Vocabulary
8.2 Guess the words and use them in the context of your own:
1. a woman who causes problems
2. an umbrella that is used at the beach for shade from the sun
3. (slang) alcohol
4. a group of people that helps maintain something
5. a prompt that tells someone when to act or speak during a performance
6. tip-over the boat
8.3 Comprehension Questions:
What does Truman do to escape?
What prevents them from capturing Truman?
Divide the students into small groups and have them write and act out the next scene of the film.
Why does the storm begin?
Why does the storm end?
Describe Christophe’s actions and emotions during this scene. How does he feel about Truman?
What motivates Christophe to act the way he does?
What emotions do you think Truman experiences at the end of this scene?
How does Christophe feel about Truman at the end?
How does Truman feel about Christophe at the end?
According to Christophe, what makes life good?
According to Truman, what makes life good?
How does the audience respond to Truman’s decision? Why?
What do you think will happen next? Will Truman want to return?
Is it possible to make someone else happy?
Are people free to direct their lives, or are they controlled by something outside their control?
What are the most important requirements for happiness?
Themes for discussion
The production of reality TV shows as a route to opening up the larger question of what makes something “real.”
The Truman Show raises the question of identifying reality (or realities) as a space in which people take action, make decisions, and more complicatedly, make believe.
There’s a wonderful moment when the production team, who have just engineered a tearful reunion between Truman and his father, are moved by the artificial scene they just created! Truman is simply a living work of art: manipulated, used, commercialized, spied on by 5,000 cameras even when he’s asleep.
Towards the end of the movie, Truman will ask Christof about his life in that world:“Was nothing real?” and Christof will reply: “You were.”
So when Christof says Truman is “real” all he means is that Truman isn’t scripted…but all of his real, unscripted responses are all to phony situations. His reality is very relative, very limited. He’s a real person, but in a totally plastic world.
Are we truly real?
What is real in our world?
What do we mean when we say “reality”? Emphasize/consider that people have both lived experiences and mediated or media experiences which contribute to our sense of reality or the real.
What does the term “reality” signify to viewers? To makers? (in Truman’s world) To Truman Burbank?
Advertising and Product Placement.
Why might product placement be effective for selling, enticing, and creating a product image (seeing fictional people use real products)?
Is this incorporation of image and fiction into lived experience also connected to how we perceive TV, perceive reality, perceive ourselves?
Can we identify some of the appeals and strategies used by advertisers in general (stereotypes, nostalgia, glamour)?
Responsibility and Ethics
The Truman Show gives a complex look at who participates in media decision-making. The audience who fuels popularity, the advertisers who provide financial support, and the producers who orchestrate the lives being watched are all implicated as are the actors (or in Truman’s case, the unwitting star) themselves.
What is wrong with Seahaven?
Who holds power over “The Truman Show”? How did they get that power? Who is responsible for the actions being filmed?
What is wrong with our world?
Who exercises the power to change or construct a different reality?
Responsibility or control is also at issue in considering reality. Is something more or less real if it is controlled? Who gets to control? How are our lives controlled?
Who takes responsibility for (constructing) reality? Who in the film does? How is Christof’s way of doing this different than Truman’s? Who else is involved (viewers, actors, technicians)? What parallelisms can be found between the way the media control Truman’s life and the forces that control our lives?
Final project options for students
Compose a part research (using newspaper or web resources), part analysis paper on reality television—how it is produced and received, welcomed and criticized.
Offer a detailed analysis of The Truman Show. Be sure to point out plot devices (things that move the narrative along and symbolism (in characters, names, objects). Further, offer your interpretation of what the film “means” (especially with regard to reality and media responsibility).
Create an ad campaign. Describe your product in detail. To whom are you trying to sell the product? In what sort of media will you advertise? Explicitly or via product placement? How will you make the item appealing? What assumptions or even stereotypes become part of your strategy? Justify your decisions and supply mock-up advertisements.
Follow-ups
Analyze characters (names, placement) and other symbolic devices used by the filmmakers. Below there are some possible interpretations for symbolism in the film, but there are more possibilities that can also be valid.
