26 Years Later, The Truman Show is Proven Real
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- čas přidán 29. 04. 2024
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My favorite thing about the movie is that it ends on Truman leaving. It kinda makes you think "oh by the way, this is just a movie, now go out there and live".
Underrated comment.
I feel like I’ve waited a quarter of a century for this video essay. Did anyone else imagine they were on a hidden camera show after watching The Truman Show?
Yep that was me at 8 yo. I even think there is a mental disorder that sprung from people watching that movie and getting paranoid
@@pikafresa6841 I’ll add it to my list of mental disorders. I’m gonna need a gauntlet for all these neurodivergent infinity stones
You are being monitored
@@RedGuy-wy2gg mostly by Legos
@@pikafresa6841 It was just renamed. The same disorder during the Cold War simply centered around J. Edgar Hoover's FBI overreach, and affected people were just CERTAIN that the FBI was tailing them, recording their conversations, etc. Other people think they are being monitored by aliens, but not because they believe they have ever been abducted; they're just being watched. Same with the Matrix, where this specific thing interacted with the Matrix's popularity by having the... um, patient, I guess... believe that they're just a regular Matrix citizen but that their reality has been reset because they did something in a way they weren't supposed to. Little things here and there like choosing the wrong entree at a restaurant and causing the wrong butterfly effect that the Architect didn't like.
lots of 90s movie did the "deconstructing the 50s tropes" so much that its kinda a trope of the 90s, its the nature of children standing up to their parents and tearing down their ideals
It’s a thing. Also the nostalgia cycle was a big part of that-I think it’s a lot like how now (the 2020s) we have this HUGE flood of 80s and 90s revival media, eg. the current Ninja Turtle merchandise comeback. Or the trolls; maybe a better example. Trolls movies are big again because the adults in the 90s played with trolls as kids and feel nostalgic. And in the 90s trolls were big because the adults at the time had played with trolls in the 60s, and so they brought them back in a revival because of their nostalgia.
But like you say-80s and early/mid 90s media is FULL of callbacks to 1950s/60s, but interestingly it’s not the counterculture movements of those times that the decades are so well known for-it’s the mainstream culture of the time that gets referenced. At least when the references are either nostalgic or satirically critical of the power structures the aesthetic represents. Counterculture retrospective stories exist, but they tend to be different. They often, for instance, deal with counterculture battles for social justice issues pertinent to the time, or tell scrappy stories of people starting out in life and fending for themselves. Aspirational perhaps, and some nostalgia, but not the type of nostalgia of “those were the good old days when we were safe and everything made sense.” In other words, the nostalgia for the naïveté of childhood in which the adults (if you’re fortunate) took care of you and you didn’t have as much awareness about the world’s problems (or more to the point-you didn’t yet comprehend that the adults in your life weren’t as wise or infallible as you thought). In nostalgically framed settings, I think we see environments more in line with “leave it to beaver” instead of hippies and beatniks (or later punks and gangster rappers) because nostalgia tends to refer to when the adult creatives of a given time were young kids. I think it’s usually ’mainstream culture ’ nostalgia because counterculture movements of most periods tend to involve teens and young adults, and so nostalgic childhood references tend to be more centered around to life surrounding kids before they had to deal with worldly adult responsibilities-but they also haven’t had the chance to differentiate themselves into cultures outside of that of their parents.
I think this pattern is evolving and changing though. We’ve seen it over the last 100 years of cinema. Mainstream films that dealt with historical settings largely looked back on old times as mythologized eras of heroes, and demigod patriarchal figures. They told these stories uncritically as celebration of and affirmation of what people already believed. But as media became more accessible, both to consume and to create, people no longer experienced only the top-down manicured narrative of the powerful in society. They started to see the problems. This led not only to protest and activism in the artist’s adult present, but a re-evaluation of their own pasts. It’s an experience of, “My whole life up to now I believed what my parents and leaders told me from above. They told me what life was, what events meant, who I was. But now I see that the powerful in my adult time are lying/out of touch. My parents continue to believe them. Were they lying when I was a kid too? Did my parents fall for a lie back then and feed it to me because they believed it? If I was raised on lies about what the world was and what life meant back then, my entire basis of reality might be warped. I need to go back and re-process all of this.” And thus we get the postmodern media of the 90s that challenged and rejected old meta-narratives, often times by creating a vision of a whole world that turns out to be a lie (a la The Truman Show or The Matrix).
What I’m interested to see is what kind of media Zoomers and Gen Alpha kids make when they are the ones on top of media companies. They grew up from the ground up with access to the internet, and much less sheltered from the realities of the world. It was much more difficult for adults around them to manicure a limited reality, and they became interested in issues of social justice earlier than most generations. They lost their illusions much faster than those of us who gained access to media from non-hegemonic perspectives later in life. I’m really curious to see what their “nostalgic” media will look like. I bet it will be quite different from that of prior generations 🤔
@@TurtleTreehouseI feels you
13:09 The fact that Neo has powers in the "real world" shows that "the real world" is actually within another Matrix, but that is never properly explored in the films, unfortunately
No it isn't which is a shame. All of the seeds are there and are pretty glaringly obvious, even Morpheus realizes it at the end. Layer after layer.
