The Truman Show
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

"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.


Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com