Current Forum: Session 3: Ideology	Read 9 times 	
Date: 29-Jan-2001 16:21:36	
Author: HAMILTON, MARK A. <mah7088@garnet.acns.fsu.edu>	
Subject: Perfection as an Ideological Apparatus 	
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       One of the most fascinating things about this film to me is the popularity of The Truman Show (the show, not the movie). Why do so many people gather around the TV and watch something that is very common and conventional? It's a baby growing up into an adult. How rare is that? Of course, such a thing is a novelty on television but, to me, that doesn't sufficiently explain its popularity for years and years.
       Perhaps the popularity can be explained by Truman supposedly living the ideological apparatus of the ultimate, controlled life. We all want to have control over our lives, and we hate it when we don't. The Truman Show‘s popularity lies in its attempt to show humanity's possibilities when almost everything is under control. There are no murders in Seahaven, no drugs, no gangs, no racial conflict. This is our chance to see how our life would have been lived if we were constantly monitored and protected from our mistakes and those of society.
       But, as Americans, we consider freedom to be one of the most important aspects of a good life. So, the amount of control necessary to protect Truman keeps him from freedom. This makes his life much worse than if he didn't have all these controls supposedly protecting him. So, for instance, everything seems to be in high-key lighting in Seahaven. But Truman, as far as I can remember, never comments on the weather's niceness. He's seldom been exposed to anything else. 
       Unlike in Citizen Kane, where we have many low angle shots to show Kane's power, in The Truman Show, we have a very classical and objective Hollywood camera. There are fewer high angle and low angle shots of Truman. Most of the shots of Truman are medium long shots (from the knees up) or long shots (from the head to the feet). This shows us that Truman is just like us. Christof is saying: "this stud could be you, America (or whoever), if only you had been randomly chosen to be in this show." In fact, Truman is the "true man" (thanks, Jason Gibson). After all, don't the girls love him and isn't he successful? This is all perhaps the reason Christoff says Truman "gives hope, and joy, and inspiration to millions."
       He is exactly like all those barmaids and barhoppers or policemen (who, by the way, are presented in medium to low key lighting and often, like in the bar, from a high-angle shot to show their world's inferiority to Truman's world) would be if things had been so controlled and perfect. Truman's role as the perfect, average middle-class man is perhaps the reason Christof is so fond of Truman. Perhaps Truman is Christof as Christoff would live over again if he had total control. 
       Really, though, Truman has to be himself. All those Hollywood conventions of the Truman era only make him a person who cannot be himself. He must break out into the real world of true love. Of course, as Aaron put so well, the real world requires many conventions of him also--only in a bigger, although still restricted, environment.
       So The Truman Show, I think, shows the ideological apparatus of the perfection of humanity--in the perfect environment--to be false. There can be no perfect environment, because one man can't determine what is perfection for another man, no matter how much he can control. What do you guys think?