Nothing Is Fake In “The Truman Show”; Just Merely Controlled
Michel Foucault once wrote that “visibility is a trap” in his infamous book Discipline and Punish.[1] Being seen, a simple act that may seem harmless at first, is a double-edged sword. Just as some dream of being seen, some dream of being unseen. However, in the age of social media and technology, Foucault’s statement can easily get trampled over by the wonders of everything deemed excellent about surveillance. Writers like Foucault and Gilles Deleuze have written texts which warn us about the ways in which surveillance can shape our behaviors and identity. With this, the essay will examine the 1998 American film The Truman Show and how it implements Foucault’s theory of discipline and docile bodies along with Deleuze’s theory of control. Although the essay will assess on how Foucault and Deleuze’s theories interlink with one another, the essay cannot exhaust the entire theories and will only focus on how they are related to the film.
Reality is fabricated in The Truman Show, the psychological-comedy film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The film revolves around Truman Burbank, the main character played by Jim Carrey, who has lived his entire life in a town called Seahaven, which unknown to him, is a Hollywood set, populated by actors in a reality television show about Truman himself. This show is broadcasted twenty-four hours a day with no commercial breaks, only having product placement and advertisement to keep the show going. The show’s creator, Christof, controls everything in the show; from the weather, to the radio stations, to every single word that comes out of the actors’ mouths. The show began when Truman was selected by Christof from a selection of babies from unwanted pregnancies, a celebration where Truman has been adopted not for the show, but by the “world.”[2] In this case, Truman’s sense of self was instantly stripped away from him from the minute he was born, and every aspect of his life belongs to Christof for him to control, and for the world to see. In his daily life in Seahaven, Truman lives with his on-stage wife, Meryl, and hangs out with his on-stage best friend, Marlon. The twist is that Truman has no idea that he lives in a false reality within reality.
The movie begins by Christof explaining how “While the world [Truman] inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there’s nothing fake about Truman himself: no scripts, no cue cards, it isn’t always Shakespeare, but it’s genuine. It’s a life.”[3] Meryl also says “There is no difference between a private life and a public life,” and that “The Truman Show is a lifestyle,”[4] bringing our attention that the fine line which separates the private and public life no longer exists. The private life that Truman have grown to believe was never really private at all. Throughout the film, we see that Truman tries several times to hide what he does from everyone around him; from hiding things which remind him of Sylvia — the woman he is actually in love with, inside his garage — to making sure no one in his office sees him flip through and rip pages off a woman’s magazine. Even so, his life is completely transparent for everyone to see, the same way that our private lives may not be as private as we would expect it to be. Released over two decades ago, The Truman Show allows us to reflect on the life that we live today. The so-called private life, is intertwined so heavily with the public life that it has now become difficult to distinguish between the two.
With roughly five-thousand cameras hidden innovatively in random but specific places,[5] Seahaven probably has more cameras than citizens. But although Christof is able to control what happens to Truman and how others behave around him, things do not always go as planned. During his college days, Truman was intended to fall in love with his later-to-be wife, Meryl, but instead falls for Sylvia, a fellow college student. Sylvia was then removed from the show, with Truman being made to believe that she was moving to Fiji. From then on, Truman’s memory of Sylvia stays with him, and throughout the show, Truman expresses his eagerness to travel to Fiji in the hopes that he will once again be reunited with Sylvia. The film displays the last few months of the show before Truman leaves, focusing on his slow realization that the world actually revolves around him.
Moving on to Panopticisim, Foucault’s theory of Panopticism derives from Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, which is an architectural prison composition. Bentham designed the annular building to provide an all-seeing element, where a tower is placed in the center of the block with windows surrounding it overlooking the whole building around the tower (see Figure 1).[6] Within the building at the periphery, there are cells which have two windows — one parallel to the tower, and the other opposite, allowing light to come into the cell. Foucault writes that the Panopticon produces permanent visibility which resembles “so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”[7] Inside each cell in the Panopticon, the individual is in constant surveillance; “He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject of communication.”[8] Just like Truman, although he is the main character of the television program, the source of all entertainment, and the subject of interpretation, he himself is outside of all the conversations about him. Truman — just like the prisoner in Bentham’s Panopticon — is seen, while not seeing anything.
The Panopticon was also designed to be a place which resembles a laboratory: “it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behavior, to train or correct individuals, and to penetrate into men’s behavior.”[9] Nevertheless, whichever way it was used, the Panopticon still manages to produce a homogeneous effect of power.[10] It is safe to say that in The Truman Show, Seahaven is the Panopticon which Truman inhabits, where the town is his cell, and he is the guinea pig, while Christof is the scientist. In this modern Panopticon, Baudrillard writes that “The most intimate operation of your life becomes the potential grazing ground of the media… The entire universe also unfolds unnecessarily on your home screen.”[11] In this sense, the show becomes obscene and almost pornographic, because the audience is watching Truman so upfront while Truman is unaware of the cameras around him, and it feels almost wrong to be watching him twenty-four-seven.
Theorizing Bentham’s revolutionary prison design, Foucault writes his influential book Discipline and Punish in 1975 featuring concepts of discipline and self-governance. Where Bentham characterizes physical surveillance, Foucault emphasizes instead on internal surveillance. He defines Panopticism to be “the general principle of a new ‘political anatomy’ whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline.”[12] Discipline, what lies at the end of the tunnel of Panopticism, is described to be “a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a ‘physics’ or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology.”[13] For Foucault, power no longer takes the shape of physical force, instead, it functions like an invisible, omnipresent cloud that regulates and disciplines human behavior, and in The Truman Show, power is continuously exercised in the form of a permanent, exhaustive, and boundless surveillance, where every part of Truman is visible, yet the creator remains invisible.
According to Foucault, technologies of surveillance have the primary reason to internalize societal disciplines for each individual, ultimately turning everyone into their own docile bodies.[14] With this, patterns of discipline and Foucault’s idea of the docile body can be seen through Truman’s behavior and personality. The whole time, Truman’s personality has been shaped by the actors he grew up with, which means that everything about him that was shown on screen is purely Christof’s design. As a matter of fact, Truman himself is a perfect example of what Foucault describes to be a docile body. In his book, Foucault argues that docile bodies are what comes as a result of discipline, where “the body is reduced as a ‘political’ force at the least cost and maximized as a useful force.”[15] In relation to the film, Truman, still unaware, is reduced to a body which acts almost like a machine that produces money for the producers of the show, as he becomes the source of income for the producers and directors.
Furthermore, docile bodies are constructed from constant observation and the internalization of discipline. This can be seen in Truman’s character as he lives in the “perfect” life that he has been given by the creator. In essence, since he was a child, Truman has been disciplined by others to live a life that is understood to be normal. Whenever Truman says or does something which strays out of the ordinary, Meryl and Marlon come into the rescue to lead him back into the line that he is meant to follow. For example, when Truman’s thoughts about traveling to Fiji come to rise in the first half of the movie, Marlon assures Truman by telling him that he has travelled across the country and that there is no place as perfect as Seahaven,[16] disciplining the idea that there is really no point in leaving. Truman retracts from leaving town after their conversation, but only for a while and as soon as he is not constantly reminded of the idealistic Seahaven, his thoughts of leaving continue to grow. At the same time, the characters around Truman have never deliberately disallowed Truman from leaving, conflicting him even further by making him believe that he can, indeed, leave if he wants to. Moreover, to defend his actions, Christof believes that his excessive and perpetual surveillance has given Truman “a chance to lead a normal life,” because “the [real] world is a sick place,” and that “Seahaven is the way the world should be.”[17] Christof believes that his actions secure Truman in a life that knows no pain or discomfort, which concerns back to the world we live in today. Over and over again, security cameras are installed at every inch and corner of the cities we live in, with the primary purpose of ensuring safety for every citizen as well as limiting crime and terrorism.
Fifteen years after Foucault has written his seminal text, Deleuze released his short text titled Postscripts of Societies of Control in 1990, which touches upon what Deleuze argues to have come next after Foucault’s disciplinary society. In his text, Deleuze moves away from discipline and dives into the regime of control, as he believes that self-discipline actually comes from continuous control and instant communication.[18] In a control society, “you never finish anything,” Deleuze argues. Control is continuous modulation; a series of constant, almost self-transmuting adjustments, “molding changing from one moment to the next,” rapidly shifting. Unlike the Foucauldian disciplinary society which is defined by physically enclosed spaces; schools, homes, factories; Deleuze argues that it has been replaced by the “ultrarapid forms of free-floating control that replaced the old disciplines operating in the time frame of a closed system.”[19]
In The Truman Show, “universal modulation” is key to its functioning. Even though Truman is allowed to move freely through his days, his every movement is “managed”, nudged, and guided by the traffic, or by being blocked by pedestrians,[20] and his daily life becomes a cycle of continuous control. On top of this, The Truman Show also maintains the benevolence of a control society. In the film, the audience and everyone watching Truman mean no harm to him whatsoever, they just want to watch him,[21] underlining the benevolence of the control society.
