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‘The Truman Show’ offers viewers a great insight into the concept of discovery by presenting themes of Descartes’ perception and reality and the power of media are prevalent in the process of discovery promoting a sense of reality and awareness of one’s place in life. In this film directed by Peter Weir, the viewers are confronted with the eponymous character’s quest for reality as he experiences countless setbacks in his search for definitive answers to questions of reality. By portraying discovery as a series of tensions between Truman and fiction, the viewers are asked upon their own experiences of the discovery of reality.
‘The Truman Show’ presents an idea of discovering perception and reality where Truman’s determination to discover the reality is paralleled to René Descartes throughout the film. In ‘Meditations’, Descartes makes it so he does not know what reality is by abandoning his past knowledge to discover what is really true. Descartes firstly discards his posteriori knowledge as that type of knowledge is subject to bias and falsehood. Like Descartes, Truman’s skepticism of his a posteriori knowledge drives his discoveries catalyzed by someone who he believes to be his dead father and thus becomes uncertain about his life and those in it. Truman’s testing of the citizens drove him to see “loose threads, false steps and notices many ‘slips of the tongue’”. He even holds skepticism of his own wife and uses a knife to give himself a sense of safety and reassurance. He begins to victimized as though there is a plot and “everyone seems to be in on it”. Truman still holds the reassurance of physical reality of objects, but he believes his intellectual reality has been compromised. Truman doubts and the abandonment of his posterior knowledge is largely similar to the Descartes method of doubt in uncovering the reality. Descartes book ‘Meditations’ explains an evil genius/malevolent demon’s existence to deceive humans, in this case, Christof, thus providing a reason why Truman was forced into this false reality. Note, Christof is a play on the term ‘of Christ’ which means fake Christ. This ‘evil genius’ chooses the characters, the weather, and the circumstances of Truman’s life. Thus, keeping Truman from discovering reality until Truman’s doubts grow too strong and become too ‘big’ to control as represented in the scene where Christof strokes a large screen with Trumans face on it. Despite the prominence of falsity in Seahaven, Truman holds onto the truth that he is the ‘true man’. While the world around him can be manipulated by Christof, his mind will always remain as his sole property. He is, therefore, able to doubt, question and reason his reality. Descartes quote “I think, therefore I am” becomes the Archimedean point. For, no matter how uncertain Truman was about those around him, he never doubts the realness of himself.
Although the reality is a difficult concept to understand, both Descartes and Truman do so by doubting, asking questions, rejecting past knowledge, and remembering their own existence.
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