26 Years Later, The Truman Show is Proven Real

there's a common cinematic Trope in which a hero discovers their reality is an illusion maintained by a shadowy Authority in the 70s zardas showed us a decadent Elite manipulating Primitives through a bizarre religious icon while Logan's Run portrayed Heroes escaping a hedonistic pleasure Dome masquerading as a Utopia we must be outside fast forward to the 9s when films like dark city the 13th floor and the Matrix depicted deceptions that went beyond lies featuring mechanisms that directly manipulated the senses to obscure access to reality in most of these Our Heroes insatiable thirst for truth exposes the deception and delivers them to Salvation or at least a higher state of awareness let's call this the cinema of demystification while all these films are compelling in their own way there's one that perhaps unexpectedly provides an entirely unique Insight on the genre The Truman Show oh and in case I don't see you good afternoon good evening and good night what's so intriguing here is that the artificial reality is the same as the medium through which the narrative is told audiovisual storytelling The Truman Show the reality show starring Truman Burbank and audio visual story is exposed as false Through The Truman Show the movie starring Jim Carrey also an audiovisual story and it's this narrative constellation that not only reveals how false realities can confound us but also how stories about revealing false realities can confound us that even Tales of exposing fabricated worlds May ultimately just present another layer of manufactured meaning let's Dive In The Truman Show follows Truman Burbank and insurance salesman who's oblivious that his entire life has been a meticulously staged reality show his friends family and co-workers are all actors and his idilic hometown sea Haven is an elaborate set enclosed within a giant state-of-the-art Dome when a love interest gets taken away for trying to reveal the truth about his life the seams of the illusion start to show and Truman begins to question his reality driven by a desire for love and truth Truman Ventures to the edge of the Dome where he finds the exit takes a bow and enters the real world the end so the world outside the Dome is real and the world inside is fake but a more accurate description of sea Haven would be that it's hyper real sea Haven is the way the world should be in his influential essay travels and Hyper reality philosopher and cultural critic Alberto Ekko describes his pilgrimage through America studying what he calls the industry of the absolute fake or places that don't just try to reproduce reality but improve it think destinations like celebrity wax museums the Rainforest Cafe or what he calls America's cinee Chapel Disneyland in Disney Disneyland everything is brighter larger and more captivating than everyday life in comparison to Disney he says reality can be disappointing for example you can go on the Disney jungle cruise and see a bunch of fake alligators up close swimming chomping away bellowing Etc but if you travel to the actual Mississippi River maybe you'll see one Gator but chances are it'll be sleeping or just chilling real hard we'll actually feel homesick for Disneyland which offers us more reality than the real thing ever could this for Ekko is hyper reality same thing with the reproductions of famous cities if you go to New Orleans Square in Disneyland you'll witness the unique architecture taste the delicious food and here Jazz and Blues played by friendly salaried staff if you go to the real New Orleans it will be disgustingly humid you'll get eaten alive by mosquitoes and any attempt to appreciate Street Music music will inevitably be interrupted by people promoting bus tours and other tourist traps Ekko argued that hyper reality can make us nostalgic for its very fakeness it's simply more satisfying and comfortable than the unpredictability of the real world SE Haven is one such absolute fake a flattened hyperreal rendition of American life in the 50s and 60s saturated with small town charm traditional family values and social conformity it's the non-reality that some are nostalgic for Kristoff the show's Boomer director likely grew up on shows like Leave it to Beaver in the Dick Van djk show and sought to replicate that wholesome vision of America that never really existed like the kid who goes to the Mississippi River and gets homesick for the Disney jungle cruise Kristoff probably grew up in small town America which was far from perfect and is nostalgic for the idealized version he remembers from TV real life was a imitation compared to Leave it to Beaver and so he recreated the better version sea Haven is the way the world should be the characters too are hyperreal stereotypes Truman's wife Merill is always perky always shopping always fit and you can bet dinner's always ready on time I made macaroni I'm not hungry his best friend Marlin always has a six-pack in hand always has his back and magically appears whenever Truman's feeling