Adam and Jesus: Truman as "True Man" in Paradise. Entire story can be seen as a parallel to the Garden of Eden story. He can also stand for Jesus, who knows of a higher world and is crucified on the boat, but in this case redeeming himself.
Alternate Reality: the "door" which leads to another reality toward end of movie.
Baptism or death to the old life and re-birth to a new one: since he must go through the water to reach "real" life. Note that the water is always there, calling to him in the film, but his fear holds him back. In his final surrender to the water, he finds life.
Courage: Truman confronts his fear of water (chaos/death) to escape his scripted "paradise."
Crucifixion: Truman on boat, knocked out in shape of cross.
Decision: Truman's departure symbolizes his decision to leave his "perfect" but controlled world for the real world.
Difficulty Recognizing Evil: At the conclusion of the movie, Christof (Truman Show creator) tries to convince Truman Burbank to stay in the imaginary world Christof has created. The setting (a voice from the sky) and the words being said sound a lot like God at first. Upon further reflection, however, it's clear that the show's creator is trying to coax Truman to remain in slavery and is only interested in himself, not in Truman.
Evil/Social manipulation: Christof exerting God-like control. (Christ off – absence of Christ)
Exodus/Moses: Truman crossing the sea to freedom.
Fear: Truman standing at edge of water afraid to cross because of implanted memory of father's death. Also fog represents our fear of the unknown.
Garden of Eden/Paradise:Truman leaves the illusory "paradise" at end of movie.
Illusion/Reality: Truman only thinks he lives in Seahaven, the "real world"
Indecision, uncertainty and lack of self-confidence is symbolized by theunfinished bridge.
Journey: journey to Reality symbolized as a staircase.
Love: love he feels isn't in the script, compels Truman to leave his "paradise"
Resurrection – Overcoming inner fears to get to know the truth: The friend went to the basement to find Truman (The empty tomb). He was not there! He was on a boat on the water. Notice the drowning scene when he is lying on the boat with arms spread out and left for dead. However, he survives thestorm. Notice his gasp for air, his new life, resurrection? When he reaches the end of the set and notices the sky is only a painted canvas, Truman ascends the stairs. He then goes forth into the unknown darkness of the world to live in the world!
Walking on ledge of reality: Truman walking on water.
A Detailed Plot Summary of The Truman Show
By Laurel Clark
Truman Burbank is a mega-star, the main character in the longest running television show ever produced. “The Truman Show” is a nonstop live broadcast that generates revenues through product placement advertising, the semi-seamless appearance of products within the show itself. In fact, the show has become its own product, marketing Truman Bars, video collections of greatest hits, pillows, and, as the movie viewers later learn, everything on the show. It is all for sale in catalogues worldwide and yet Truman Burbank has not made a dime. Even more provocatively, he has no idea he is being filmed. His emotions are real, but his world is not.
Truman Burbank is NICE. He is kind and generous to a fault—and the creators of his life/show feel sure that this is because his world on Seahaven Island is how the world should be. This is a dark judgment on America offered from within the film and an even darker one on the excesses of “reality TV” from the perspective of one watching the film.
The social commentary does not stop there, however; by the end of this movie, many questions are raised about the ethics and consequences of reality programming—both for its stars and for its audiences.
Over 5,000 hidden cameras have been placed throughout Truman's daily routine in the town of Seahaven, a charming seaside town on an island that is actually enclosed within a giant dome. All day and all night he is filmed and broadcasted live on a channel dedicated to his life, a fact that for the most part results in the film audience feeling as though they are watching “The Truman Show” itself, rather than a film about a TV show.
When scenes of “Truman Show” viewers appear the film audience feels both empathy and disgust for the adoring fans/voyeurs who watch enthralled from bars, bathtubs and living rooms. Everyone from parking garage attendants to single moms is fascinated by Truman's life. Many of them have watched Truman since before he was born, and some even while he sleeps. Christof, the show's omnipotent creator, believes that it comforts them.
