Peter Weir’s 1998 film, The Truman Show, explores a variety of themes, but the one that will be followed throughout the paper is simulation and simulacrum, which is seen through the filming techniques. This paper will also explore the Psychoanalytic theory through the character Truman Burbank and his day-to-day routine and lifestyle. Truman exemplifies the true qualities of the Psychoanalytic theory through his reactions towards the people around him. In the film The Truman Show, Truman Burbank slowly comes to a realization that his entire life has been fictitious in facilitation of a reality television program. Truman has lived his life in the idealized town of Seahaven, and is genuinely oblivious that the entire town existed within a television studio, and that he is the main character of a 24-hour reality TV show known as “The Truman Show”. From the beginning of the film, we see Truman living a regular lifestyle along with those around him through the viewers of the television show’s point of view. While those around him are actors, the attention of the film focuses solely on Truman.
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Truman is captured within a world where everyone around him is fake from his family to his friends to the people he works with. Truman is brought up with the idea that he will be able to achieve greater success in the fictitious world than the real one. Christof, the producer of “The Truman Show”, has created a powerful world of simulacrum, where Truman is seen as the simulation himself. Truman can and will be formed in to anyone that he is wanted to be by Christof. Billy Cowles, the author of Simulacra and Simulations in The Truman Show, states that “Truman will be a simulation produced by the simulacrum in which he lives ”. (7) Truman tries to escape from capitalism and escape from his own ideological world, trying to find himself within the “real” world outside of the
Truman is captured within a world where everyone around him is fake from his family to his friends to the people he works with. Truman is brought up with the idea that he will be able to achieve greater success in the fictitious world than the real one. Christof, the producer of “The Truman Show”, has created a powerful world of simulacrum, where Truman is seen as the simulation himself. Truman can and will be formed in to anyone that he is wanted to be by Christof. Billy Cowles, the author of Simulacra and Simulations in The Truman Show, states that “Truman will be a simulation produced by the simulacrum in which he lives ”. (7) Truman tries to escape from capitalism and escape from his own ideological world, trying to find himself within the “real” world outside of the