"The Truman Show" is a profoundly disturbing movie. On the surface, it
deals with the worn out issue of the intermingling of life and the
media.
Examples for such incestuous relationships abound:
Ronald Reagan, the cinematic president was also a presidential movie
star. In another movie ("The Philadelphia Experiment") a defrosted Rip
Van Winkle exclaims upon seeing Reagan on television (40 years after
his forced hibernation started): "I know this guy, he used to play
Cowboys in the movies".
Candid cameras monitor the lives of webmasters (website owners) almost
24 hours a day. The resulting images are continuously posted on the Web
and are available to anyone with a computer.
The last decade witnessed a spate of films, all concerned with the
confusion between life and the imitations of life, the media. The
ingenious "Capitan Fracasse", "Capricorn One", "Sliver", "Wag the Dog"
and many lesser films have all tried to tackle this (un)fortunate state
of things and its moral and practical implications.
The blurring line between life and its representation in the arts is
arguably the main theme of "The Truman Show". The hero, Truman, lives
in an artificial world, constructed especially for him. He was born and
raised there. He knows no other place. The people around him -
unbeknownst to him - are all actors. His life is monitored by 5000
cameras and broadcast live to the world, 24 hours a day, every day. He
is spontaneous and funny because he is unaware of the monstrosity of
which he is the main cogwheel.
But Peter Weir, the movie's director, takes this issue one step further
by perpetrating a massive act of immorality on screen. Truman is lied
to, cheated, deprived of his ability to make choices, controlled and
manipulated by sinister, half-mad Shylocks. As I said, he is
unwittingly the only spontaneous, non-scripted, "actor" in the on-going
soaper of his own life. All the other figures in his life, including
his parents, are actors. Hundreds of millions of viewers and voyeurs
plug in to take a peep, to intrude upon what Truman innocently and
honestly believes to be his privacy. They are shown responding to
various dramatic or anti-climactic events in Truman's life. That we are
the moral equivalent of these viewers-voyeurs, accomplices to the same
crimes, comes as a shocking realization to us. We are (live) viewers
and they are (celluloid) viewers. We both enjoy Truman's inadvertent,
non-consenting, exhibitionism. We know the truth about Truman and so do
they. Of course, we are in a privileged moral position because we know
it is a movie and they know it is a piece of raw life that they are
watching. But moviegoers throughout Hollywood's history have willingly
and insatiably participated in numerous "Truman Shows". The lives (real
or concocted) of the studio stars were brutally exploited and
incorporated in their films. Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, James
Cagney all were forced to spill their guts in cathartic acts of on
camera repentance and not so symbolic humiliation. "Truman Shows" is
the more common phenomenon in the movie industry.
Then there is the question of the director of the movie as God and of
God as the director of a movie. The members of his team - technical and
non-technical alike - obey Christoff, the director, almost blindly.
They suspend their better moral judgement and succumb to his whims and
to the brutal and vulgar aspects of his pervasive dishonesty and
sadism. The torturer loves his victims. They define him and infuse his
life with meaning. Caught in a narrative, the movie says, people act
immorally.
(IN)famous psychological experiments support this assertion. Students
were led to administer what they thought were "deadly" electric shocks
to their colleagues or to treat them bestially in simulated prisons.
They obeyed orders. So did all the hideous genocidal criminals in
history. The Director Weir asks: should God be allowed to be immoral or
should he be bound by morality and ethics? Should his decisions and
actions be constrained by an over-riding code of right and wrong?
Should we obey his commandments blindly or should we exercise
judgement? If we do exercise judgement are we then being immoral
because God (and the Director Christoff) know more (about the world,
about us, the viewers and about Truman), know better, are omnipotent?
Is the exercise of judgement the usurpation of divine powers and
attributes? Isn't this act of rebelliousness bound to lead us down the
path of apocalypse?
It all boils down to the question of free choice and free will versus
the benevolent determinism imposed by an omniscient and omnipotent
being. What is better: to have the choice and be damned (almost
inevitably, as in the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden) - or to
succumb to the superior wisdom of a supreme being? A choice always
involves a dilemma. It is the conflict between two equivalent states,
two weighty decisions whose outcomes are equally desirable and two
identically-preferable courses of action. Where there is no such
equivalence - there is no choice, merely the pre-ordained (given full
knowledge) exercise of a preference or inclination. Bees do not choose
to make honey. A fan of football does not choose to watch a football
game. He is motivated by a clear inequity between the choices that he
faces. He can read a book or go to the game. His decision is clear and
pre-determined by his predilection and by the inevitable and invariable
implementation of the principle of pleasure. There is no choice here.
It is all rather automatic. But compare this to the choice some victims
had to make between two of their children in the face of Nazi
brutality. Which child to sentence to death - which one to sentence to
life? Now, this is a real choice. It involves conflicting emotions of
equal strength. One must not confuse decisions, opportunities and
choice. Decisions are the mere selection of courses of action. This
selection can be the result of a choice or the result of a tendency
(conscious, unconscious, or biological-genetic). Opportunities are
current states of the world, which allow for a decision to be made and
to affect the future state of the world. Choices are our conscious
experience of moral or other dilemmas.
Christoff finds it strange that Truman - having discovered the truth -
insists upon his right to make choices, i.e., upon his right to
experience dilemmas. To the Director, dilemmas are painful,
unnecessary, destructive, or at best disruptive. His utopian world -
the one he constructed for Truman - is choice-free and dilemma-free.
Truman is programmed not in the sense that his spontaneity is
extinguished. Truman is wrong when, in one of the scenes, he keeps
shouting: "Be careful, I am spontaneous". The Director and fat-cat
capitalistic producers want him to be spontaneous, they want him to
make decisions. But they do not want him to make choices. So they
influence his preferences and predilections by providing him with an
absolutely totalitarian, micro-controlled, repetitive environment. Such
an environment reduces the set of possible decisions so that there is
only one favourable or acceptable decision (outcome) at any junction.
