Refusing the Reality With Which You Are Presented
A Genre Approach to The Truman Show (1998)
Bit of a challenge this week for our second review. The Review Roulette Wheel landed on Genre this week after I picked a film that defies genre entirely in one of the most iconic examples of a standalone, hybrid-genre film: Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998).
What do I mean by a hybrid-genre film? Well, it’s a film that refuses to stick to one genre. This can be done simply, e.g. romantic comedies, bam, two genres that formed in our collective consciousness into what we view as its own genre. Same thing with Christmas films. In my dissertation and elsewhere, I argue that in the 1940s and 50s especially, “Christmas film” isn’t actually a genre of film but rather a subgenre that can then be applied to other genres, e.g. Die Hard (1988) is an action Christmas film, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is a social and psychological Christmas film, etc.
(To that point, if you’re familiar with my work at all or as you may have gleaned from the definition of genre I gave in the Methodology post from two weeks ago, I don’t really believe in a true genre film; I think it’s nearly impossible to have a pure generic film, especially one as intricate as The Truman Show. When we look at deeper concept art depicting multi-layered, complex plots with philosophical intrigue buried in several dimensions of a cinematic world, then the idea of pure genre starts to slip away.)
So, with that said:
The Truman Show (1998) - A Genre Analysis
It doesn’t have one. It actually has probably eight or nine, if not more, that you could argue are blended into a massive hybrid-genre piece, those being: comedy, sci-fi, psychological, dystopian fiction, drama, romance, satire, metafiction, and social science fiction. You can then also say that the film is a social criticism on grounds of a number of things: surveillance, celebrity worship, religion, existentialism, depression, reality tv, privacy, corporatism, and hierarchies of humanity based on whether or not an individual was born from a “wanted” pregnancy.
The Truman Show takes an extreme approach to genre blending, and I want to focus here first on why, and second on how our view of this film from a 2023 perspective effects the reading of the genres of the film.
The premise of this multi-layered film is that Truman, our titular hero played brilliantly by Jim Carrey, is also the titular hero of the television show within the film: The Truman Show. Truman was born on television, watched from birth to the age of 30, without his knowledge. A physical world was constructed for him and the world outside of his bubble in Burbank watches the 24/7 lightly edited stream of his life. The film melds interviews from the show’s creator, Christof (Ed Harris), and behind the scenes production of the fictional show, scenes with viewers, fans, and critics outside of the show, a purely intentional blend of shots from the fictional show itself, and what seems to be a privileged perspective for the audience in our world watching the film.
These four main layers are how the film defies a single genre. We see Truman’s constructed life, the narcissism of the show’s creator, the pain of the actors who have been with Truman his whole life in this bubble as they struggle against the moral justifications for their roles in deceiving this man and their own identities. We see genuine moments of joy and fear and desperation, love and exploitation and psychological pain.
By refusing to commit to a single genre, the film develops elements of several that create a truly original story, that can subvert or defy any one genre at any time (i.e. not ending in the way one would expect for said genre). The film can therefore be accessed from so many angles, inviting the audience to interpret its myriad themes and tropes in whatever ways they feel connected to. I would always say that multi-angled interpretations are true of any film especially with the reception of millions of individuals, but it’s certainly on a spectrum, and The Truman Show, in blending so many genres and building such a complex, layered film both structurally and philosophically, is at the far, far end of that spectrum.
It is a truly brilliant film that deserves deeper analysis of all of its themes and tropes and hybridised genres, but let’s focus in on just a few inextricable ones: satire, metafiction, and the social criticisms of celebrity worship, privacy, and reality tv (and, from a 2023 perspective, social media).
One of my favourite things about The Truman Show is how it uses metafiction, meaning how it constantly uses its structure to remind the audience that they are watching something fictional (the show within the film). The use of this is so clever that at one point we get the construction of an almost 5th wall after the 4th wall within the film is broken (I know a 5th wall is something else, stick with me). Truman looks directly into a camera and the show’s editors fear he is looking straight at them, aware of his role and the deception of the world they built for him. By extension, Truman is looking at us, the viewers of the film, asking if we’re aware of the same boxes into which we put our own celebrities. Additionally, the viewers of the show in the film seem to have varying degrees of knowledge about just how scripted and constructed this world is and whether Truman is more or less aware of his role in it, challenging us as viewers of the film to think about how much we actually know about the circumstances of the shows we watch and the lives of actors we follow.
The film is a satire of (many things, including) celebrity worship and the dehumanising ways we as a society treat (or possess) our stars. Watching it in 1998 certainly would have evoked these challenges to celebrity worship, thinking about tabloids and paparazzi and the treatment of stars such as Madonna or in immediate years after its release, Britney Spears. Watching it 25 years later after the ravages of social media, 24-hour news cycles, TMZ, TikTok, and what we now know about the National Security Agency, we have a much different understanding of the film. We can watch it and be horrified by the deception and the world that is constructed for Truman in similar ways, but our world has changed so much that The Truman Show now feels like a prescient warning about the constant surveillance we are all under both willingly by posting our lives to social media and unwillingly by virtue of CCTV and equivalent camera systems worldwide. How would someone watching The Truman Show in 1998 react to the reality show Hunted? How do we react to the reality show Hunted? Personally, with fucking horror.
From our 2023 perspective of seriously complex issues in our corporately entangled world questioning whether we have a right to privacy, bodily autonomy, ownership over others who dare to become actors, influencers, or public figures, as well as the psychological ramifications of questioning each of those categories and more deeply complicated and multi-layered intricacies of contemporary life, The Truman Show is a phenomenal film for prompting those questions, for seeing which themes or tropes or character traits from which genres pop out to you for deeper engagement. This is a film that changes with you as you grow your worldview and perspectives, as you pick up new elements and emotions each time you watch it. The dynamism of this hybrid-genre, or even genre-less, film is that rare quality in a film that not only invites but challenges both intense philosophical, emotional, personal engagement with the film and reflection on the ways in which you interact with the world around you outside of it.
The challenge for this review was conveying a genre interpretation of a hybrid-genre film that subverts most of the genres it presents as without giving away exactly how or what elements it manipulates to do so. One of Ed Harris’s best delivered lines of his career, in my view, is when he says in an interview of Truman not questioning his existence within the simulated world, “we accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. It's as simple as that." When you watch The Truman Show, what reality are you engaging with, which genres stick out most to you? What do those interpretations say about you and your worldview in our wider world and how have they changed on subsequent viewings? How simple was that?
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Formalist
As I said above, one of my favourite elements of The Truman Show is the multi-layered approach to the metafiction structure of the film. The way this is constructed is, in my view, breathtaking. We get so many different camera angles, perspectives, and frames. We see low angle shots from bushes with leaves around the frame implying that this is a shot from the fictional show. We get shots from Truman’s shoulder that cannot possibly be from a hidden camera in the constructed world implying this is a privileged shot for us, the viewers of the film. We see the interview of the creator from the camera filming it for prime time airing in the film’s real world. We get so many just *chef’s kiss* shots of Laura Linney or Noah Emmerich (playing Truman’s loved ones) cheating products to the camera and smiling as they advertise products within Truman’s life/the fictional show. The use of cinematography to build these worlds within worlds, shows within shows within a film, it’s just next level cinematic genius in my opinion.