Comparing Catcher In The Rye And The Truman Show

Metropolis Utopia: no crime, no poverty, and no problems; it is the seemingly perfect society. The amazing concept of such a reality has been featured in numerous films, literature, television, and music in both positive and negative lights. The most recent example is Disney’s 3D animated film aptly Zootopia (2016), focusing on a government conspiracy that involves the spread of drugs to predators, to keep the prey population safe, akin to Ronald Reagan and the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Zootopia, however is not the first film to deal with a utopian society. Another well known film that also had it’s own Utopian city is The Truman Show, whose central question was whether a utopian society is really better than the currently flawed ones.

Life will end the same for everyone - in death physically or metaphorically, so the end place does not matter as much as the journey that was taken to get to it, or just being yourself. In both works the utopian societies strive on the halt of everyone’s personal journeys. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s personal vision of society focuses on the protection of others childhood innocence. To keep it safe however, would deprive people from learning about politics, violence, relationships, and sex which are all part of someone’s true personality. Individualism in The Truman Show is also affected greatly, not because it has to, rather they want to. Even though the Utopian city is just a tv show made up of thousands of actors, they still present every actor as being overly nice to Truman, no matter his own feelings, or their actual connection to Truman in his life. The only time the actors act genuine is when Truman starts to get near the edge of the dome, or finding out the truth. To quote another movie about one’s purpose in life, “It's bad to kill. Guns kill. And you don't have to be a gun. You are what you choose to be. You choose. Choose” (Bird, Iron Giant) when the Iron Giant a.k.a Superman has an option to continue terrorizing the town, or to stop and help them from themselves. The Iron Giant’s main theme is very much summarized by, “you choose”, by giving but without learning about life, the Iron Giant would have not been able to choose. In both works the citizens who occupy the utopian societies are just empty shells that accept what they are presented with, because they are not aware of anything else, akin to the totalitarian government presented in