Great film for many ages and mindsets

Rating: Null/10 (12 September 2016)

I really enjoyed The Truman Show I felt that it satirized a problem that is both far- reaching and persistent. I believe it was presented in a way funny enough to be palatable to the audience, while also unnerving enough to attack its target. Even when writing this, the fear still persists that this is all one big set, designed to sell your life for the viewing pleasure of a few million people. I felt that the audience was anyone old enough to understand how morally reprehensible the total invasion of privacy which occurred in the film was, however the target was much different. The target was anyone the participates in and/or propagates consumer culture, as well as supporters of invasive policies allowing for the unfair surveillance of innocent people. To do this, the writers had to highlight the immorality of the show, and present the benefits of having agency over your position. The immorality of the show was easy to expose, only having to show him being manipulated by his "loved ones" and the incompetency of the Kristof, the director. However, more importantly it showed Truman as the agent of his own fate. There was one specific quote in which Kristof said that we could see that Truman wanted to stay because if he wanted to leave then he could, which was quickly followed by Truman leaving. That quote from Kristof also reflects on the view of agency in today's society, in which people who have the deck stacked against them are blamed when they can't draw a royal flush. One contemporary example of this is the poor in today's society. Commonly people will say, "Poor people just need to get a job and stop living off welfare." However statements like this and Kristof's completely leave other circumstances that are the reason why the poor people are poor and why Truman took 30 years to escape. Such as, Truman was raised in a society where people were constantly telling him that the weird things happening were regular so it makes it harder for him to tell that his life isn't normal, and poor people are born into broken families surrounded by drugs, crime, and gangs all of which make it very hard to not be poor. For this reasons I would highly recommend The Truman Show to anyone that wants to constantly fear that they are being laughed at all around the world, and also people who want to look into the complex socio-economic problems facing the less fortunate of the world.