The Truman Show: A Different American Dream

Truman Burbank, a child who was adopted before he was born by a film company, had been brought up on Seahaven Island, a large and completely humandesigned plateau. On the island, Truman is the only ‘real’ person. Not only the surrounding environment but his mother, father, wife, and best friend are all part of the fiction as “actors.” The interplay between real and fiction is in fact being watched by millions of different countries in the world. Everything used in the show, all products, are objects of advertisement and for sale. We see in the movie that everything in the real world has a price and how popular culture shapes society with visuals.

Today’s lifestyle leaning towards consumption bombards us with the ideology of use, finish, throw it away, and continue for the new. We cannot deny that architects and others from different disciplines working with architects are not complicit. Environments constructed with the promise of creating ideal spaces for living do not promote life experiences, city culture, or the well-being of the individual, but impose capitalism’s demands.

The Truman Show, which leaves unanswered questions in our minds and brings about questions to question ourselves and those around us, foreshadowed today’s spectacle society. Social media and popular culture dominate our space of living day by day and people choosing to become not only spectators but also those who are watched turned to the directors of The Truman Show.

The Truman Show movie, with all of its metaphorical descriptions, treats carefully the change in the notion of space. It eventually is a remarkable movie, bringing a new perceptive to architectural culture.

Keywords: Architecture in Cinema, american Dream, american middle class, big Brother, dystopian Film, fabricated world, frankfurt School, fictional words, ideal spaces, jim Carrey, lifestyle, mass culture and mise-en-scène, metaphorical, neighbor family, peter Weir, spectacle society, seahaven Island, the Truman Show, truman Syndrome, virtual world.