vulnerable even Truman's boss rides him like the quintessential upper management blo hard you're going to lose a lot more than your teeth if you don't meet your quota the movie then critiques the Allure of the hyperreal though there may be a seductive quality to a life cleansed of inconvenience and unpredictability true Liberation lies in facing reality right well that's definitely the message we're supposed to take but we should ask ourselves how is the truth represented in the movie movie and why does it feel more real in his essay Ekko recounts seeing life-size wax Renditions of the Last Supper in various California museums some cringier than others he claims that in every instance there was a picture of the original next to the sculptures now you would think it would be a photo of the original Da Vinci painting but no instead it was a less detailed wooden replica the wax figures may not be perfect but compared to the rougher wooden version they suddenly seem a whole lot more authentic that's one of the tricks of the absolute fake it positions itself as realer by offering up something crappier for comparison The Truman Show does the same thing the hyperreal naive 50s aesthetic with its manicured Lawns and aggressively cheerful neighbors is like the shoddy wooden Last Supper whereas the world outside sea Haven the real world is full of people and settings that are much me I year and thus much more real by comparison we see two frazzled waitresses making ends meet in the big city a definitely single middle-aged dude spending hours in the tub security guards with much more precarious careers than the white collar ones in Sea Haven and two old ladies sitting next to each other are they in a nursing home where are their families do they have families definitely not the traditional family structure we see in Sea Haven just like the wax figures compared to the the crappy wooden ones these slices of messy everyday life seem more authentic compared to the manufactured Bliss of sea Haven here's the thing though back in 1998 two frazzled waitresses scraping by seemed relatively novel but today we have Two Broke Girls a middle-aged guy solo Doo instead of fathering a family not something you'd see on TV in the ' 50s but nowadays we have better call saw watching the movie 25 years later makes you realize there's nothing more real about these Messier figures the film inadvertently reveals that there's no such thing as a purely real depiction it's all about which tropes feel less tired at a given moment even inside the show we see old tired tropes representing the fake minations of the producers and newer tropes representing authentic actions outside the scripted reality for example the way Truman meets his wife is a sterile lifeless encounter that would definitely please 50s TV sensors a cheerleader unconvincingly Falls over a boy in the marching band realizes he's super cute OMG and they fall in love compared to the late '90s when TV had horny teenagers on the rig this seems quaint and false but then there's Lauren Truman's real love interest who tries to free him from the Dome when he sees her it's catching eyes across the setting the kind of thing you'd see in a gazillion music videos of the era There's real desire here much more resonant with the dominant media narratives of the time which allows it to be interpreted as realer than the tired trip over boy meat cute or think about when Truman reunites with his dad who he thought died at Sea the actor was overridden with guilt and infiltrated the set years later forcing Kristoff to quickly think of a way to quell Truman's curiosity his solution is the hacki and most overused soap opera plot device Amnesia brilliant Days of Our Lives Dallas General Hospital Santa Barbara and another world all had Amnesia plot lines in the 70s and 80s again the tired cliche codes it as artificial but watching the film 25 years later when newer tropes feel just as contrived the passionate Rebel the Journey of Relentless self-discovery it becomes evident that the movie doesn't just reveal the hyper reality of media but the ever shifting nature of the absolute fake the point is The Truman Show perhaps inadvertently disguises its own Central Paradox while it claims to expose false realities it simultaneously replaces those realities with new Illusions we see how the tropes values and narratives that built Truman's hyperreal prison have lost their grip on us only to be replaced by equally constructed codes of realness and authenticity we accept the reality of the world with which we're present presented it's as simple as that you could say this is an example of philosophers Delo and gui's concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization deterritorialization refers to the disruption or dismantling of established structures systems or cultural codes and reterritorialization is the process of reestablishing or reinforcing these systems and codes importantly this process often just reestablishes the same or similar power dynamics a famous example is Cortez