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The real lesson of The Truman Show
- m000 3y agoArchive link: https://archive.is/9g5kS https://archive.is/9g5kS
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tgv 3y agoIt's more of a "I have found another analogy" than "the real lesson", but the point stands.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe Jury Duty (2023) TV series is like a real life Truman show. If they really did what they said (Jury Service, but everyone, including the Judge and clerks is an actor except the main "star") then I feel really bad for him. The reveal episode is cringe. I just hope he is really an actor too.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y agoI thought it was handled about as best as it possibly could be, and he reacted fairly well. What really sold me was his podcast appearances afterwards, which I'd highly recommend checking out. It was definitely real.
- quickthrower2 3y agoHaving watched enough Derren Brown I wondered how and why he passed whatever tests and rounds were created to pick a contestant. Derren Brown goes to great lengths to pick great “suckers” for need of a better word. They picked a good one - I think he “acted” better than the actors in terms of facial expressions, reactions and general gravitas. They had to pick someone smart but not cynical/sceptical , not crazy in any way, with a personality, but will behave etc, and who had some leadership skills.
- ryanjshaw 3y agoSounds like The Joe Schmoe Show (2003).
- js2 3y agoJames Marsden interviewed about the show: > "I had many reservations, and the biggest one was the wild card of this one human being who's being dropped into this situation that is all fake and manufactured," Marsden says. "Is this even something that is ethically right to do, to play with someone's human experience over the course of three weeks of their life?" > From the beginning, Marsden told show creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (who also worked on The Office) that he didn't want to participate in a prank show. But they assured him that Jury Duty wouldn't be cruel or mean-spirited. Instead, Marsden says, the intention was to create a "hero's journey" for Gladden. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173271968/jury-duty-james-marsden-ronald-gladden https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173271968/jury-duty-james-ma...
- eska 3y agoI don’t see any new idea in this article. It’s more of a plot summary to begin with.
- cheekibreeki2 3y agoI don't see anything because it's paywalled.
- andai 3y agohttps://archive.ph/9g5kS https://archive.ph/9g5kS Works every time!
- bitwize 3y agoOne of my favorite games is Space Channel 5. On the surface it seems rather cutesy, inspired by 1960s space-age aesthetics like from The Jetsons and Barbarella. But narratively it's considerably darker. See, (spoiler warning) it turns out that the orchestrator of the alien invasion main character Ulala is documenting is the head of her own network, who staged the invasion in order to boost ratings for his network. It was actually a biting commentary on popular Japanese television of the period, as well as news and media in general; the turn of the millennium is when shows like Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (which famously locked a man naked in an apartment and forced him to acquire everything he needed including food and clothing as prizes in magazine sweepstakes, ultimately awarding him nothing for his trials) were on the air, and incredibly popular. So the future of The Truman Show was playing out in Japan, in real time, at right around the same time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WeylandYutani 3y agoI don't really pay attention to social media much but apparently there are families in my country that put their entire lives on YouTube and have a million subscribers. No idea why anyone would watch that but I'm sure I'm the weirdo.
- ksey3 3y agoOur abilities to pay attention are limited. Not so our abilities to receive it - Michael Goldharber The Attention Economy accidentally came into being taking advantage of the inequality above without anyone knowing about the inequality itself. People have a need for attention. Advertisers have a need for attention for their products. The platforms had a need for cash to keep all their freebies running (search, chat, video, social, email, streaming etc) and make sense/filter down exploding Information the internet produced. These 3 needs accidentally came together, with no one having any clue about Goldharbers inequality and we get the absurdity that currently exists. The original problem being solved - how to handle the info explosion was forgotten. Everyone got side tracked into how to capture attention. And then they got rich. The question today is knowing much more abt the inequality and still facing the ever increasing Info overload problem, how do we build better less exploitative systems?
- xeonmc 3y agoSo basically...attention is all you need?
- steveBK123 3y agoOne theory I've had re: inequality and peoples feelings towards it now vs 10/20/30 years ago (its been fairly stable since 1992 in 40-41 range) is that its a social media phenomenon. Previously, I didn't know any of my friends (or their friends) flew private jets or stayed in $1000/night resorts regularly. Someone in town might have a nicer house or nicer car, but I didn't see them (or their kids) flaunting or humblebragging on social media about where they did spend their money. Unironically it's probably much worse with kids because they don't have the social mores & filter to understand what they shouldn't be posting. There's a lot of "stealth wealth" that has lost it's stealth out there due to this.
