The Truth In Peter Weir's 'The Truman Show'

A popular cliché says that seeing is believing. What one sees, feels, and experiences helps develop a perspective in the mind to which one believes is the truth. Although, what one perceives as the truth might be one hundred percent plausible, it may not be the same as what another believes to be the truth. It’s all relative to what visions and emotions one has access to. Peter Weir’s The Truman Show displays this concept that one’s reality may just be a small subset of the what the truth really entails. Truman, a seemingly normal man, lives his perfect life without worry, but when looking at the bigger picture, his world does not seem so perfect. Truman’s utopian environment is simply a staged production of what a perfect life would look like. At the wheel of this entertaining spectacle is Christof, the mastermind behind “The Truman Show”. Feeling the stress of managing a television show of such high caliber, Christof drives himself and Truman to the brink of insanity which, consequently, causes them

In The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir, Christof feels pressured to rectify the imperfections that arise as he develops “The Truman Show”, in order to maintain the show’s authenticity due to Truman’s constant desire to explore the realm of Christof’s false reality, indicating that a false perception built upon the ignorance of common knowledge becomes reality when one is shielded from any alternate perspective that could be seen as the truth. Weir depicts Truman’s reality as a utopian society to contrast the fallacy it truly is, a perception built upon Truman’s ignorance of standard knowledge, justifying that the influence of a higher power can determine what is commonly seen as the truth. “‘We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that.’” Christof explains to an interviewer as the master manipulator he is (Weir). Truman