Constructing Identity for Truman Burbank

Several of my classmates have already unpacked the relevant connections between Truman's Burbank's experience as he realizes that his whole life has been a facade for the sake of television entertainment and the realizations Descartes explores in his Second Meditation. Indeed, I am sure that the character Truman Burbank struggles with some of the same subjects Descartes is writing on-- primarily, a human's ability to discern what is real and what is not.  

Instead of discussing the experience of reality, I would like to address the characters' experience with identity in this film. 

At the very beginning of the film, the actress Hannah Gill is giving an interview statement about her 'double life.' She says, "For me there is no difference between private life and public life. My life is my life, it's the Truman show." In his essay “Of Identity and Diversity,” philosopher John Locke writes about identity, “This also shews wherein in Identity of the same Man consists; viz. in nothing by a participation of the same continued Life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized Body.” The supporting characters of the Truman show, particularly the more central characters like Meryl, Marlon and Truman’s mother, have a unique experience of identity. Their fulltime role has surpassed the nature of a role into the imitation of an identity; indeed, all acting to an extent is this taking on of a false identity. The concept of The Truman Show, however, has elevated this imitation to a level of devotion to a false identity beyond that of normal pretense-- the height of this example being in my opinion when director Christof suggests that there is an on screen conception in the future plans for the show. Ultimately actress Hannah leaves her role as Truman’s wife Meryl, revealing that there are limitations to an individual’s ability to commit to an identity that is not their own. 

So, what does this element of Locke’s understanding of identity mean for Truman at the end of the film? The action of the film ends with Truman exiting the set that has been his world since birth and Sylvia seemingly running to meet up with him-- an ending which I feel suggests hope for the establishment of a life post-Truman Show for our protagonist. However, “if the Identity of the same Man consists in nothing but a participation of the same continued Life,” what will Truman’s new identity look like? I think it can be said for certain that Truman’s existing identity has already begun to be challenged throughout his realization that his world was a facade. In the opening moments of the film, show creator Christof says, “There is nothing fake about Truman himself.” What Christof means, of course, is to identify what precisely is so appealing about the television program. Because Truman does not know he is being filmed or that his life is being monitored and controlled, he does not limit his actions in accordance with that knowledge; he has no extraordinary inhibitions or intentionally wild behaviors that are common features of “reality” television in our own society. After Truman has abandoned his false life, however, I wonder if Truman too would agree that there was nothing false about his identity. A brief example-- are a person’s fears a part of their identity? Truman’s fear of open water was constructed as a plot point by the show creator; does this undermine the truth of this part of Truman’s identity? 

Naturally, this discussion of humankind’s autonomy works well when thinking about the nature of humans’ interaction with deities and religion. If Christof’s decision to create a situation in which Truman will almost certainly fear open water instills in Truman a fear that is falsely part of his identity, can anything that is beyond the control of us as humans be considered a part of shaping our identity? By this, I mean to speak directly to the question of the level of direct control that God has in the lives of humans (using the modern Western Abrahamic understanding of God). I feel that the situations are comparable; the film features a substantial use of Western imagery to underscore that Christof is playing God in this situation. 

This subject has raised more questions about the nature of exterior forces in shaping our identity than perhaps it has answered today. If Identity is in fact constructed of all the elements discussed in John Locke’s essay, there are many factors of which we must take inventory to truly understand ourselves. Lucky for us, we will hopefully have one series of moments to account for, unlike Truman who, I suppose after the end of the film, must in a sense begin completely anew. 

The Truth Behind Truman

In the present day world, we take a lot of things for granted.  From the moment we are born forward, we are taught the 'realities' of life, and by the time we are just a few years old, these become second nature to us.  For example, there is no doubt that should we let go of an object in the air, it will fall to earth.  It's jut how things are.  However, these 'truths' of the world are really no more than pattern perceived by our senses.  We assume that things will go as they always have in the past, but when you remove all prior assumptions from the equation, it becomes clear that there is no inherent reason for our laws to work the way they do.  As in the prior example, should we let go of an object and it instead hurdle into the sky, there's no particular reason that this is 'wrong' outside of the fact that every other time we did so the object fell.

Ancient philosophers were able to reach similar conclusions, even without the modern knowledge of the 'laws of the universe' we hold to be true today.  In Descartes Second Meditation, Descartes raises the question as to what we can really know about the world.  He considers that everything around us is just what we perceive it to be with our senses, and for all we truly know it could just be an illusion our senses are subjecting us to.  Anything that can be doubted cannot be accepted as truth.  This line of thought has also been expanded by scientists, and is reflected by the fact that all scientific knowledge can only be, at best, a "theory" waiting for that one time when something happens that would disprove what we think we know.  We have built up quite an extensive knowledge base for how the world works, but it is all just theories stacked upon theories that all fit together in the end to form a logical reality.  All it would take is one instance of an object being repelled by gravity, rather than attracted, to send it all crashing down.  But I digress.  Descartes holds that the only thing he can be sure of is "I," his own thought, stemming from the baseline concept "I think therefor I am."  Everything else is just a reality constructed by the senses, and the senses can be deceived.  Personally, I would take it one step further to say that you cannot trust yourself either, because one's 'self' is, from a scientific standpoint, an illusion created from all one's past experiences once given a way to think rationally.

This line of thought forms a nice parallel with the plot of The Truman Show, a movie in which the main character, Truman Burbank, is living a seemingly regular life, all the way from being a child to an adult, when he suddenly starts realizing that everything around him is being staged, and ultimately that his life has been made into a show, with everything he knows, including himself, having been set up by the show producers.  As peculiar things start happening, Truman begins to doubt his long-held assumptions about his world, and the more he learns, the more he realizes that everything he thought he knew: friends, places, and 'truths', are nothing more than an illusion created to keep him content and within the show's boundaries.  While The Truman Show is foremost an entertaining film, if you look a little below the surface it is a fantastic example of the philosophical thoughts of Descartes ideas in action.  One of the merits of The Truman Show is that for everyone watching, they can place themselves in the main character's shoes.  The main character is completely unknowing at first, and so it could just as easily be any one of us being featured in the show, and much like our 'theory' of the world, there's no way to definitively prove that we're not, only the possibility that the illusion could come undone and find that our reality wasn't really real.

In the end, despite all the questions as to what the true nature of reality is, be it illusion or truth, it ultimately comes down to perspective.  From the point of view of any one person, it is up to them to decide what their 'reality' is.  If each person can only feel sure of their own existence, then there's just no way to uncover any more than that beyond the possibility of a doubt, at least with the senses we are given, and so it's ultimately up to each person to decide what their reality is.  Truman may have been able to dissipate an illusion from his life, but should he have never discovered it, then his 'fake' reality may as well have been a normal existence.  Similarly, even after breaking out of the show, Truman still remains in a questionable reality, and there's always the possibility to break out one step further, so philosophically he is in the same place at the end of the movie as he is at the start: in his perceived reality.

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.