Ask Me Anything: 8 Answers To Your Questions About Tanstaafl

1. "The Truman Program" is an exceptionally troubling film. On the surface area, it handles the worn out concern of the intermingling of life and the media. Examples for such incestuous relationships are plentiful: Ronald Reagan, the cinematic president was likewise a presidential motion picture star. In another motion picture ("The Philadelphia Experiment") a defrosted Rip Van Winkle exclaims upon seeing Reagan on television (40 years after his forced hibernation started): "I understand this man, he utilized to play Cowboys in the movies". Honest cameras monitor the lives of webmasters (website owners) nearly 24 hours a day. The resulting images are continuously posted online and are readily available to anyone with a computer. The last decade experienced a spate of movies, all worried about the confusion between life and the replicas of life, the media. The ingenious "Capitan Fracasse", "Capricorn One", "Sliver", "Wag https://www.openlearning.com/u/demaris-qk47b7/blog/13SituationsWhenYoullNeedToKnowAboutFtl/ the Canine" and lots of lesser movies have all tried to tackle this (un)fortunate state of things and its ethical and practical implications. The blurring line in between life and its representation in the arts is perhaps the primary style of "The Truman Program". The hero, Truman, resides in a synthetic world, constructed particularly for him. He was born and raised there. He understands no other location. The people around him-- unbeknownst to him-- are all actors. His life is kept track of by 5000 electronic cameras and broadcast live to the world, 24 hours a day, every day. He is spontaneous and funny since he is unaware of the monstrosity of which he is the main cogwheel. But Peter Dam, the film's director, takes this problem one step even more by perpetrating an enormous act of immorality on screen. Truman is lied to, cheated, denied of his ability to make choices, managed and controlled by ominous, half-mad Shylocks. As I stated, he is unwittingly the only spontaneous, non-scripted, "star" in the on- going soaper of his own life. All the other figures in his life, including his parents, are stars. Numerous millions of viewers and voyeurs plug in to take a peep, to intrude upon what Truman innocently and honestly thinks to be his privacy. They are revealed responding to different dramatic or anti-climactic events in Truman's life. That we are the moral equivalent of these viewers-voyeurs, accomplices to the very same criminal activities, comes as a stunning awareness to us. We are (live) audiences and they are (celluloid) viewers. We both enjoy Truman's unintentional, non-consenting, exhibitionism. We understand the fact about Truman therefore do they. Naturally, we are in a privileged moral position since we understand it is a film and they understand it is a piece of raw life that they are enjoying. However moviegoers throughout Hollywood's history have willingly and insatiably participated in various "Truman Shows". The lives (genuine or created) of the studio stars were extremely made use of and integrated in their movies. Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, James Cagney all were forced to spill their guts in cathartic acts of on electronic camera repentance and not so symbolic embarrassment. "Truman Reveals" is the more common phenomenon in the film industry. Then there is the concern of the director of the motion picture as God and of God as the director of a film. The members of his group-- technical and non-technical alike-- obey Christoff, the director, practically blindly. They suspend their better moral judgement and catch his whims and to the harsh and repulsive aspects of his prevalent dishonesty and sadism. The torturer enjoys his victims. They define him and instill his life with significance. Caught in a story, the film says, people act immorally. (IN)popular psychological experiments support this assertion. Students were led to administer what they thought

2. were "fatal" electric shocks to their colleagues or to treat them bestially in simulated prisons. They followed orders. So did all the horrible genocidal bad guys in history. The Director Dam asks: should God be permitted to be immoral or should he be bound by morality and ethics? Should his choices and actions be constrained by an over- riding code of right and incorrect? Should we obey his commandments blindly or should we exercise judgement? If we do exercise judgement are we then being unethical due to the fact that God (and the Director Christoff) understand more (about the world, about us, the viewers and about Truman), know much better, are omnipotent? Is the exercise of judgement the usurpation of divine powers and attributes? Isn't this act of contumacy bound to lead us down the path of apocalypse? Everything boils down to the question of free choice and free choice versus the benevolent determinism enforced by an omniscient and omnipotent being. What is much better: to have the option and be damned (practically inevitably, as in the scriptural narrative of the Garden of Eden)-- or to catch the remarkable knowledge of a supreme being? A choice constantly includes a problem. It is the conflict in between two comparable states, 2 weighty decisions whose results are equally preferable and 2 identically-preferable courses of action. Where there is no such equivalence-- there is no option, simply the pre-ordained (offered complete understanding) workout of a choice or inclination. Bees do not choose to make honey. A fan of football does not choose to watch a football video game. He is inspired by a clear inequity in between the options that he deals with. He can check out a book or go to the game. His choice is clear and pre-determined by his preference and by the unavoidable and invariable implementation of the principle of enjoyment. There is no option here. It is all rather automatic. However compare this to the choice some victims had to make between 2 of their children in the face of Nazi brutality. Which child to sentence to death-- which one to sentence to life? Now, this is a genuine choice. It includes conflicting feelings of equal strength. One need to not confuse choices, opportunities and option. Choices are the simple choice obviously of action. This selection can be the outcome of a choice or the outcome of a propensity (conscious, unconscious, or biological-genetic). Opportunities are present states of the world, which permit a decision to be made and to impact the future state of the world. Options are our mindful experience of moral or other dilemmas. Christoff finds it unusual that Truman-- having actually discovered the fact-- firmly insists upon his right to make choices, i.e., upon his right to experience dilemmas. To the Director, issues hurt, unnecessary, harmful, or at finest disruptive. His utopian world-- the one he constructed for Truman-- is choice-free and dilemma-free. Truman is set not in the sense that his spontaneity is snuffed out. Truman is wrong when, in one of the scenes, he keeps screaming: "Beware, I am spontaneous". The Director and fat-cat capitalistic producers want him to be spontaneous, they want him to make decisions. But they do not desire him to make choices. So they affect his preferences and predilections by supplying him with an absolutely totalitarian, micro-controlled, repeated environment. Such an environment decreases the set of possible choices so that there is just one beneficial or acceptable choice (result) at any junction. Truman does decide whether to stroll down a certain course or not. But when he does decide to walk-- only one course is offered to him. His world is constrained and restricted-- not his actions. Really, Truman's only option in the motion picture causes a perhaps immoral choice. He abandons ship. He abandons the entire job. He destroys an investment of billions of dollars, people's lives and professions. He turns his back on some of the stars who appear to really be emotionally connected to him. He neglects the good and pleasure that the show has given the lives of countless individuals (the audiences). He selfishly and vengefully goes away. He understands all this. By the time he makes his choice, he is fully informed. He understands that some individuals may devote suicide, declare bankruptcy, endure major depressive episodes, do drugs. However this huge landscape of resulting destruction does not hinder him. He chooses his narrow, individual, interest. He walks. But Truman did not ask or pick to be put in his position. He found himself accountable for all these people without being consulted. There was no authorization or act of option included. How can anybody be responsible for the well-being and lives of other individuals-- if he did not CHOOSE to be so responsible? Furthermore, Truman had the best moral right to think that these individuals wronged him. Are we morally responsible and accountable for the wellness and lives of those who wrong us? Real Christians are, for example.

