Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Kristof, let me ask you.

  • Why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now?

  • We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that

  • In the beginning of the truman show a star falls from the sky, well.. a light falls from the ceiling of a sky-high

  • Set that encloses an artificial town built for the life of one

  • man

  • and the entertainment of the whole world the light says sirius nine canis major which refers to

  • sirius the Brightest [star] in the night sky

  • This star which [homer] once called an evil portent bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity. In the film the falling of Sirius

  • is the first in a series of

  • Ruptures in Truman's fake reality, a series that ends here with [an] actual rupture a breach in things as they are

  • like an homer Peter Weir director of the Truman show

  • envisions this door into real reality

  • in darker terms than you might expect. All the symbols we usually associate with goodness and positivity are

  • behind Truman. Bright blue skies sunbeams breaking through the clouds an expanse of sea of

  • possibility. Reality, truth and authenticity on the other hand are relegated to a small single rectangle of

  • shadow

  • hardly the light at the end of the Tunnel that we normally associate with

  • liberation all throughout the film freedom for Truman is linked tightly with trauma every peek behind the curtain is accompanied by

  • Some form of pain whether it's the pain of seeing the image of a deceased loved one the pain of a true connection

  • Abruptly cut short the pain of memory or simply the pain of uncertainty of not knowing what it is

  • You're seeing that's of course a pain that we're all familiar with it's why for the most part we see only

  • What we want to see. Truman has been privy to a lifetime full of hints

  • Clues to the fact that his world is not as it seems

  • Yes

  • to incorporate those clues means to reconfigure the [entire] narrative of his existence and

  • Rewrites like that just aren't free. They cost.

  • They cost suffering. Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol were prophetic about so much from the vantage of

  • 1998 the ubiquity of Reality television the rise of Mass Surveillance

  • they keyed in perfectly to my parents generation of cold War Paranoia of being watched or bugged and my own generation of

  • narcissism where it bugs us not to be watched

  • That's a great joy of the truman show the allegories and layered readings, the heaviness of it all stands out vividly

  • Even for a kid like I was when I saw it at age 10

  • It's not pedantic or preachy. It just asks so many damn questions that are impossible to ignore. [Truman] "what the hell are you talking about?

  • Who are you talking to?" And actually I was watching it again recently

  • And I was really struck by how easily the truman show can be read as an allegory for

  • the present. Like Truman's town of C. Haven, our own world seems to be experiencing a similar series of

  • ruptures, ruptures like the Great Recession 2008

  • the Arab Spring, like the killings of Young Black men by police or our

  • increasing awareness of them, like brexit the splitting of [the] uk from Europe and

  • Most recently like the rise of the political outsider movements of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

  • I think American society at large is a lot like Truman Burbank

  • Laboring like him for 30 plus years under a system that is finally showing itself to be ridiculous

  • Society like Truman is trying to wake itself up while stumbling under the pain that surfaces from doing so

  • The Truman show is a massive operation with a crew and cast of thousands

  • But for all the power that Christoph commands the show's success always

  • Hinges on Truman himself. It can only work if Truman believes in it. [Chrtistoph] "He could leave at any time

  • if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth

  • There's no way we could prevent him" The powerful in our world hold things in place like Christoph holds Truman

  • But we hold ourselves in place, too. If nothing else, It's clear that in 2016

  • we are slowly waking up into a new political reality like in Truman's world the power

  • relationships of our own have gained and consolidated strength by convincing us that

  • They're normal like laws of nature by taking any breach and folding it [back] into the narrative

  • They've kept all those like Truman who are perennial losers at they but ideologies don't last forever eventually

  • They crumble under their own weight and the increasing refusal of people to believe it. [Truman] Thank you for your help. [Policemen] You're welcome, Truman.

  • the Truman Show shows us

  • what waking up looks like. It stages in a really valuable way the struggles that come with it?

  • It shows how the messaging of the dominant ideology is absorbed into media and into education

  • It shows us how individual people even people we trust, good people, can become the mouthpieces of a rotten system

  • Everybody is in on it

  • I'd have to be a nun [too] and

  • Most importantly of [all] the Truman show Imagines liberation, not as utopia

  • but as a world flawed like our own full of multiplicity and contradiction and

  • people obsessed with TV

  • [it's] a world gained only by struggle and pain, one that often looks like an evil portent in the moment

  • It's not a sunburst in the clouds or an endless sea

  • But a small shadowy door that leads off to a territory unmapped

  • But invested hopefully with a greater

  • Authenticity. [Truman] In case I don't see ya

  • Good afternoon good evening, and good night

  • There is a new Nerdwriter video every [Wednesday]

  • So if you go right there and click on that you'll subscribe to this channel get all the videos and that's what helps

  • Me out the most the truman show blows my mind every time [I] watch it

  • [I] saw it in the theaters when [I] was 10 in 1998 with my mom

  • And it was one of the best movie experiences the formative movie experiences of my life

  • So this was a blast to make thanks so much for watching again. [I'll] see you guys [next] Wednesday

Kristof, let me ask you.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it