Truman does decide whether to walk down a certain path or not. But when
he does decide to walk - only one path is available to him. His world
is constrained and limited - not his actions.
Actually, Truman's only choice in the movie leads to an arguably
immoral decision. He abandons ship. He walks out on the whole project.
He destroys an investment of billions of dollars, people's lives and
careers. He turns his back on some of the actors who seem to really be
emotionally attached to him. He ignores the good and pleasure that the
show has brought to the lives of millions of people (the viewers). He
selfishly and vengefully goes away. He knows all this. By the time he
makes his decision, he is fully informed. He knows that some people may
commit suicide, go bankrupt, endure major depressive episodes, do
drugs. But this massive landscape of resulting devastation does not
deter him. He prefers his narrow, personal, interest. He walks.
But Truman did not ask or choose to be put in his position. He found
himself responsible for all these people without being consulted. There
was no consent or act of choice involved. How can anyone be responsible
for the well-being and lives of other people - if he did not CHOOSE to
be so responsible? Moreover, Truman had the perfect moral right to
think that these people wronged him. Are we morally responsible and
accountable for the well-being and lives of those who wrong us? True
Christians are, for instance.
Moreover, most of us, most of the time, find ourselves in situations
which we did not help mould by our decisions. We are unwillingly cast
into the world. We do not provide prior consent to being born. This
fundamental decision is made for us, forced upon us. This pattern
persists throughout our childhood and adolescence: decisions are made
elsewhere by others and influence our lives profoundly. As adults we
are the objects - often the victims - of the decisions of corrupt
politicians, mad scientists, megalomaniac media barons, gung-ho
generals and demented artists. This world is not of our making and our
ability to shape and influence it is very limited and rather illusory.
We live in our own "Truman Show". Does this mean that we are not
morally responsible for others?
We are morally responsible even if we did not choose the circumstances
and the parameters and characteristics of the universe that we inhabit.
The Swedish Count Wallenberg imperilled his life (and lost it)
smuggling hunted Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe. He did not choose,
or helped to shape Nazi Europe. It was the brainchild of the deranged
Director Hitler. Having found himself an unwilling participant in
Hitler's horror show, Wallenberg did not turn his back and opted out.
He remained within the bloody and horrific set and did his best. Truman
should have done the same. Jesus said that he should have loved his
enemies. He should have felt and acted with responsibility towards his
fellow human beings, even towards those who wronged him greatly.
But this may be an inhuman demand. Such forgiveness and magnanimity are
the reserve of God. And the fact that Truman's tormentors did not see
themselves as such and believed that they were acting in his best
interests and that they were catering to his every need - does not
absolve them from their crimes. Truman should have maintained a fine
balance between his responsibility to the show, its creators and its
viewers and his natural drive to get back at his tormentors. The source
of the dilemma (which led to his act of choosing) is that the two
groups overlap. Truman found himself in the impossible position of
being the sole guarantor of the well-being and lives of his tormentors.
To put the question in sharper relief: are we morally obliged to save
the life and livelihood of someone who greatly wronged us? Or is
vengeance justified in such a case?
A very problematic figure in this respect is that of Truman's best and
childhood friend. They grew up together, shared secrets, emotions and
adventures. Yet he lies to Truman constantly and under the Director's
instructions. Everything he says is part of a script. It is this
disinformation that convinces us that he is not Truman's true friend. A
real friend is expected, above all, to provide us with full and true
information and, thereby, to enhance our ability to choose. Truman's
true love in the Show tried to do it. She paid the price: she was
ousted from the show. But she tried to provide Truman with a choice. It
is not sufficient to say the right things and make the right moves.
Inner drive and motivation are required and the willingness to take
risks (such as the risk of providing Truman with full information about
his condition). All the actors who played Truman's parents, loving
wife, friends and colleagues, miserably failed on this score.
It is in this mimicry that the philosophical key to the whole movie
rests. A Utopia cannot be faked. Captain Nemo's utopian underwater city
was a real Utopia because everyone knew everything about it. People
were given a choice (though an irreversible and irrevocable one). They
chose to become lifetime members of the reclusive Captain's colony and
to abide by its (overly rational) rules. The Utopia came closest to
extinction when a group of stray survivors of a maritime accident were
imprisoned in it against their expressed will. In the absence of
choice, no utopia can exist. In the absence of full, timely and
accurate information, no choice can exist. Actually, the availability
of choice is so crucial that even when it is prevented by nature itself
- and not by the designs of more or less sinister or monomaniac people
- there can be no Utopia. In H.G. Wells' book "The Time Machine", the
hero wanders off to the third millennium only to come across a peaceful
Utopia. Its members are immortal, don't have to work, or think in order
to survive. Sophisticated machines take care of all their needs. No one
forbids them to make choices. There simply is no need to make them. So
the Utopia is fake and indeed ends badly.
Finally, the "Truman Show" encapsulates the most virulent attack on
capitalism in a long time. Greedy, thoughtless money machines in the
form of billionaire tycoon-producers exploit Truman's life shamelessly
and remorselessly in the ugliest display of human vices possible. The
Director indulges in his control-mania. The producers indulge in their
monetary obsession. The viewers (on both sides of the silver screen)
indulge in voyeurism. The actors vie and compete in the compulsive
activity of furthering their petty careers. It is a repulsive canvas of
a disintegrating world. Perhaps Christoff is right after al when he
warns Truman about the true nature of the world. But Truman chooses. He
chooses the exit door leading to the outer darkness over the false
sunlight in the Utopia that he leaves behind.