I have a hypothesis that the idea of a paradise afterlife is just to condition people for the first layer. The architect says that people rejected the perfect world they first made, but what if those people were conditioned from birth to understand the idea of a heaven? When they finally reach it they will stop rejecting and trying to break free.
I was a Jehovahs Witness and grew up watching the Truman Show. They definitely demonized doing any critical investigation of the sect's history or theology, and instead insisted constant service to the religion through meetings and door to door work. I had my voyage moment when I decided to do research on the org and it felt extremely liberating to leave it behind.
After leaving the Truman show studio he later goes to city of Buffalo and becomes the worlds greatest field reporter
Jared's way of summarizing movies and novels and such it's really excellent. He knows just how to capture the essence of a story in a single paragraph sometimes less. You don't have to do that a lot, so you don't realize how hard it is to do it as well as Jared does
The Wisecrack Messiah
and Jim Carrey has a video about "Jim Carrey doesn't exist " My head is spinning LMAO
Wow. You make me want to do Film Studies and I had no idea I was even interested in this.
I don't know why in the minute 4:10 I was expecting the scene from Matrix where Cypher is talking to the agent about the bliss of ignorance.
I remember that on online forums it was said that there was an alternate ending in which as he walked out the door, Truman walked into an alley where a man was robbing an elderly woman and simply turned around and walked back to the set. The concept by Echo and the Disney example *makes a LOT of sense* of this myth.
Disney castle based om German and Spanish medieval castle that was built in 19 century based on very popular Romantic style of knights, chivalry. (Mark Twain and Monty Python opinion about - Sir Walter Scott. He was a loony). Disney castle is hyper hyper realism.
"You could say this is an example of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattaris concepts..." I DID say that. That was the subject of my thesis paper, that included the same examples from the Truman Show and Eco, along with Baudrilliard and others. That's so funny. Wait, am I actually the subject of a reality tv show?
When I go out to the swamp i see dozens of gators, they fight and hunt and make noises. They do way cooler stuff than they do at the zoo.
desroyed with facts and logic
Checkmate atheists
Checkmate, atheists
Yup, the zoo is the manufactured non-hyper because it features living beings in dead environments!
All of the closets are cluttered with our abused and broken skeletons and the elephants in the room have become passé; we've hunted down the maguffins and ripped out all of their magical stuffing, and soon every beautiful secret will become cliché. *sK*
What was it about the late 90s and movies about guys who are disillusioned with their mundane lives? There was the Truman Show, Office Space, the Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others
Call it a symptom of conservatism of the 50s and 80s making many Gen Xers (and hopefully some wise boomers) reaching their breaking point and trying to verbalize it creatively
I imagine it’s a very Gen-X thing.
Also reminds me a couple years ago, a millenial tweeted, man, I only wish I could have an office job.
The power of persuasion, could compel a group of people to follow you somewhere, if you convinced them there were great rewards to be found there.
But when you get there, and it’s a barren wasteland, the crowd will quickly disperse.
I started my working life in 2000 and had my mind front-loaded with all that stuff so I've always been the slightly cynical guy at the office who sees through corporate bs. (Still happy to take the money though)
That Jean Baudrillard quote is the best / most accurate criticism of The Matrix I've ever heard. And somehow never heard it before until just now.
I find Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) to be very interesting in this aspect. The characters constantly struggle with continuing disillusionment wanting back what once was (getting their original bodies back), until at the end they accept the struggle, the responsibility with the complications, and continue in their lives, driven for just each other. It is the darkest part of coming of age portrayed incredibly well.
I would be over the moon, if you once would make a video on it.
Regarding Matrix 4, Lana made it because the studio made it clear that it would be made with or without their involvement. It's not fair to say she did it for the money.
Go Jared, been here gang
The trouble with the allegory of the cave is when we exit the cave, we can't know for certain we haven't simply entered another cave with more convincing puppets
It's ultimately a subset of the problem of solipsism
I think you just helped explain what I love about Fallout's setting so much. I really like vintage sci-fi, alternate timelines, and forced *hyper realities*.
What if Jim Carrey’s character from ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ is Truman, but several years after leaving the original show? By then people have forgotten about him because other shows will have taken its place; meanwhile, Truman (having changed his name soon after leaving the show) has a deep inability to form close and meaningful relationships because he spent his first 30-ish years in what was essentially a carefully controlled lie. The line at the beginning “why do I fall in love with every woman who smiles at me?” indicates that he doesn’t know how to form friendships or relationships with people; he’s naive due to never having had a relationship that wasn’t scripted. He didn’t get together with the woman from TTS (can’t remember her name in the film; she’s played by Natasha McEhlone) because he can’t trust her either, not least because she was part of the show.
