The Meaning of the Truman Show

Personal Reflection on The Truman Show
Many of the shows we enjoy today were all inspired by something in the past, and it would never be over exaggerated if people stated that the source of these shows was "The Truman Show". Truman Show is a movie that has created the new genre back in the 90's. It introduced a different way of filming one's life, which is what we see a lot on TV, today - reality shows! This movie has inspired many people's lives and that includes myself as well. It made me take a moment and think to myself, "what if my life is exactly like the Truman Show?" There were so many 'what if' statements going through my mind, such as: "What if everyone was controlled to act like this in front of me? What if people are watching my life from a whole different point of view?" I have never questioned my own life like this, and I even got convinced about how intelligent the movie director of Truman Show, Peter Weir, was for making the audience think deeper in the film, even after it ended. The interesting point about this movie is how it gave you chills down your back when it was not even a horror/thrill film. It gave you those feelings because you could easily relate it to your own life. This movie was one of those classic movies that you cannot resist in giving them a five star and a perfect review, for moving our hearts and souls.

Summary of "The Meaning of the Truman Show"
Truman Show is a show portraying Truman's life 24/7 on television. He did not know about this truth until some 'characters' in his life started to give him hints that his life was fake - for example, the girl that he fell in love with. He then started to grow suspicion in his life that what he is seeing is all artificial. We can relate this film to our lives with media because of how we are easily influenced by them, as if our lives are controlled by media, just like how Truman's life was controlled by the actors in his life and the director acting as God. The main purpose of the movie is to make us look around and break the spell that keeps us believing in the media-fabricated illusions of popular culture. Both the audience and Truman portray how we are so willing to experience an easier and more exciting substitute for life, which is what media creates. Just like how Truman went on a dangerous adventure to escape from his artificial life, we need to escape from the illusions that media creates for us, or even illusions that media influences us to create it ourselves.

Reflection on "The Meaning of the Truman Show"
I definitely agree with the writer's opinion because it is indeed very true that we are extremely influenced by media. It even seems that the actions shown on television today, is normal to our daily lives, when it would have been unbelievable to be even seen back in time. It is exactly like how the children today are playing with Barbie dolls when it is impossible to even have bodies like them. Either way, we still supply our children with Barbie dolls, although it may be a bad influence - making them think that it is normal for someone to have a body shaped like the dolls so you have to look like that as well.

Truman has been led to believe that he has been living a "Real Life" since he was born. In fact, the moment he was born was broadcasted on live television. He did not question anyone about his life until some 'characters' around him started to give him hints - whether they did not give out a hint on purpose, to they purposely gave him a hint so he would notice that everything was made up. Most of the hints were given to him by accident - for example, the nurse running fast to tell the others what Truman was up to, after he told her how he was looking for his friend and how he would like to know if the leg surgery was actually going to happen or not. Yet there was one character in his life that he has fallen in love with, which was also the only one who purposely gave him hints on how he should realize that everything was created by actors. One of the obvious ways was how she suddenly started to advertise cocoa in front of him as if they were on television. Eventually, Truman has succeeded in escaping his fake life with the help of all these clues.

The film genre of The Truman Show is drama with some aspects of non-fiction. However, it would be classified as a branch of a reality show today.

This movie acts as a metaphor for our own lives. Just like how Truman had to work hard to realize that his whole entire life was fake and has been created by other humans, we need to take a journey in our mind as well, to realize that our minds have been influenced too much on media, so what we think normally is not how we should think. In other words, this film is telling us to get back down to earth because we are getting way too influenced on the stereotypical stuffs that we have lost ourselves.