Jess Fong

Week 12 (The Truman Show)

The city life is not an easy one; people often say if you can make it in New York City,
you can make it anywhere. This belief applies to many of this countrys cities. With their
unending wealth of cultural, political, and economic stimuli, and the constantly changing rhythm
of city life, it is little wonder that those who live there need a certain degree of flexibility and
adaptability. The suburbs, on the other hand, represent the opposite of the city pacestable
routines and safety. The movie The Truman Show, which takes place in a typical suburb,
highlights these aspects. However, the movie is also an expression of a power that always exists
in society, a power that tracked the suburbs from its development from the cityeconomic
power. The main characters entire life is the plot of a major TV show (The Truman Show)
and every part of it is controlled by the creator to maximize revenue and view ratings. The movie
The Truman Show highlights the routine stability of suburban life, but also the inescapable
economic power that follows it from the city.
As explained by The Suburb Reader, suburbs arose from a number of factors, including
economic, technological, and social. There is, however, a commonality between these factors
the material and psychological needs of the middle class. Urban opportunities offer some people
the financial foundation to move away from the city, to distance family and work lives, to pursue
certain material and moral desires. Suburbs are the physical manifestation of an ideological shift
in what is desirablespatial units, privacy, stability, and family time. The main character,
Truman Burbanks life and the suburb he lives in reflect all these elements of the new
American Dream. He has a white collar office job, a happy wife, a spacious house and decent car,
and even cheerful neighbors that he says a scripted good morning greeting to. What is crucial
is that residents in a suburb know what is going to happen next. This becomes extremely obvious
when the movies opening sequence (the good morning greeting, Dalmatian attack, magazine
purchase, and accosting by the doppelgangers) is repeated almost exactly halfway through the
movie. This occurs after Truman begins to piece together the reality of his life, but when it seems
that he is trying to break out of the scripted routine, the suburb forces him back into it. Truman
himself even realizes his strangely scheduled life when he points out to his wife the traffic
rounds around his block. At the end of the movie, when Truman finally frees himself and the
show is over, the viewers immediately change channels in search of the next addicting show, a
replacement so that their TV watching routine is not broken. Increasingly, this ability to predict
the future, to always know what the next step is by knowing a set routine, this unquestionable
stability has picked up a value afforded only by those who live in this rhythm of the suburbs.
More importantly, The Suburb Reader describes a type of morality that attaches to
suburban life that comes through its emphasis on family and time away from the immoral
corruptions of the city. Similarly, The Truman Show stresses how honest the show isit is
the real, unscripted life of a real guy. This show and the suburban lifestyle it presents is
something drastically different from the fakery and deceits of the actual, or other urban world.
The shows creator actually says at one point that the actual outside world is sick, and the one
that he created is the only safe place. In a sense, the suburbs are a means of escape from the
stressful pace and ever-present, potentially corrupting stimuli of city life.
The Truman Show also shows the unrelenting power of the corporation even on a life
that seems to split itself away from the city. To the rest of the citizens of this artificial town, the
creator of the show, Christof, has the economic power as their employer and provider. However,
he is much more than just the signer of paychecks. He has the financial and technological
resources to control the management of this suburb, the tides, even the weather. Christof is the
epitome of urban corporate powerdisciplinary, encompassing, and inescapable. In cities,
corporate duties infiltrated each workers daily schedule much more simply by the physical setup
of the city. The Suburb Reader notes that city people often lived above their shops or close to
where they worked; the house and the workplace melded seamlessly and the demands of a job
were more likely met due to this proximity. While the suburban routine should include time
purely for relaxation and family, away from the job, Trumans suburb is controlled literally day
and night by the shows creator. The creator decides what each person says, does, reacts, at all
hours of the day and even controls the sun and the moon (as exemplified by his infamous line,
Cue the sun!). Corporate presence is also much more ubiquitous in cities, with their ownership
and usage of billboards, building faces, and even entire buildings. Property ownership in a city is
largely in the hands of the corporation, while a normal suburb has the appeal of owning your
own house, car, and lawn. The Truman suburb, however, is arguably worse than a city as all of
itincluding the air and skyis entirely owned by the show. The Truman Show shows the
enormous reach of corporate power. It is one aspect of city life that seems to be inescapable.
While the movie is an extreme circumstance, corporate power does, to an extent, have these
effects on individual lives. Outside of setting a daily work schedule, corporations insert popular
catchphrases and cultural icons, decide which countries and cities are best for vacationing, what
products create the most perfect style of family or home. The way that they work is much more
subtle than in the movie, but has a similar effect on individual lives.
The Truman Show tries to represent an escape from the corruptions of real society
(presumably the city and its tempting stimuli) by depicting a perfect suburban life. The Truman
Show, the movie, does succeed in showing the dramatic differences between the unpredictable
flow of cities against the familiar routines of the suburb, but only acts to cement aspects of the
city, namely the presence of a strong and inevitable corporate power.