead of embracing him as who he is. Had Christof accepted Truman’s decision to leave, and had explained the outside world to him truthfully, though Truman would have still chosen to leave, he would have done so with Christof’s blessing. He would have still been playing into Christof’s fantasy. But because Christof’s ego would never let go of Truman willingly, Truman is able to deny Christof in his final moments.
Christof was right. Truman was real, is real, but it’s this reality that clashes to the point of disaster with his surroundings. A false person can live easily in the real world, as Christof has shown, for he is a false person, a fraud masquerading as a master. A hack who is believed to be a genius. But a real person who is in a fake world is bound to break free, the distortions that are constantly on the edge of his world destined to bend and break. Christof states that we accept the world we are given, but this isn’t true. Real people question. Real people desire. Real people are free.