Author: Jiang Shuli, Associate Professor, Department of Chinese, Dalian University of Technology
Neil Bozeman wrote in Entertainment to Death: "Humans become silently vassals of entertainment, without complaint, even willingly, and as a result we become the species that entertains to death." "The movie "Truman's World" is not only a kind of image interpretation of "Entertainment to Death", but also a prediction of the current entertainment era. This film, released at the end of the last century, may seem today to be able to give people a more profound experience.
Movie poster of Truman's World
The beginning of the film is very dull and boring, ordinary residents and ordinary days, daily street scenes and simple communication, all of which constitute a most "real" scene of life. And as the truth is revealed layer by layer, it brings some shock to the audience. Lifting the mask of daily life, revealing the cruel truth, the original surface entertainment behind the huge tragedy of life.
The tragedy of the film is mainly reflected in two characters, one of which is the protagonist Truman. Lead actor Jim Carrey vividly expressed truman's tragic side with a comedic expression and body language. Truman, who first appeared in front of the audience, was happy and happy, and what he was worried about was a trip to Fiji and his obsession with Shivia. Unfortunately, even such a deep-seated secret is nakedly exposed to cameras and millions of viewers. It wasn't until one day, due to the mistakes of the staff, that Truman found himself being monitored.
So he began to look for clues in his life, it turned out that in the world where he lived, his wife was fake, his best friend was fake, his mother was also fake, and the father who drowned in the sea and left a huge psychological shadow on his childhood actually appeared on the street... He seemed to be covered by a huge net, and this place called Taoyuan Island was just a huge studio.
Stills from Truman's World
It turns out that Truman is the protagonist of a "reality show", everything around him is false, his relatives and friends are actors, and he himself knows nothing about it. His life and life are not only "selected" and designed, but also broadcast live in front of thousands of viewers, without the slightest privacy. According to reality TV director Christopher, the outside world is full of lies, but it is real.
Another tragic character in the film is Christopher, the director and producer of the "reality show". Christopher, wearing a beret and glasses, looks elegant and wise, but in order to save the show, he has to expose his cruel, cold-blooded side. In order to prevent Truman from leaving, in the scene of "Wild Wind and Waves", he completely disregarded Truman's life and death, and manipulated the wind and waves to the highest level, which stunned all the staff. This is a character who really confuses the real and the fake, a TV producer who loses his moral bottom line for the sake of ratings.
Unconsciously, television has become the master of the lives of these viewers, and it is inseparable from television at work, television when eating, and television when bathing, just as people today cannot do without mobile phones. Neil Bozeman once said, "Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television." Whatever the content or the perspective taken, everything on TV is meant to entertain us. "It's just that Bozeman didn't expect that more than twenty years later, the entertainment of television has already spread to the era of mobile Internet, the entertainment function of mobile phones has become more powerful, and everyone has the opportunity to be Christopher."
People instinctively pursue happiness. However, it is a sin to base one's happiness on the suffering of others. Unfortunately, neither the program producers nor the audience in the film realize that their actions have caused Great harm to Truman. When the audience cheered loudly for Truman to escape from that door, perhaps they did not realize that it was their keenness to watch and spy on other people's lives that led to the popularity of "reality TV" programs.
Truman's World is a reflection on modern media. In today's reality TV boom, the meaning of the film has become richer. Televisions, computers, and mobile phones are like mirrors, and only by peering into the lives of others can they discover their own lives, which is the sadness that belongs to human beings. Although Mr. Lu Xun made a sharp criticism of the psychology of the spectators more than a hundred years ago, today, a hundred years later, not only do we see hundreds of millions of guests, but the people who are watched are scrambling to devote themselves to it, perhaps, this is what is worth thinking about by modern people. (Jiang Shuli)
Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel