The Impact of American Culture on The Truman Show

In Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, the protagonist Truman Burbank unknowingly participates in an artificial reproduction of the "perfect" American life, a simulation of the American Dream. Truman’s incuriousness in the recreation of the cliched American life of Christof reveals to the audience that the American Dream can not be limited by a checklist and that the meaning of the American Dream varies from person to person. It reveals that in fact, the concept of the American Dream has different meanings to each person. In the example of Truman's life, the dream life of Christof causes Truman to feel the desire to escape from his life which seems to be perfect. The Truman Show highlights restlessness, and escapism and criticizes the American Dream which is the concept that shaped the American way of life.

"Christof's American dream is very different from Truman's dream life. Being trapped in a single location consisting of similar-looking houses and similar-looking people bores Truman as it would anybody" (Truman's Dream). He doesn't want a life full of Christof's fantasy, a beautiful wife, a trouble-free life or a calm town and he gradually comprehends that his life is so boring and his relationship with his wife is fake, understanding this he wishes to escape from his life. The last thing he wants is to be controlled by others. This discontentedness and problem caused by Christof's American dream bring through Truman's desire to escape his life in Seahaven.

Restlessness is a theme consulted in the movie and applied to the characters in order to help us understand the complicated behaviours of the characters and to explain the actions of the protagonist, Truman Burbank, who is role-played by Jim Carrey.

Running things behind the scenes is the erudite mad genius Christof (Ed Harris), who cues the sunrise and fills Truman's life with tension and happiness. Even though his world literally revolves around him, Truman is restless, and as the facade of his tele-existence slowly peels away, he becomes increasingly desperate. (Kronke, par. 6)

Despite his being in possession of all the goods one may need in order to be happy, he is unable to rest and although all the necessary conditions are provided by Christof and other actors, Truman can not maintain a trouble-free life.

According to Alexis Tocqueville, people are inspired by the American Dream to become restless and  "they constantly dream of the goods they do not have" (Tocqueville, par. 3). According to him, they think that there is always something that needs to be improved in their lives.

Towards the middle of the movie, we come to realize that his expectation of the future becomes catastrophic and he starts feeling like there is something wrong with his life. His wife, Meryl (Laure Linney) implies that he is acting paranoidly by saying "...You're not right in the head. You want to destroy yourself, you do it on your own" (Weir,1998). In response to this, Truman tries to show her the weirdness and abnormality of the people living in Seahaven and the events that occur in his life. For example, "while he was trying to leave the town in his car, with Meryl he's gone through various obstacles including traffic jams, a forest fire and hearing a warning siren" (Weir,1998). In other scenes, the audience witnesses that he starts realizing other abnormal things happening around him. For instance, he sees his father (Kirk) who drowned while sailing on a stormy day and died when Truman was a child.

The effects of restlessness on Sylvia who is a girl from Truman's high school are visible. She is in love with Truman and Truman is also in love with her secretly, she confuses his mind about his wife and his life which ultimately results in his paranoid acts that bring about the idea of escaping to Truman. She tries to reveal the truth about his life to him which is certainly prohibited and risky, although she knows that she is going to be stopped and fired she tells Truman that his life is fake and he should believe her just before being removed from the show. She is the only real person in the whole show, her feelings are not fake contrary to his family, friends or wife. Truman, in response to her real feelings, feels something he has never experienced before thus, Sylvia is a turning point in his life. Outside the show, Sylvia starts a free-Truman campaign and she starts convincing people to step by step that he is not living in a dream, indeed he is a prisoner. She is clearly unable to get comfortable and is always anxious throughout the movie. She is always nervous and worried due to experiencing a lot of stress and conscientious responsibility. She is moving around without a reason. "While talking with Cristof she walks back and forth across the screen emphasising the agitation and concerns that she feels" (Sutherland 112) which is a symptom of restlessness.

Escapism is another theme that affects the behaviours and the mental states of the characters greatly. It especially has a huge impact on Truman Burbank. He daydreams a lot and he wants to see the world. He desires the freedom to see something new. He no longer wants to live in the repetitive and cliche environment of Seahaven and he wishes to escape from the town. His dream is not settling down, holding a job or having a child. In a scene Meryl asks "ı thought we would try for a baby, isn't that enough of an adventure?" and Truman answers: "That can wait, ı want to get away, see some of the world, explore" (Weir,1998). He thinks that every day is like the same day and this routine is not acceptable. He is looking for another world to live in. He wants to break from the routine, the work and his responsibilities. He feels alive when he thinks of exploring new places, he also seems to be happy in his daily life but there is always something that makes him uncomfortable and worried about his life which seems to be so boring and ordinary and. He is also worried about his future. He tries to convince Meryl to leave everything behind and roam around the world. There is a dialogue in a scene between Truman and Meryl that clearly demonstrates the willingness of Truman to walk away and explore new places. He starts his sentence by saying: "'I figure we can scrape together $8.000... We can bum around the world for a year that on. 'And then what Truman?... You are talking like a teenager'" (Weir,1998) answers Meryl in response to his husband's childish desire.

Sylvia tries to inform him about what is going on in Seahaven and she tries to tell him the truth about the artificiality of his life but she fails to do so. A man claiming to be her father tells Truman that she is mentally ill, she doesn't know what she is saying and they are moving to Fiji, therefore, we see that Truman has a dream to go to Fiji and he tells his dream about his friend. His friend, Marlon, feigns ignorance in response to his wish. Besides his friend's negative reaction, he is also exposed to other signs that he should not leave Seahaven. He sees an advertisement for Seahaven on TV trying to be engraved in his subconscious and change his mind. In the advertisement, a man was implying that Seahaven is like a paradise and nobody wants to leave there. Another sign is when he goes to the booking office to buy a ticket to Fiji, he sees a poster on the wall with a picture of an aeroplane crash and writing "It could happen to you" (Weir,1998). He can not go to Fiji because of the fake arrangement of the booking office. The agent tells him that there is no available flight for a while then he tries to go to Chicago but the bus breaks down. He has a world map which he marked Fiji and we see him sometimes while looking at the map. Fiji is a foreign place signifying Truman's desire to expand beyond the world he has known as well as Sylvia. Besides his desire to escape physically, he also wishes to escape from his life and wife mentally. He wishes to find Sylvia and experience real love which also is a way of escaping. He uses cutouts from fashion magazines to reconstruct his memory of Sylvia by bringing together different women's eyes, noses and hair. Escaping also becomes more tempting when he thinks of her love interest, Sylvia.

Sylvia represents Truman’s anima, an aspect of his unconscious personified as feminine, which lures him towards a greater knowledge of the Self. The anima is the agent behind a love-at-first-sight encounter. When activated, the anima is that strange feeling of profound familiarity and knowingness, experienced simultaneously with an intuitive sense of expansiveness and adventure. It is an external projection emanating from deep inside of something known yet unknown, at home yet unexplored (Weedon, par. 14)

He can't forget Sylvia who is his real love and there is strong a relationship between his eagerness to escape and his relationship with Sylvia. She encourages Truman for an adventure unavoidably and psychology explains this chain of events as people search for a connection with a part of the self themselves called "anima" which is the feminine part of a man or "animus" which is the masculine part of a woman and when they find their fullness with their other parts, it triggers the adventurous part of the people just as Sylvia stimulates the curious and the adventurous part of Truman.

There are many other factors entailing his desire to explore one of which is seeing his father who was known to be dead. One day while driving home he sees his father, at first Truman supposes that he is a homeless man but when he looks closely he realizes that he is his father but he can't speak to him because of an instantaneous crowd and because of bizarre impediments and a few moments later people put him in a car and take him away. He tells this situation to his mother and questions her but she completely refuses the idea and she supposes that he saw another man and confuses him with his father. Then his wife, Meryl interferes and implies that she is an old woman and he should not wear her down with these meaningless and impossible things nevertheless, he is absolutely sure that he saw his father, there is something wrong with his life and the town and there are lots of events requiring investigation.

