The Truman Show (1998)

“I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life. The world, the place you live in, is the sick place.” This is a quote by Christof (Ed Harris) in the film, The Truman Show (1998). In The Truman Show the main character, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), is living a fake life, a life in which everything and everyone around him is a sham. Everything is unreal because Truman is the star of a television show; however, he does not know it. Christof the man who was quoted at the opening, is the director of the fake life that Truman is living and although Truman still has his free will, Christof attempts to control every other aspect of Truman’s life as if to persuade him to take certain actions and even to control his thoughts (for example, Truman’s fear of water was caused by a storm Chistof created in order to kill his father off). With the cameras constantly rolling, Truman is a real man living a fake life.

In René Descartes Second Meditation he says, “I suppose, then, that all the things that I see are false, I persuade myself that nothing has ever existed of all that my fallacious memory represents to me” (133). In the Truman show, he finds himself believing that the world around him is the real world, however he is being tricked. Would Truman have been better off believing Descartes’ words? Even Truman’s childhood memories are fabricated although he does not see them as fake. Descartes, in his Second Meditation, attempts to question how he is supposed to understand the world around him as real. Through inquiry and thinking Descartes knows himself (his mind) to be real, however Descartes still has uncertainty about the world around him. The example of the wax shows perceiving something is what must first happen in order to know what something is, and the next step is by means of the external senses or common senses so that one can more clearly conceive the idea of the object. In The Truman Show Truman perceives the world around him to be sincere because he is mislead by a great deceiver (Chistof). Truman cannot even trust his external senses or common senses since the world around Truman is a meticulous filming set.

Descartes concludes the Second Meditations by posing that, “because it is difficult to rid oneself so promptly of an opinion to which one was accustomed for so long, it will be well that I should halt a little at this point….” (137). This line is interesting in relation to The Truman Show because all of Truman’s life he was on a set in which every action and every relationship was planned out. Eventually Truman challenges the world around him, but it takes him quite some time before he questions the perfect world, which surrounds him. Similar to Descartes, it takes Truman many of years to promptly rid himself of an opinion (such as the world around him being real) to which he was accustomed to for so long.

Now that I have given a brief synopsis of the film and how it connects to our reading of Descartes’ Second Meditations I ask, how do we know the world around us isn’t fake?? Yes that sounds like a “mad” question but as prominent philosophy Michel Foucault says in vague terms, “we ought to study madness as experience within our culture and grasp madness.”  So I ask again, how do we know we are not simply misguided by a great deceiver as Descartes suggests? I assume most of us, if not all of us in the class can attempt the same thought experience as Descartes did, which is the “cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am.” In finding that we all “are,” or that we all “exist” in a mental form is the first step to understanding the reality around us. However, Descartes, conversely, does not seem to pose other means of finding out any other realities of the world. Perhaps we are simply brains in a vat? Perhaps one or all of us are just like Truman?

If you have not seen The Truman Show I highly suggest it. It philosophically asks questions about the world around us, the realities we perceive, and god. Not to mention the film is very entertaining and interesting (I can’t forget to mention how beautiful the ‘set’ is too. It takes place in Seaside, Florida and although it is meant to serve as an entrapping set for Truman, it is not too shabby of a set to be stuck on). Also, I included the movie trailer for those of you whose interest I have caught.