Released in 1998 to critical and financial success, The Truman Show carries a legacy that, in hindsight, betells much about our future relations with the media. By being able to influence the media, one is wielding power that can affect lives not only locally, but around the globe; whether it is a single status on Facebook that alerts people of your upcoming trip to Cancun and leads to your house being robbed during your absence; whether it is a gossip magazine that prints falsehood about a celebrity contributing to a false representation of that celebrity's image; or whether it is something much greater like Orson Welles' infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast that could send the masses into hysteria. The media has a lot of power and, in our modern days, has begun to slip through our grasp and assume an identity of its own. The media is becoming a god.
The Truman Show presents the media as a tool by which anybody's life can be controlled to provide entertainment for the public. This is an eerie foreshadowing to the reality TV boom that would implode our TV screens less than two years after the release of the film. Nowadays, people tune in to watch Big Brother to watch a group of people in sequestration and how they cope with their enclosed surroundings. Or America's Next Top Model to watch a model face plant. The truly ironic thing about this supposed televised "reality" is that it is heavily controlled, just as presented on The Truman Show. Many former reality tv contestants have spoken out about what they call their "edits", which is how the show portrays them. Sometimes, as with Ed Harris' character in the film, production gets involved and actually tries to pit contestants against each other. However, what plays on our screen seems real to us, and we rarely question it.
Thus, not only does the media affect the lives of the people within our screen. It also affects our perception of the real world around us. Some reality TV contestants often receive a stereotyped edit based on their looks or their background. This then carries over into the real world to our perception of people that resemble said contestants. Furthermore, the lines between public and private begin to fade. Celebrities' lives, well mostly shortcomings, become tabloid fodders. As the media presents those stars to us, so do we believe they are in truth. This leads to a sort of a Hawthorne effect, where people behave differently when they know they are being observed.
Reality TV contestants are aware that cameras are on them and that their every move can be televised for ratings. Though at times human takes the best of them, they often learn how to control their behavior. Reality is not about control. I'd like to say that I'd love to see reality tv become something where the people are not aware that they are being filmed, but sadly that too lends itself to a The Truman Show reenactment. Production would no doubt interfere, again contributing to the god complex of the media. It also again crosses the line between public and private. Hence, I gladly state that there should be no reality TV, unless the name reality TV is completely changed or people become more aware that what they're watching cannot be further from reality. Controlled TV seems like a better term.
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