His father’s sudden reappearance functions as Truman’s “call to adventure.” It is a trigger that puts him in tension with his environment. Something isn’t right. Something requires further investigation. Assumptions about himself and his world need to be questioned. The order of things is no longer self-evident and unshakeable. (Weedon, par. 20)

Because of the sequence of extraordinary events and his family's not believing him, his paranoid acts increase and he tries to find a way to escape. He realizes that there is no way out by land and the only possible option is sailing but he has to confront his past, overcome his fear and try his best at the sea to be victorious. By the way, Christof who is portrayed as the god, orders the actors to search for Truman. He commands the sun to rise to help people find him. Finally, he comes up with an impossible idea; search at sea. When they find him Christof gets very angry and utilizing his weather program, he increases the winds and the storms and pours the rain. He nearly falls from the boat but he gets up again and again. Understanding that he will never stop, Christof stops trying to prevent his escape and he fixes the weather. As he comes to the end of the sea, he examines the wall, tries to understand and sees an exit door. Christof introduces himself as the creator, explains that the world has been watching him since he was born and he is the star of an entertainment show. Truman keeps his silence until Christof offers him to stay in this pure and safe environment and tries to convince Truman to live in Seahaven, where he can live happily forever, he says "there is no more truth out there than there is in the world ı created for you. The same lies, the same deceit. But in my world, you have nothing to fear" (Weir,1998)  but Truman is determined to live his free, uncontrolled life, with the real people and without being trapped in the lies. He takes responsibility for his choice and completes his individualism. In the end, the audience of The Truman Show cheers tremendously and applauds him, some of them even cry. They wanted him to be able to escape and live his own life though it might be much more hard and uncertain from his former life which can be interpreted as they all actually wanting to find their real self like Truman and their desired life by escaping their present ones because they all actually somehow live in lies in different ways, they live full of what society teaches them in the natural flow or with the principles that norms give them and according to Christof, "we accept the reality of the world with which we are presented" (Weir, 1998).

Because Truman has different ideals and dreams than Christof, he can not keep pace with the repetitious and ordinary atmosphere of Seahaven anymore and he finally finds a way to run away from Christof's American Dream.

Since Truman's birth, Christof has continually influenced Truman to live the quintessential American dream through Truman's friends, family, occupation, and fears, but what Truman reveals to Christof is that their American dreams are fundamentally different from one another. (Truman's Dream)

The Dream of Christof causes a cliche life, which exhausts Truman. His dream includes big, white, detached houses with well-kept gardens, happy families with their dogs, and a safe place where nobody gets hurt or commits acts of violence. Everybody knows and salutes each other every morning. They seem to be very happy with their little kids playing around in their little houses. Christof creates this environment for Truman. At the beginning of the movie, Truman walks out of his tidy house to his car, he sees their next-door neighbour who is typically perfect and they happily salute each other. Holding a regular job, earning money and participating in society is also a part of Christof's recreated dream life. Truman works in insurance, he has a beautiful wife and every detail in the studio is designed to be flawless. Although his life is the epitome of the American Dream, he is still dissatisfied with his life because his kind of dream is much more different than Christof's, which is the determinant of his life. "By every means necessary Christof moulds Truman’s life to an uncanny and slightly off-putting conception of the American dream, but Truman refuses to accept it" (Christof's Dream). Truman also offers us the drama of the person who adopts a sedentary life. The audience does not think that there is something wrong with Seahaven until Truman worries about the perfectness of everything then, things get complicated for Truman. He realizes that the life in which he lives doesn't satisfy him anymore, his wife, Meryl's dreams and Truman's dreams are quite different, he is not interested in having a baby, living in a peaceful town or holding a 9 to 5 job, he is curious about the new places, he is dreaming of Fiji where Sylvia lives and their possible relationship because he can not get her out of his mind but Fiji does not only represent his love to Sylvia. Fiji is the most distant place to his life and he wants to go to the furthest place and get rid of his tediousness.

