The film stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, a man who grew up living an ordinary life that, unbeknownst to him, takes place on a large set populated by actors for a reality television show about him...
As the show approaches its 30th anniversary, Truman begins discovering unusual elements such as a spotlight falling out of the sky in front of his house and a radio channel that precisely describes his movements... [and attempts to escape] Truman continues to sail until his boat pierces the wall of the dome. Initially horrified, Truman discovers a nearby staircase leading to an exit door. As Truman contemplates leaving his world, the Truman Show director Christof speaks directly to Truman through a speaker system and tries to persuade him to stay, claiming that there is no more truth in the real world than in his artificial one, where he would have nothing to fear.
Which raises philosophical questions like: are all of us actually only living in a setup, an experiment run by some superior being or beings? After all, haven't we discovered some "unusual elements" like Modern Physics or even in Mathematics, which most of us figured was pure almost by definition, until the advent of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems where undecidable questions have even arisen in physics, suggesting that Gödelian incompleteness afflicts not just math, but... in some ill-understood way... reality.
What some interpret as conspiracy others claim as die-hard truth. Take, for example:
Horatio Spafford: Not Well With His Soul
The very well presented Hugh Bonneville narration, and the oft congregational singing of "When peace like a river", leave out what for many are the more questionable aspects of Horatio Spafford's life. I quote:
Like the false prophet Harold Camping [who predicted that the rapture and Judgment Day would take place on May 21, 2011 and that the end of the world would take place five months later], from his “bad experience” in an instituted church (brought about by his own egregious sin), Spafford proceeded to write off not just his own local church but all churches. Horatio repeatedly claimed, “God has showed us that ‘the Church’ in all its parts… is destitute of spiritual power… Theirs are false teachings”. Horatio, his wife Anna and their followers viewed the visible churches with “contempt”, calling them “Babylon” and that "God had chosen [us] instead of the organized church as the new ‘holy and peculiar people’ to be ‘the Bride made one with Him and one another'”
There are some noticeable resonances here with doctrine that I have described elsewhere in regard to my own loose connection with the Move although it is not my intention to equate them. Such movements are often driven by a singular personality and that attribute ought to be enough to warn the rest of us. But the opposite of singular is "all we like sheep" and anyway wasn't Jesus decidedly singular? The world might think Spafford a heretic but what would we have done, had we been around him? It's too easy to see the wool after the event. The trouble is, there is likely a degree of truth in the thinking of the Move, Spafford, and many present day "conspiracy" theories, and isn't it also easy to pick holes in the strange activities of the institutionalised "church"?
All of which does not help a chap in his quest for truth.
A remarkable & thought provoking post! I really enjoyed The Truman Show...
ReplyDeleteAfter having read the CPRC article I found the Tabernacle Choir presentation very hard to stomach.
Why must things be neatened up around the edges (and in this case, the middle as well) so heavily before they can be presented? Given that the world we see nowadays is mainly presentation - media - medium - the disconnect between reality and the presentation is easier to achieve and harder to detect. But as we begin to suspect that reality shows are not indeed reality and so on, we really (!) need an alternative.
Perhaps this is where interaction with real human beings and the real world is a helpful antidote. Gibert & Sullivan's:
I often think it's comical--Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive--Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Still holds true and I suspect it always has and always will. But the real "little boys" and "little girls" are quite different from the slots they find themselves in - and find themselves having to defend: forced into representing something that isn't true; becoming part of the misrepresentation. Like the actress who portrayed Anna Spafford...
(Not that what I'm calling a "real" world may not be found to be somewhat imaginary after all - but it is what we have, and I say let us make the extensional bargain of embracing it as reality! "Occam's Razor meets String Theory..." Personally I think Plato would be pleased with the outcome.)
I long for the ruthless and yet merciful honesty of a Speaker for the Dead. "Honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth." (C S Lewis)