Truman Show & Satire

Rating: 9/10 (8 September 2014)

The Truman Show sheds light on the flaws in the "perfect society" conceived by many people throughout time. It shows how this kind of "utopia" is not what the human race needs and in a way how when we have all the things we need, we find issues with it and other things to desire. The film possessed various elements of satire, using a strong persona, tone, hyperbole and irony. Truman's tone and view at the beginning was basically the view of people that think this society is possible and a good idea. Towards the end, his tone changes which propels the audience to continue to agree with the movie's creators or to change their mind completely. In the film they also use hyperbole in the case of how much all these people care about this random guy's life, and they over exaggerate the perfect sunshiny place that Truman lives in. Although this movie is about sixteen years old, it definitely still applicable to our society today. Now it relates to not only watching people's lives on TV (like Keeping Up With The Kardashians) but with social media, whether you are "watching" people you know on Instagram, Twitter etc or if you are following the lives of people you do not know on YouTube or Vine. Although this takes on a much different purpose, The Truman Show could be related to the Hunger Games in the way that there is a central power that controls everything, and the weather-controlled, camera monitored dome is very similar to the arena used in the Hunger Games. Overall, I liked The Truman Show and it shows how these seemingly perfect utopias cannot exist, while being a fun light-hearted film.