Thoughts of adventure by travel, rejoining Sylvia, as well as the possibility of experiencing different cultures keep Truman's dream alive. It keeps him striving for more. He is not the only one, though: as society's standards transform, dreams become less universal and more individualized. A  dream is not for someone else to control because each and every dream is unique. (Truman's Dream)

This act of Truman implies that someone else's dream may be the persecution of another's. His dream is not based on material well-being or a beautiful wife, he is bored with his materialistic life and he prefers dangerous and unknown earth by stepping towards the dark door at the end of the movie which represents that the real world is actually worse than Seahaven just like Christof says but Truman gives a chance to himself, to the unknown world and follows his dreams even though it might bring more trouble. The audience can't see him anymore after he steps through the darkness, therefore the audience doesn't know whether his life is going to be better or worse but now is the time to learn the real world for him.

 Peter Weir also criticizes the American Dream in other ways. In the Truman Show, in order to make more money, Christof uses product placement frequently. The audience gets the feeling that if they purchase those products publicized by a dream life show, they can have a perfect life because the show advertises the perfect life to the audience.

They are constantly bombarded by the advertisement and the media and they pursue their own American Dream by believing that those products being sold for fancy prices can make a difference and change their lives. They believe that material prosperity can make them happier and closer to their dreams because the dream becomes materialistic rather than being a lifestyle. The media convinced the audience of the Truman Show that they need to find their own American Dream but it is depicted as such a materialistic concept that neither Truman is satisfied with his life in abundance and prosperity nor the audience gets closer to their dreams by buying those items.

When one considers the symbolic sides of the characters, setting and the story of The Truman Show, it is clear that the director, Peter Weir, wants to draw attention to certain characteristics of the American Culture one of which is restlessness that highly affects the mood of the characters and the other one is escapism, an element that helps us understand the complex actions of the leading actor. Another significant theme is the American Dream which Weir criticizes in many ways. While analyzing the Truman Show it is important to take these factors into consideration because they lead us to understand what the movie actually wants to show us and how it uses these themes by mingling them with the characters and the story.

Works Cited

Knox, Simone. “Reading ‘The Truman Show’ Inside Out.” Film Criticism, vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44019392. 

"Review of Peter Weir’s Movie, The Truman Show With Regards To the American Dream." GradesFixer, 12 Feb. 2019, https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/review-of-peter-weirs-movie-the-truman-show-with-regards-to-the-american-dream/.

Sutherland, Valerie. "The Truman Show Directed by Peter Weir." Google Books, Google, 2000, https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=Z03ldHFXiucC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=Truman+show+restlessness&source=bl&ots=gy-lOfP0xQ&sig=ACfU3U0RBRBHb8MUHW2fbNEiuZMpcYydew&hl=tr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilweihoIzqAhXrkosKHRmTAjIQ6AEwAXoECA8QAQ#v=onepage&q=Truman%20show%20restlessness&f=false

Tocqueville,de Alexis. "Why the Americans Show Themselves So Restive

in the Midst of Their Well-Being" Democracy in America, edited and translated by Harvey C. Mansfield an Delba Winthrop, Volumes I and II,1835. https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/805328chap13.html

"Truman's Dream." The American Dream- The Truman Show, trumansamericandream.weebly.com/trumans-dream.html. Accesed 19 june 2000.

Weedon, Travis. “Psyche and The Truman Show.” Medium, Medium, 28 July 2018, medium.com/@tweedon8/psyche-and-the-truman-show-24e0d96b9204.

Weir, Peter, director.The Truman Show.Paramount Pictures.1998.