3. Furthermore, most of us, most of the time, discover ourselves in situations which we did not assist mould by our choices. We are reluctantly cast into the world. We do not supply prior consent to being born. This basic decision is produced us, forced upon us. This pattern continues throughout our childhood and adolescence: choices are made in other places by others and influence our lives profoundly. As grownups we are the items-- often the victims-- of the choices of corrupt political leaders, mad researchers, megalomaniac media barons, gung-ho generals and lunatic artists. This world is not of our making and our ability to form and influence it is really minimal and rather illusory. We live in our own "Truman Show". Does this mean that we are not morally accountable for others? We are morally accountable even if we did pass by uhe situations and the specifications and attributes of deep space that we populate. The Swedish Count Wallenberg endangered his life (and lost it) smuggling hunted Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe. He did pass by, or helped to form Nazi Europe. It was the brainchild of the deranged Director Hitler. Having actually discovered himself a reluctant individual in Hitler's scary program, Wallenberg did not turn his back and opted out. He stayed within the bloody and dreadful set and did his best. Truman needs to have done the same. Jesus said that he should have liked his opponents. He should have felt and shown duty towards his fellow people, even towards those who mistreated him greatly. However this might be an inhuman need. Such forgiveness and magnanimity are the reserve of God. And the reality that Truman's tormentors did not see themselves as such and thought that they were acting in his best interests which they were dealing with his every need-- does not absolve them from their criminal offenses. Truman needs to have kept a fine balance in between his obligation to the show, its developers and its viewers and his natural drive to get back at his tormentors. The source of the problem (which resulted in his act of choosing) is that the 2 groups overlap. Truman discovered himself in the difficult position of being the sole guarantor of the well-being and lives of his tormentors. To put the question in sharper relief: are we ethically required to conserve the life and livelihood of somebody who considerably mistreated us? Or is revenge warranted in such a case? A really problematic figure in this regard is that of Truman's best and childhood good friend. They matured together, shared secrets, feelings and adventures. Yet he lies to Truman constantly and under the Director's instructions. Whatever he states belongs to a script. It is this disinformation that encourages us that he is not Truman's real buddy. A genuine buddy is anticipated, above all, to provide us with full and true information and, consequently, to enhance our capability to choose. Truman's real love in the Program tried to do it. She paid the rate: she was ousted from the program. However she tried to provide Truman with an option. It is not sufficient to state the ideal things and make the right moves. Inner drive and motivation are required and the desire to take threats (such as the danger of providing Truman with full details about his condition). All the stars who played Truman's parents, loving better half, good friends and coworkers, badly stopped working on this score. It remains in this mimicry that the philosophical secret to the whole motion picture rests. An Utopia can not be faked. Captain Nemo's utopian underwater city was a real Paradise because everybody understood everything about it. Individuals were offered an option (though an irreparable and irrevocable one). They picked to become life time members of the reclusive Captain's nest and to follow its (overly reasonable) rules. The Paradise came closest to extinction when a group of roaming survivors of a maritime mishap were imprisoned in it against their revealed will. In the lack of option, no paradise can exist. In the absence of full, prompt and accurate info, no option can exist. Really, the availability of choice is so crucial that even when it is avoided by nature itself-- and not by the designs of more or less sinister or monomaniac individuals-- there can be no Paradise. In H.G. Wells' book "The Time Maker", the hero stray to the 3rd millennium just to come throughout a serene Utopia. Its members are immortal, do not have to work, or think in order to survive. Sophisticated makers take care of all their needs. No one forbids them to choose. There merely is no requirement to make them. So the Paradise is fake and indeed ends terribly. Lastly, the "Truman Program" encapsulates the most virulent attack on commercialism in a very long time. Greedy, senseless cash makers in the type of billionaire tycoon-producers make use of Truman's life shamelessly and

4. remorselessly in the ugliest display of human vices possible. The Director enjoys his control-mania. The producers indulge in their monetary fascination. The viewers (on both sides of the silver screen) delight in voyeurism. The stars vie and contend in the compulsive activity of advancing their minor careers. It is a repulsive canvas of a disintegrating world. Possibly Christoff is right after al when he warns Truman about the true nature of the world. However Truman chooses. He picks the exit door causing the outer darkness over the false sunlight in the Utopia that he leaves behind.