Identify and Explore the Philosophical Issues Raised in The Truman Show

International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge

Identify and Explore the Philosophical Issues Raised in ‘The Truman Show’

The Truman Show is a film about a fictional reality television program which is named after its main star, Truman Burbank. The show differs from a conventional reality T.V shows because Truman doesn’t actually know he’s in it. When he was born Truman was adopted by the production company which became ‘the first business to ever legally adopt a child’. After this he was put into a massive specially designed dome. This dome is under the complete control of the production company, they can change everything from the weather to the time of day at the flick of a switch. all his movements are monitored by thousands of cameras and everyone he knows, even his ‘mother’ are being played by actors. This is then broadcast live and uninterrupted to the entire world creating a vast amount of money for the production company through the use of product placement.

Such an interesting and morally dubious idea of course presents us with a veritable plethora of philosophical concepts and ideas to examine. Aside from the obvious moral issues which need to be addressed there are also ideas of determinism, existentialism, love and friendship and even the theory of forms which can be examined in relation to the films content.

The first idea from the film I would like to address is that of the morality of the production company when making the program, were they right to do so? Although on the face of it the answer seams to clearly be no, there are a few interesting if perhaps not overly convincing arguments in favor of the production company. First of all is the idea of utilitarianism. John Stuart-Mills’s Utilitarianism is often summed up as ‘the greater good for the greatest number of people’. In relation it to ‘The Truman Show’ this could be interpreted as the good of the greater number i.e.; the viewing public as being more important than the freedom of only one person. This of course raises the question of whether or not the pleasure of the viewing public is worth the freedom of Truman. When thinking about this question we have too consider two things; Truman’s freedom is, most people would agree much more important than the pleasure gained from watching television, but the people who are receiving this pleasure are in there tens of millions compared to the one Truman. So is the pleasure of tens of millions worth, the freedom of one man? This dilemma is almost unanswerable and highlights two of the major flaws of utilitarianism; the first is the subjectivity of pleasure. Pleasure is not something which can be calculated and compared (despite the attempts of the hedonic calculator) and as such comparison between the pleasure of the viewers, and the pleasure or perhaps even pain denied to Truman by his incarceration are very hard to draw. The second common criticism, which is often leveled against all teleological ethical theories, is that the results of an action can never be definitely forecasted. When the production company where planning the program they would have researched opinions and would have been able to predict that people wanted to see the program, and that they would get pleasure from it, but they could not be sure. Without the certainty of pleasure they risked taking a mans freedom for no benefit at all. So although it would be unfair to say utilitarianism completely supports the production company, because of the ambiguity inherent in all utilitarian arguments due the subjectivity of pleasure, it is definitely fair to say that there is potential to build an argument for the production company based upon it.

The next issue I want to address is that of how we perceive the world. In the film, for most of his life Truman has no idea that he is actually living inside a large dome and that his life is under the complete control of a television company. This may perhaps seem strange to us, surely someone’s natural curiosity would lead them to leave the island and attempt to explore the world? However what we need to remember is that without anything to compare it too, and considering that all his life he has been taught that he ...

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This film ties in very nicely to Plato’s theory of forms, indeed it can almost be seen as a twentieth century version of the allegory of the cave. This allegory asks us to imagine some people chained so that they can only ever see a wall in front of them and cannot move, they cannot get up and have no other way of knowing anything other than by talking and looking at whatever shadows cross the wall in front of them. These shadows are produced by people carrying silhouettes of pots and horses etc. in front of a fire which is permanently burning behind their backs and above their heads. These people would almost definitely name the shadows that they saw in front of them and would perhaps even try to explain what they are. However they would never truly know what a horse is, after all a shadow of a horse is of course not a horse and the shadow of a pot is not a pot. These are things they would talk about and perhaps even guess their purpose, but it is impossible for them to ever truly appreciate these things.

Plato argues that we are the people in the cave and that we live in a world which is a mere ‘reflection’ of another realm. According to Plato we live in a world which is only given meaning by the objective truths which exist independently and prior to our own world, these truths ‘reflect’ onto out world and give us meaning. This is a theory which is very applicable to Truman. Truman says that he loves his ‘mother’, or that his best friend is Marlon. But can it really be said that Truman is experiencing true love or true friendship as we would define them? Nothing shows this point more than the scene where Marlon is trying to convince Truman not to leave the island. Truman is convinced that the reason he doesn’t want him to leave is for his own safety and because Marlon doesn’t want to lose him as a friend. However the real reason is of course because he is being told by the production company to keep Truman on the island at all costs, this friendship is further cemented as false when we learn that the whole conversation, which is apparently a heart-felt and sincere moment by Marlon is actually a scripted one he is being told through an earpiece. This is relevant to the theory of forms as we can see ourselves in that relationship. According to Plato we can never know true love or beauty or friendship etc. for the same reason Marlon and Truman were never what we would define ‘real’ friends. Their friendship was a reflection and an imitation of what we consider to be true friendship, it was only an imperfect copy of the real thing. In a manufactured world were friends for Truman are cast actors who are paid to get close to him he would, most people would agree only have an imitation of the idea of friendship, which exists independently and separately of the ‘dome’. According to Plato this is like our lives and the ideas of beauty and justice etc. which exist completely prior of and removed from our lives as objective truths. However we never see through to the ‘other side’ because our perceptions are limited to this ‘realm’, in the words of Christof ‘we accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented’.

In conclusion The Truman Show is a film which raises many interesting and contentious ethical issues, not least because they could be so easily applied to the many reality television shows which are present in our own culture at the moment. Admittedly the idea of Plato’s Forms, even when given a bit more credence albeit circumstantial by the idea of latent learning is to say the least debatable. And to be perfectly honest wholly irrelevant to people’s lives. However it is in the films ability to create a parallel with the television of our times and thus force us to look introspectively which gives it the force it has.

Tom Gower

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