conquering the Aztecs the Spanish deterritorialized by forbidding the symbols and rituals that characterize the Aztec beliefs then reterritorialized by establishing their own beliefs and rituals similarly The Truman Show dismantles the wholesome 50s facade of sea Haven only to reterritorialize the narrative with then contemporary tropes of rebelliousness passionate romance and individual self-discovery this process seduces us into believing we've achieved a greater truth when in reality we've simply been repackaged a new flavor of absolute fake the film's ultimate absolute fake lies in its core message a message baked into every installment of the cinema of demystification that the will to pursue truth love and authenticity will break us free from manipulation and illusion just as New Orleans Square promises a more pleasant experience than the real New Orleans this Narrative of Liberation promises a clearcut satisfying distinction between the real and the unreal but the reality is truth seeking is messy disorienting and often involves endless cycles of disillusionment and confusion some philosophers like slavo xek even argue that fully escaping the influence of ideology and constructed realities is almost impossible of course now I'm going to talk about the Matrix because one I can't help myself and two I think creators L and Lily wichowski deeply struggled with this idea the first film is probably the most famous and revered in the cinema of demystification offering a clear divide between real and unreal The Matrix is the fake digital world and the real world is well the real world Jean bodard a source of inspiration for the witch house heys famously hated the film saying it's the kind of movie The Matrix would make about itself reflecting on how even a film about breaking free from illusion like The Truman Show inevitably perpetuates its own layers of mystification I believe L and Lily took this very seriously and tried to address it in the sequels so in reloaded and revolutions this division between real and unreal gets blurred Neo has powers in the real world there's a world between the digital and the real world there's an unexplained gold world that Neo is tapped into oh and turns out that Zion is just a variable in the equation that helps the greater oppressive system of the Matrix perpetuate itself the sequels grapple with the impossibility of of a Pure Escape and instead rely on mystical and religious symbols to vaguely suggest a Transcendent salvation Beyond depiction then by the fourth film L feels defeated even a film warning about the dangers of constructed realities remains bound within the very system that creates them so she feels frustrated about it for the first half of the film through Thomas Anderson the stuck in the system game designer then reluctantly perpetuates the very cycle of Illusion for the second half cuz Hey I guess a girl's got to make a living and maybe a cry for help is therapeutic but I suppose that's okay because according to Ekko the pleasure of imitation is one of the most innate to the human spirit so we're pretty content with Fakes in his words Disneyland not only produces illusion but in confessing it stimulates the desire for it similarly Cinema of demystification offers a tantalizing simulation of disillusionment life is confusing deception is everywhere and the promise of a s satisfying resolution for our efforts to be less confused is highly appealing to our psyche and that's what these films offer that's why The Truman Show is the most honest of all these movies except for maybe the Matrix 4 after witnessing Truman's dramatic triumph over manufactured reality the movie presents a reflection of us in the form of the security guards who simply shrug it off what else is on yeah let's see what else where's a TV guy Eko says says the appeal of the absolute fake is The Offspring of the unhappy awareness of a present without depth and so while these movies may speak to our urge for authenticity our inability to point anywhere makes us like the security guards just blankly search for the next illusion and before I go this is not meant to be a miserabl Frankfurt School moralization about these movies these movies freaking rip and they provide Illusions not because they're the extension of an evil cabal of controlling Elites who want to obscure their dominance but because our social reality is impossibly complex and entertainment is there to soothe us but like I said in my video about the mask it's okay to let ourselves be benevolently fooled by beautiful lies so long as we eventually or at least periodically get back to reality whatever that may be hey thanks for watching guys if you want to support the channel and help it continue don't forget to check out my coffee page where you can donate subscribe to the channel and ring that Bell so 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Channel: Jared Bauer

Views: 28,391

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Id: chp3FtTZXFM

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024