The Truman Show - Calling a Corporation Mommy and Daddy (Media Meditation 2)

The Truman Show is a movie that was made to be dissected by a class like like Contemporary Media Issues. The main point to this movie is the media and its destructive powers when controlled by one of the mega corporations. Truman Burbank was the first child to be legally adopted at birth by a corporation. They stuck him in a massive Hollywood set and filmed him growing up. They created what Censored 2010 calls a Hyperreality, the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not (pg. 251). Truman had no idea that he was not living in reality and that everyone around him was acting. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited by a corporation.


This brings up the question of how far is going to go? The idea of a corporation legally adopting a human being to do what they want with, seems ridiculous to us now...but maybe in 20, 50, 100 years it could be common occurrence that isn't even noticed by the average human being. In Postmans, Amusing Ourselves To Death, he says "Television has achieved the status of 'meta-medium' - an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well" (pg 79).

For Truman the corporation who adopted him put him into this controlled universe and dictated to him what was reality. This makes me think about the mega media outlets and how the fewer the corporations that control our major forms of news the more they control 'our reality'. Just like mega corporations controlling our governemnent and dictating legislature.



Once Truman starts to question his reality, his "friends and family" try to reassure him that everything is okay, the idea behind persuasion through "Big Lie" couldn't have been more present than in this movie. He starts to see his reality unravel around him and this leads him to mistrust everyone around him. That causes the corporation to get upset that their money maker could possibly put an end to their show. They go so far as to almost kill Truman to keep their show going. This made me think of the chapter in Censored "Index on Censorship 2008-2009" (pg. 241-250). In this chapter is goes over all the extreme lengths governments or other outlets have gone to keep certain information from being reported and viewed by the public.