The Truman Show - The Movie That Came True
Helloooo lovely readers of the Goddess Blog and welcome to another day and another post by your one and only Goddesss! For today, I will be sharing my thoughts on The Truman Show - one of my all time favorite movies that I watched yesterday, so if be sure to read my thoughts on the Truman Show - and as always, remember to get this Goddess some nice cups of coffee if you appreciate my blog! :*
As I was scrolling through the TV feed yesterday, I stumbled on FOX TV, as I usually do when I am bored. And I was in luck, as I happened to stumble on the opening of The Truman Show, a 1999 (or 1998?) movie with Jim Carrey that I have seen 10-15 years ago. I got myself some popcorn and I sat down to watch it again after all this years, knowing that it was immense fun and a damn good movie.
Now, for those of you who havent seen it, I strongly recommend to watch it because today's read will be filled with spoilers, and I would hate to ruin such a great movie.
The Truman Show is a film in which the main story revolves around Truman Banks, a seemingly ordinary guy who has the most extraordinary life - namely, his life is actually a television show, broadcasted to the public, 24 hours, without him knowing. It is a very peculiar concept as you might imagine, filled with philosophical conundrums and it makes for an exhilirating watching of the movie.
The movie used this concept as a bold forecast of how mass media and consumer culture will become a great player in our everyday lives. It is a very clever satire. Truman (a play on the words True Man) represents (or at least tries to represent) the average guy: he has a very vague job, he is set in a cliche environment - hell, he is even married to a beautiful blond girl.
However, as we come to see from the opening credits, his life is a lie. He is surrounded by actors who are there to surround him in his everyday life that is being televized as a reality TV show for 24 hours. The Director of the show, Christof (a play on the words Christ Off - as in discount Christ perhaps?) is the guy who is creating this facade in which Truman is esentially trapped for his whole life.
Eventually, some events begin to unfold that beg the question to Truman - is my reality real? He grows suspicious of his surroundings, and he quickly gathers that something around him is horribly wrong - even his wife, Maryl, the beautiful blond, is a part of the actors that surround him, and the conundrum here is that for Truman, all he yearns for is an honest relationship and an honest family - while Maryl is at the end of it all, a paid actor. This makes for some incredible scenes between the two filled with drama and some very clever writing from the directors.
The movie carefully shows us the Plato's Cave alegory in a modern society, and it is brilliant. What is not brilliant though unfortunately, is just how ahead of its time the movie really was.
While watching it, I could not help myself but wonder just how eerie the movie really is as we have become modern slaves to technology, mass media and the consumer generation. Hell, while watching it I figured out that we are all Trumans in our own worlds. The need for Instagram likes, the fake social media narratives that we live in and that we are a part of on a daily basis have created a new, distorted reality that can be very far fetched.
We are growing dependant on shows that show us shallow, hyper-consumeristic values that is really troublesome if you think about it. Shows like The Kardashians, The Bachelor, Big Brother, hell even the cooking shows like Hell's Kitchen are so carefully structured and so unbelieveably fake - yet we still watch them on a daily basis and we still devour all of that bullshit due to the entertainment values that they bring to the table.
Alas, Truman shows us that there is a way out of this facade - the end of the movie being one of the most beautiful movie endings I think I have ever seen.
But - the question that I am stuck with after finishing the movie was: Is there a way out of our Truman Show? Or did we miss it?
Unfortunately, my opinion is a grim one - I think that for us, there is no way out of our Truman Show.
Everything that we do, subconsciously we do in order to be liked and approved by the very same fake society and reality that surrounds us. More and more we see everyday people (Youtubers, Instagram influencers, Twitch streamers etc) that carefully craft an online persona and try to be the star of their own reality TV show - and what is ominous is that the REAL person that created that persona is locked away somewhere deep down there, probably never to be found again.
That realisation made me quite sad because it made me realize - we are all in our very own Truman Show. But we are not Truman. Not by a mile. We are not very True Man.
We are the phony actors of the show. We chose this by our own accord, we want to be the actors of our own reality TV endeavours, we imprison ourselves due to the constant brainwashing that the mass media and the consumer culture that surround us constantly in our everyday routine.
The movie has one of the most beautiful tracks written by Philip Glass, and I will be ending today's post with a link to a piece of music that is really beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-EHT3N5sOI&ab_channel=PhilipGlass-Topic
Hey and let's all agree - after that grim read that I wrote, we could all do with a beautiful piece of music in order to lighen us all up! 😄
That is it for today’s post guys! Hope you enjoyed the read!
Goddess loves you all, I will be back tomorrow with another post,
xxxx