Both Foucault’s discipline and Deleuze’s control are evident in The Truman Show. In fact, at the start of the film, Marlon tells us that “nothing on this show is fake, it’s merely controlled.”[22] One important aspect in the film that displays both regimes is the fact that Truman has been made traumatized of water, as a way to discipline him to stay in Seahaven — noting that the town is an island, and the only way out would have to involve water. When Truman was young, his father and him went sailing together when a storm occurred and had caused his father to drown. This has caused Truman to be physically trapped in Seahaven, even though his mind wanders outside of town, he is unable to leave due to the circumstances that he has been given. Alongside this fear of water, Truman is constantly being reminded that his life is perfect; he has a stable job, a loving wife, a comfortable home, and a caring best friend. He is reminded that he should feel lucky that he recognizes no distress in his life, and all of this is purposed to be internalized by Truman.[23]
Unlike the physical space of a home, there is no online search warrant; people do not need a permit to enter one’s virtual life, which is something that can be gathered from the film. In The Truman Show, Truman believed that home would be his safe place, with his garage as his private space, but in reality, everything inside his home was out for the public to see. Truman never knew what it felt to have a home, a safe haven in which he could behave and act like no one was watching. This draws the attention to the idea of home; in today’s society, is there such a thing called home? If The Truman Show taught us anything, it would be that the most private and confidential parts of our lives are not as undisclosed as we think. Without realizing, Truman is constantly surveilled and monitored, which consistently manipulates his behaviors and actions, the same way we stick to what is accepted to be normal because an anomaly would individualize us.
In the film, the reality show does not discriminate when it comes to audience. The show is accessible to every single person, no matter their location, age, and gender. Everyone is able to watch the show from the comforts of the couch in their homes, the television in their workplace, the bars, and restaurants. Following the show is a middle-aged man watching from the television in his bathroom while he bathes. Ironically, a man at his most vulnerable, naked state, watches a show which exposes a man’s entire life. For that reason, this shows just how little surveillance requires, and that the act of watching others and being watched is effortless.
Today, space and time does not mean anything when it comes to seeing and watching others. In fact, we live in a world where The Truman Show comes to life. However, instead of watching just one person, we watch millions, the same way millions can watch us — therefore, we are both Truman and the audience. The only difference is that we know that people can see us, and we accept it without question. Perhaps, this is what Christof means when he says that “We accept the reality of the world which we are presented,” at the second half of the movie when asked by an interviewer why he thinks Truman has not figured out the true nature of the world he lives in.[24]
In spite of the manipulation he has encountered for more than the thirty years of his life, by the end of the show, Truman still manages to show his individuality as a citizen of the world, not Seahaven. He is ultimately the only “true-man”, the authentic being in a faux reality. Before the film finishes, Truman tells Christof; “you never had a camera in my head,”[25] signifying that there are still some parts of him that he keeps to himself. And although there is no sense of need to resist a society that is benevolent, Truman shows otherwise. In the control society, Deleuze imagines a world where resistance would act like it is at the bottom of the to-do list. But even in the most perfectly imagined world, Truman still yearns to escape. However, as everyone celebrates in joy when he finally leaves Seahaven which marks the end of the show, the audience quickly finds themselves moving on from the show to find something else to watch. This accentuates the never-ending cycle of stimulation that people need from the media. How quickly people are able to move on from the show proves just how much the media controls them. As Truman breaks through, the audience fail to realize that they too, are stuck in a Panopticon which traps them inside a hyperreality.
When watching The Truman Show, we watch ourselves watching.[26] In the first half of the movie, we are involved in the film as television watchers, however, somewhere along the movie, we start to find ourselves in Truman’s shoes. Just like George Orwell’s 1984, The Truman Show is a satire that reveals the difficult truth about the world of surveillance. Although the film is comedic and often ridiculous, most of what happens in it happens in real life. Apart from this, despite the fact that the show was set around 1950s America, this brings forth society’s obsession to nostalgia. In Seahaven, social media and political complications do not exist, which interests the audience even more as it resembles a utopia, a subconscious desire to escape the disciplinary and control society. Subsequently, the film lets us think of how integral social media, mass media, artificial reality, and “fake news” are in our daily lives, and whether or not we can imagine a world which do not circulate around them.
NOTES:
[1] Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison,” trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 200.
[2] The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir (June 5, 1998. USA: Paramount Pictures).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Adam Simpson, “Illustration of the Panopticon” in Tom Shone, “Surveillance State,” The New York Times, July 18, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/books/review/the-panopticon-by-jenni-fagan.html.
[7] Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison,” 200.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 203–204.
[10] Ibid., 202.
[11] J. Macgregor Wise, “Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing Through The Truman Show,” Television & New Media, Vol. 3 №1 (February 2002): 35.
[12] Foucault, “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison,” 208
[13] Ibid., 215.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 221.
[16] The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir (June 5, 1998. USA: Paramount Pictures).
[17] The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir (June 5, 1998. USA: Paramount Pictures).
[18] Gilles Deleuze, “Postscripts on the Societies of Control,” October, Vol. 59 (Winter, 1992): 3.
[19] Ibid., 4.
[20] Wise, “Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing Through The Truman Show,” 36.
[21] Ibid., 37
[22] The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir (June 5, 1998. USA: Paramount Pictures).
[23] Wise, “Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing Through The Truman Show,” 35.
[24] The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir (June 5, 1998. USA: Paramount Pictures).
[25] Ibid.
[26] Wise, “Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing Through The Truman Show,” 46.