- hi41 3y agoI was really moved by this movie. Based on his previous movies, I didn’t think of Jim Carrey as a good actor. But this movie changed that. Everyone watching this movie will relate to the movie’s plot as it speaks to the existential questions that arise in every human. We can imagine the reality tv boss as God. Our own experience of thrownness feels like God is playing with us just as the reality tv boss is playing with Truman. In the ending sequence, I wept when the tiny boat reaches the end of horizon and hits the blue sky wall. The utter devastation Truman experiences when he realizes he has been played all his life. I was deeply impacted by this movie.
- canadianfella 3y agothrownness?
- asimovfan 3y agoHeidegger's term i think, based on the english translation of "being and time" (Sein und Zeit), our state of having found ourselves like this.
- hi41 3y agoIt’s as if you wake one day and suddenly find yourself in the midst of things without anyone asking you whether you actually wanted it. You don’t choose your epoch, parents or the nation or the religion you are into. You find yourself “thrown”. I meant it like that.
- jansan 3y agoBefore watching the Truman Show I actively avoided Jim Carrey movies because I really disliked his over the top acting. Just like in your case, this movie completely changed my view of Jim Carrey, even the performances in previous movies that I had disliked so much. I may even call this my favorite movie of all time. Btw, Jim Carrey has never won an Academy Award, and neither has The Truman Show, which is quite a shame.
- xyzzy123 3y ago
- acqq 3y agoThe texts like this say sometimes more about the author than the object of the text: IMO the author completely missed the deeper levels about the individual living soaked in lies, but recognizing them and, in his case, literally sailing "to the end of the world" to escape. The author wrote from the spectator perspective, not from the person's escaping.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggm 3y agoI always wondered how much the 1959 PKD book "Time Out Of Joint" about the man living in a fantasy world winning prizes which turn out to be intuitive defences in a space war influenced this story. So much Philp K Dick has turned up in movies.
- passwordoops 3y agoThanks for the reference! Sounds like it may be the influence for a couple of other classics too (Ender's Game comes to mind). I am shamefully behind on the PKD library...
- acumenical 3y ago> But Truman is not the story’s true everyman. The people who watch The Truman Show are. I'm by no means a movie buff but I thought this was kind of obvious.
- justdep 3y agoTo move around the paywall https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fculture%2Farchive%2F2023%2F06%2Fthe-truman-show-25-years-later%2F674456%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2F...
- temptemptemp111 3y ago[dead]
- mav88 3y ago>And then there’s the audience: massive, constant, mistaking exploitation for fandom. As Truman struggles to escape—the island, the show, and the life that has been imposed on him—he commandeers a boat. The producers create a storm. He falls off the vessel, struggling in the water, gasping for breath. He could die, before their eyes. The audience at the Truman Bar is rapt. “I got two to one he doesn’t make it,” someone shouts. “Hey, I want a piece of that!” yells another. The exchange is 25 years old. It hasn’t aged a bit. This comment completely ignores the ending where is clear that EVERYBODY watching him is happy, nay, ecstatic, that he escaped. It's part of the reason why the ending is so uplifting. It turns out that his fandom across the globe with their How Does It End? t-shirts really were rooting for him all along, just like us in the audience.
- bart_spoon 3y agoYou can be rooting for him but ultimately indulging in his exploitation all the same. Yeah, people want the happy ending, but they will be fine with a tragic one, so long as they are entertained.
- probably_wrong 3y agoI see it differently: while I agree that the audience is on Truman's side, they only care about him as much as they would care about (say) whether Ross and Rachel end up together. I take the final shot (two guys looking at the now-dead channel and saying "I wonder what else is on") as a sign that the audience will go back to their lives without even questioning what they just saw, with Truman being just another sacrifice in the altar of the TV gods.
- Pamar 3y agoRoss and Rachel get together?! Thanks for totally spoiling it for me :(...
- schwartzworld 3y agoJeez, wait til you find out who Darth Vader is related to
- reportgunner 3y agoI feel the need to mention Dark City (1998)[0] here. It's like a noir sci fi truman show. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/
- helf 3y ago+++ Always upvote Dark City mentioning :)
- anthk 3y agoI was about to say that. I love the German expresionist aesthetics from that film.
