Thinking about what is true and what is false has always been the driving force behind human progress. But in the future, there may be fewer and fewer people with this kind of thinking ability, as the director in the film said, "People believe in the truth." The truth has always been represented (representation), and we have not escaped from Plato's fables.
There are two metaphors in this film, watch truman show and truman show itself.
When you watch it, trumanshow is an unprecedented reality show-the ultimate in the television industry, watched by 1.7 billion people, and has been broadcast uninterrupted for 30 consecutive years. This in itself is a huge metaphor for modern society. The media provides entertaining content, satisfies people's original desires (in reality shows are voyeuristic desires), makes people fall into the structure of modern society, cannot extricate themselves, and is entertaining to death. This is a proposition of mass society that has lasted for 100 years. The film shows the most real future form of this mass society-the huge power of the television industry. Look at the people watching in the film: waiters and guests in the cafe, the elderly, the middle-aged people waiting in the bathtub in front of the TV, the security guards-watching has become an indispensable part of their lives, even more than Eat and sleep. Global viewing makes such a program a cultural experience shared by all, which is also a metaphor of cultural globalization.
Second, starting from the trumanshow itself, why truman has not escaped from this virtual world in 30 years? The director's answer in the film is an understatement: We all believe in reality, it's that simple. So, what is the reality that Truman believes in, and how is this reality created?
Structurally speaking, Truman is a white-collar worker who works for people and provides cars and houses. If this structure cannot be broken, there is nothing else he can do.
In terms of reproduction, all the media on Taoyuan Island are reproducing the reality: here is the best, and going out is dangerous. The radio, magazines, TV and even posters Truman comes into contact with every day repeatedly emphasize this reality.
Therefore, the Taoyuan Island world itself is a metaphor. The political and economic structure and the ideology created by the media reality reduce the modern person to the two core forces in the system, just like the two levels of the operation of leadership. People live and work in it without realizing it. This is exactly a dystopian proposition-about the choice between the normal world and the pathological world. The director in the film said that Taoyuan Island is normal and the real world is pathological. Simply put, do people need the right to suffer more or want to be "happy robots"? ?
Truman finally walked out of Taoyuan Island. Real people may never walk out of this show in the real world. The film uses Truman to touch the wall of Taoyuan Island and walk up the narrow door of the stairs to signify Truman’s victory. At the same time, it tells the viewer the "authenticity" of the reality we are in, and this "authenticity" seems to also signify at the same time. This is the victory of those of us viewers of "Trumen's World"—Trumen escaped back to our "real" world. However, this victory is actually nested in the "Taoyuan Island" where we are.
Finally, back to the proposition of new media. The Trumanshow movie’s prediction of the future is the ultimate development of the mass society dominated by the television industry. However, with the development of new media today, we seem to see a possibly different future. As more and more people are advocating, modernity has ended, and postmodern society is emerging. In the future, whether we are going to a mass society or a focused society, I cannot give an answer. What I see is that these two completely contradictory trends are rushing forward: the
concentration of media capital is increasing, and the giant multinational companies are expanding globally, pursuing their own content hegemony around the world.
At the same time, more and more people have learned about web2.0, have their own blog, and use p2p to download their favorite things. SNS is also beginning to show its signs.
So, in which direction will the future go... Will users really be liberated? Or lost in the new consumer differentiation?
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