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 "THE
TRUMAN SHOW" NOMINATED FOR DEMOCRACY AWARD
Peter Weir's continuing effort to inspire filmviewers to reflect
on the stupid mistakes committed by those in power has hit
the jackpot again. Whereas his Gallipoli questioned
why Britain used soldiers as cannon fodder, and his Dead
Poets Society depicted the cruelties of authoritarianism
and antisemitism, The Truman Show tells us about
the most frightening autocracy of all-the tendency for the
general public to believe that everything in the media is
real but to reject an authentic life in which a person might
make his or her own decisions. In short, the message is that
the media have capitalized on an inner totalitarianism because
being a real person in a consumer-oriented society is terra
incognita. Weir has indeed found a script to make the point
that that if everyone thinks alike, then nobody is thinking,
and the audiences of the television series named "The Truman
Show" appear more the focus for Weir than Truman Burbank,
the star of the show. The Truman Show, in demonstrating
that few persons nowadays have an interest in being anything
but spectators of the lives of others, asks us to turn off
our television sets and live our own lives.
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Ultimately,
the hero of the film tries to assert his identity and he does
escape his captor, who has monitored and directed his life
for some thirty years, but the audiences who have been viewing
Truman on television cheer his human liberation-but not necessarily
theirs. The Truman Show, thus, portrays a world
that is much worse than Orwell's 1984-one in which the public
accepts and even applauds the totalitarian control of a human
being simply because the result is entertaining to watch.
One reviewer has likened Truman's story to Siddharta, but
the audience portrayed in the film clearly has made a Faustian
pact, and the outcome for the contemporary world is uncertain.
The Truman Show, thus, makes a strong bid as
the 1998 film that best raises consciousness about the need
for greater democracy.
THIS
YEAR'S NOMINATED FILMS
DEMOCRACY:
Four Days in September, Primary
Colors, Wag the Dog
EXPOSÉ:
Bulworth, Four
Days in September
HUMAN RIGHTS:
Wilde
PEACE: The
Boxer, Men with Guns
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