- lordfrito 3y agoI second the recommendation on Dark City. When I first saw The Matrix I said to myself, they stole all the ideas in this film from Dark City.
- AlbertoGP 3y agoI watched Dark City years after watching The Matrix (on opening in the cinema) and I enjoyed it very much, have watched it multiple times over the years. Here is Dark City’s director Alex Proyas: “Alex Proyas on: The Matrix copying Dark City” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxjsetVIRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxjsetVIRM And this is a juxtaposition of some scenes with background music: “The Matrix vs. Dark City.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW17YHl6B8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW17YHl6B8 This is Mr. Hand [Richard O’Brien] talking in ”Memories of Shell Beach”: > It was a very groovy movie, you see? > I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it really doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s a box-office success because we’re going to get paid as actors anyway, sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we’re gonna get paid as actors anyway and isn’t it nice to be part of something which is groovy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrK4U6PEu94&t=1029s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrK4U6PEu94&t=1029s
- lordfrito 3y ago
- dale_glass 3y agoI found the religious themes interesting. There's the famous Problem of Evil in religion. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?" I've actually used the movie when arguing about religion, because it makes for an interesting parallel. Christof plays the role of a mostly benevolent, power limited God. And he does his best (of course not perfect) attempt to give Truman a good life. And Truman at the start seems quite happy and positive, until things start falling apart because Christof isn't powerful enough to keep up the illusion. It's very interesting to me that people give the Christian god a pass for doing a worse job than Christof does in the movie.
- SnowHill9902 3y agoThe answer is that good and evil are just human perspectives. His plan is beyond our understanding and is neither good nor evil.
- anthk 3y agoThat's how Lovecraft started. And before, Nietzche/Shopenhauer. More than "god", it's the absurd of the universe, and existential terror. There's no God, and we are like ants for the vast and huge universe. We should grow up from Gods beings created from the Neolithic (the Abrahamics religions are just metaphors on cults around Sun and grain harvesting), and to create something else akin to modern urban cities and not old villages around the primary sector for economics. For instance, transhumanism. No, we don't need to create a religion, but set a good chunk of facts and laws to govern ourselves. The American and French revolutions were a good step on that against the Old Regime around the mentioned Neolithic.
- dale_glass 3y agoYes, that's a common answer. One issue is that it lets go of benevolence. Which works but raises the question of why we'd want to worship such an entity, and what does morality even mean anymore if it's supposedly based on an entity whose reasoning is inscrutable. There's also that power removes excuses. Eg, Christof resorts to methods like "killing" Truman's father because it's all he can do to maintain the illusion. But if Christof had a whole planet to work with that'd instantly stop being a morally grey thing and just be plain evil. An actual god effectively has no excuses, because there are no limits forcing any kind of compromise.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- pmoriarty 3y agoAnyone who liked The Truman Show should watch Abre Los Ojos (aka "Open Your Eyes), and which was later remade in to the inferior Vanilla Sky*.
- diego_moita 3y agoI feel uncomfortable when people like this movie, as if someone discovered my secret pleasure. When this movie premiered it felt like an epiphany, a revelation, but almost everyone I knew hated it. Jim Carrey fans didn't like because it wasn't slapstick enough. High brown movies fans didn't like because it had Jim Carrey on it. But it became one of my dearest "cult" movies. There is so much on it: mass manipulation, lies, religion, politics, the whole stupidity of reality TV, the fake happiness of consumerism, the lack of any authenticity in mass media, ... I hope it doesn't become like Monty Python's "The Holly Grail": a brilliant movie that gets reduced to a collection of quotations and clichés.
- teknico 3y ago> “The Holly Grail” Many possibilities, but none of them is a Monty Python movie. ;-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_(disambiguation) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_(disambiguation)
- NaN1352 3y agoAwakening from delusion is appparently not worth it … Jed McKenna’s interpretation of the movie : https://youtu.be/4V1E91GHCF8 https://youtu.be/4V1E91GHCF8
- Cerpicio 3y agoAlong the lines of "comedians doing well in dramatic roles in good movies" I have to throw in 2006's "Stranger Than Fiction" with Will Ferrell.