Argumentative Essay On The Truman Show

     A utopia is a seemingly perfect world, with happiness, honesty, equality, and peace. Although in the novel, 1984, by George Orwell, and the film The Truman Show, directed by Peter Wier, the readers and viewers are presented with a negative utopian society. A negative utopian society is a perfect world that somewhere has gone wrong. The controllers in the novel and film succeeded in achieving complete control and power, which was their attempt to make the ideal society. Each controller has a different threat, in 1984 it is association while in the film, The Truman Show, it is separation from the outside world.

The director (Peter Weir) has many views about modern day society that he is trying to convey in The Truman Show though two were stand outs. The first will focus on is that we will never have the whole truth. It is impossible because of the amount of people that lie and bring deceit. Also, the world and media tries the hide things from us that degrade the higher society or itself in our eyes. It might cause a backlash like from the people, like in The Truman show when Christof said ‘Listen to me, Truman. There’s no more truth out there than there is in the world that I created for you. Same lies. The same deceit. But in my world, you have nothing to fear. I know you better than you know yourself.’ Subsequently, when Truman said ‘You never had a camera in my head.’ From these two quotes show that you can’t know everything about a person just buy watching them their whole life. So in turn, means that not the whole truth can be found. Also that Christof is trying to ‘protect’ him from the real world, which is like and example of the ‘higher’ grade society or media trying to hide people from the truth or show it in such a way that reverses the

The Truman Show introduces us to a man named Truman who is living a fake life, a life in which everything around him has been scripted out by a director of a television show. He was adopted at birth and raised inside a television studio that was made to resemble the real world. However, Truman is unaware that he has been the star of a television show since birth and thanks to free will, he continues to live life as a normal person. Meanwhile, the director, Christof attempts to control every aspect of Truman’s life as if to lead him to take certain actions and to think a certain way.

“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented." through the individual experiences leading to the realisation of the truth, which they have to accept in order to move forward. This is explored in the ‘‘The Truman Show’ where director Peter Weir, displays an individual's discovery of their world’s reality. This is seen through the protagonist, Truman Burbank as he eventually figures out the truth overtime due to the build up of faults regarding the set and actors.

The Truman Show is centred on a man-made island called SeaHaven where a man named Truman Burbank has been televised without his knowledge since birth. The show is a 24 hour live tv show where every aspect of Truman’s life is shown. As Truman grows older he begins to notice unsual events that leads him to believe that there is something incongruent with what people are telling him and what he experiences in his day to day life. As Truman begins to test the boundaries he realizes that the town seems to revolve around him and his desire to escape comes to an all time high. Eventually Truman begins on a journey to escape his virtual reality. Despite the boundaries that the director throws at him he eventually escapes and will try to find his way in the real world. This movie made me sympathize for Truman being that he has no privacy and is oblivious to his lack of freedom. This movie shows how it is possible to create an “ideal” community and how New Urbanism can be created and maintained.

In the film “The Truman Show”, directed by Peter Weir, many techniques are strategically used to position the audience to respond emotionally to Truman Burbank. Techniques such as lighting, music, camera shots and angles are used in three specific scenes throughout the film co-ordinated by the shows director Christof. He uses these techniques to encourage the show’s audience to believe that what they are watching is unscripted and real.

The Truman Show, is a film starring Jim Carrey, directed by Peter Weir. The film revolves around Truman Burbank, who is the star of The Truman Show, the show within the film. The Truman show is a live stream of Truman's life, filmed by hidden camera's capturing his everyday movements. Truman is a key character in the film, who helped me to understand the important message of the film. Truman's developments during the film and the manipulation of him and his surrounding environments helped to understand how the media and big corporations have excessive power and control over society and people's opinions.

Utopia - A perfect world. Truman's world was an utopia. Everything, including the weather, was controlled in a huge Hollywood dome. Truman grew up having no idea he was being watched every hour of the day, and that every step he took was being viewed by millions all over the globe. As the show progressed, it became clear how much media influenced Truman's life, and also how Christof played a huge role in Truman's well-being.

Throughout this journey to find the truth, lots of similarities between the life of Truman and Siddhartha can be found. By depicting his life as a parallel version of Siddhartha’s life, the idea of spiritual journey and enlightenment is indirectly shown in the film. Furthermore, The Truman Show can be analyzed as the

The film ‘The Truman Show’ directed by Peter Weir, shows how society is manipulated by the power of media. We see how Christof creates a ‘perfect’ environment for Truman to live in since his birth to his adulthood without Truman knowing that his life is being watched by millions of people around the world. The society is quickly being manipulated by Christof and doesn't realise that Truman gets no privacy and he is just being used for their entertainment. This is shown through a series of verbal and visual features in this film.

Truman Burbank is forced to live a fabricated life on a reality television show, The Truman show. Truman was recorded unbeknownst since the day he was born; he seemingly had a wife, a best friend, and everything required to live an “idyllic life”. Though, Truman didn’t know all that was just for show. “The Truman show” is unethical and against human rights due to three solid facts: he was not allowed to leave Sea Haven, his life is controlled as well as decisions made for him, and lastly he is isolated from the world thus he experiences what normal human beings do not.

Peter Weir’s 1998 film, ‘The Truman show’ effectively manages to portray the message of audience manipulation both through the internal and external audiences of the show. This essay will be critically analyzing the techniques used to manipulate the audience in ‘The Truman Show”. Firstly, by analyzing the sound techniques, then by analyzing the camera shots used. Finally, by discussing how the symbolism used manages to successfully manipulate the audience’s views. There will now be three critical and analytical arguments supporting the statement that ‘The Truman Show’ manages to effectively manipulate the audience.

Peter Weir as the director of Truman Shows reveals that with power and knowledge, the film depicts a casual acceptance of “reality”. For example, in the event that a personality is made by the media then as it is progress, the reality perspective is constrained to the world perspective of those confined where wealthy people is made to think that people, as well, is ought to have a same materialistic mind-set (in this way making those in control more wealthier). The observation is a direct force of power by the television show creators over Truman which is the only inmate in correlation to the experiment of the Panoptic machine which is a type of prison building designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787 as stated by Storey (2016, 132). It is a similar act of practice to serve as an act of power

Another image that Peter Weir used in this film is the representation of Christof as the director or ‘creator’ of The Truman Show. Christof portrays himself as the man behind the show and once we are able to see through his tough exterior we can see that he is not a completely unsympathetic character but quite and conservative. Christof is a very powerful man and is portrayed as a god-like figure. This is shown through the image of individual versus society - as Truman the individual is constantly trying to break free from the control and strong hold of Christof who represents the society.

However, his reality is now based on these objects vs. what is truly real. In Truman’s second phase he starts to believe that something is wrong with his world based also on his perception and his common sense. First, his father Kirk who had been written out of the show years earlier sneaks back onto the set. This sends Truman into a teenage flashback of his last moments with Lauren a girlfriend that had tried to tell him the truth before she was written off to Fiji. He also notices that the radio is following him around and people all around him are acting very strange. At this point he does not know what is wrong but he knows he is onto “something big” as he tells his “best friend” Marlon.