The film opens on television broadcast day 10,909. Our affable hero Truman is almost thirty years old and starting to feel like life is little stale. He tells his best friend Marlon that he wants out, wants a change from his job, a trip off the island. Marlon immediately tells him that he should be thankful for the great life he has. Meanwhile, Marlon also plugs "his favorite" beer repeatedly. All his headshots are from the side, so that the beer logo is always clearly visible to the TV (and film) audience even as he and Truman hit golf balls off of a bridge to nowhere.
Truman is friendly to his neighbors (who stand out as nearly the only African Americans in the entire film): each morning he greets them, "Good Morning! And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight." He is kind to (though secretly irritated with) his wife and mother. At work as an insurance salesman he appears dedicated and trustworthy, although behind his desk he is "secretly" trying to create a picture of his lost love, Lauren, from models in magazine ads. While the Truman he presents to others is content, the audience (both on-screen and off!) sees him when he believes that he is alone. The inside view (into his psyche?) is part of the show's draw, and it becomes clear that he is unhappy and becoming more and more suspicious of those around him.
In a flashback sequence, we learn that Lauren tried to tell him that he was being filmed, but was quickly rounded up and removed before Truman grasped the full meaning of her explanation. Her "father" appeared and explained that she was schizophrenic and that their family was moving to Fiji. This incident explains Truman's "mid-life crisis" desire to travel there. The other woman in Truman’s life, his wife Meryl, is a peculiar vehicle for product placement and seems to be a combination of fifties domesticity and girl next door although the film is clearly set in the present. In fact, everything associated with Meryl is like this. The college flashback is not set in the 1980s or 1990s, when we might assume the Burbanks were in college together. Instead, it appears that Truman and Meryl are dancing at an early 1960s sock hop. Meryl’s nursing uniform is a throwback to earlier nurses with cute caps and pretty collars and her clothing at home is typically June Cleaver-esque unless she is wearing lingerie. Truman's "memories" as presented in such flashbacks are, of course, as manufactured as his present. And yet the private Truman keeps a box of mementos—pictures of his Dad, Lauren's sweater, and a map of Fiji—which seem to keep him grounded in an unexpected way.
As he continuously ruminates about Lauren and her message, several slips in production occur that add to Truman's growing paranoia. A set lighting device falls from the sky dramatically landing feet away almost hitting Truman on the head. This is immediately followed by a radio news broadcast warning that a plane has been dropping its parts on Seahaven Island—suspicious because Truman recognized the object as a light of some kind. Then Truman’s dead “father” reappears as a homeless vagrant (an odd sight in Seahaven) and is violently captured and removed just as Truman recognizes him. “Dad” supposedly fell overboard during a storm and drowned when Truman was young.
His father's death created Truman's insurmountable fear of water, which also serves as a convenient way to keep Truman from ever trying to leave Seahaven. Truman also feels guilty for cajoling his Dad to stay out at sea despite the impending storm. As he sits on the beach remembering his Dad, a rainstorm starts and mysteriously only rains where Truman is standing. It follows him from spot to spot before finally breaking open and raining all over the Island. The next day the radio station in Truman's car becomes scrambled and he hears the TV producers’ radio communications about his own movements. He begins to realize that he is being followed and that the town is centered on him, a theory he tests by stopping traffic. Next he enters a building that is not part of his usual routine, and behind the elevator doors he gets a very provocative peek backstage. He starts to misbehave in small ways, testing the town to see if they react appropriately to a crazy man, which they do not. Truman talks with Marlon about the strange things happening to him. Marlon alludes to God, while mentioning how wonderful their hometown is. Then Truman tells Marlon that he is going away for a while. That conversation is nearly immediately followed by a session of reminiscing with Mom and Meryl about how great his/their life in Seahaven has been. An increasingly suspicious Truman notices a fake-looking Mount Rushmore as well as Meryl crossing her fingers in their wedding picture. Even his favorite old movie, "Show Me the Way to Go Home," suspiciously appears on TV with its sugary messages about home and friends. The next day he follows Meryl to work to see if she is really a nurse; at the hospital he is blocked at every turn from viewing the operating room.
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