Seahaven Island: Who'll be next to leave or be voted off?

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2001)

This film rightly forecasted that a voyeuristic-dominated society like Western consumerist America pop culture will move toward peeking through the windows as the next step in TV programming. Already this week, the CBS network is building up anticipation for Survivor 3: Africa and Big Brother 2 while other broadcast and cable networks follow with much of the same (MTV's REAL WORLD of a few years ago). In the world of Truman Burbank, the all-seeing, all-knowing (supposedly) Christof plays "God" with maniacal gusto. He's like the Grand Inquisitor in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Director Peter Weir and Original Screenplay author Andrew Niccol have shown convincingly their audience that today's Pop Culture in the light of day is pathologically or at least neurotically obsessed with "on-camera" peers who have been manipulated into "maze-like" situations and problems. Mainstream TV audiences (according to ratings surveys) want to watch religiously as people are "voted off" or "lose a challenge" for a weekly dosage of bread and circuses. From scene to scene, Truman gets tormented, teased and finally caught up in a deadly hurricane as his TV audience sits back and breathes sighs of relief. He does have one true friend inside his tormenting contrived "universe": a beautiful informer-traitor named Sylvia/Lauren who cheers his efforts to find a real world apart from the Land of the Smirks, Patronizing Product Placements, and Constant Surveillance. Will technology and oppressive social control win out over the freedom of the individual to choose to be with honest, enabling others? Watch this unconventional film on video on Independence Day to find out!