Perhaps he even used Lacuna in order to forget his time on TTS.
Kinda cool cannon but I don't think it would make sense unless the whole world got their mind wiped because in Truman show, it's established Truman is revered all around the world. Once Truman left the show, he'd be like Oprah or some other hyper big personality figure purely because how famous he is.
...and in order to make his love life easier, he became a yes man type in 'Yes Man'?
...and don't forget he became a God temporarily in 'Bruce Almighty' 😁
when i grow up, i'm gonna have so much amnesia. i mean, i have it now, but i forgot
I LOVED Eco’s Travels In Hyperreality! It was pretty old, even when The Truman Show was just out. You do a great job of showing how these two works relate to each other, and how they’re both relevant and both worth discussing now.
Where has this channel been my whole life
@5:05 "...the way the world should be" is poignant in that everyone (save Truman) in Seahaven is acting - so he's saying that everyone should act to create an illusion that it's perfect world.
Glad you mentioned "The 13th Floor". Bierko, D'Onofrio, Mol, etc. kind of all got overshadowed by the Wachowski's "Matrix" film (based from a comic book). They're both great movies, but I actually think that 13th Floor had some exceptionally powerful moments which shouldn't be overlooked.
Dark City was an homage to a much earlier example of this genre -- Metropolis.
4:05 "Bet you $5 I can tell where you got dem shoes"
Lets not forget the cd with a side donation or they yank it right out of your hand if the money isn't right, I wonder what could be in those disks?
Loved it-ty.
Could the real movie about escaping ideology and reality be The Shawnshank Redemption? The protagonist is in jail unfairly and he escapes first to a better inner lief and then for real...
Awesome as usual, Jared!!! Thanx!!!
Alright, just finished reading Ubik today, after almost two decades me puting K. Dick's oeuvre on hold, but dawg, it encompasses quiet a bit of what you've tackled !!!
Only when we stop questioning society and begin questioning reality, can the inner Neo wake up
Holy shit it's Jared. Haven't seen you in a while.
The only real way out of the matrix is to get a cat.
it so of it's time, yet it's timeless. One of those perfect movies
Total Recall is pretty reality-questioning too
I apply Plato's cave allegory for everything
well, except in the real world, you can in fact hurt people, sometimes badly - everyone around you is not a shadow. But probably you meant it differently than I first interpreted it. kek
@@xBINARYGODx yeah your thinking is wrong bud, time to leave the cave
Two things Sir
1. Reality and the truth /realism of all its constructs are relative
2. I'd love a couple of hours to show you that the matrix has a pragmatic answer that was there from the beginning of Movie 1.
" The Matrix " movie was made to promote a video game.
Any references to faith , politics and freedom are all distractions.
@@Mikewee777 I never played the games. I was too distracted by the constructs explored by the movies. Lol (not attacking you, I know what you mean but I still love the ideas of the Matrix)
@brianguayartist Care to share?
@@sirNicolasDracultoo long to share it all here but I'll give you a question to think about.
How does a machine built to serve, develop its own identity? As Persephone said in Enter The Matrix ;when asked what she wanted... Oh so very long ago, I didn't even know what that question meant.
@@brianguayartistinteresting
What about the notion of a future reality revolutionaries strive for? They are baked in the cinema of demystification, trading a better construction for the current one.
Nothing better than the truth you create yourself.
I guess there is presumption of circularity in movies depicting revolutions and their aftermaths, something like "every liberation only shuffles the oppressors."
Which I guess mirrors the public's mood after realizing capitalism and technology wouldn't lead to humanity's salvation
Great video! Funny seeing this after just seeing CZcamsr Jose's recent video on All in the Family, as that was a show that attempted to present a vision of the authentic in response to the inauthentic landscape of television in that era. Much like films like the Truman Show or the Matrix, in its own way All in the Family simultaneously was trying to rebel against the fake, while ultimately needing to succumb to the fact that a work of fiction can't truly be 100% authentic to work.
Whenever I think of All in the Family, I'm reminded of 1976's Network, and its critique of television turning us all into Children of the Tube: "No one ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house!" It's such a self-reflexive line, as if Chayefsky is admitting that he, just like Norman Lear, cannot escape being a part of the very system he seeks to dismantle.
I’m so happy you have your own channel. Your point of change and manner of delivery is a gift to the internet.
Talks about a great movie with a south park shirt on.
OK. im listening.
This movie was prophetic, along with Idiocracy.
I don't know how exactly to articulate what I'm thinking, but what you say about the realities being offered by the Truman Show and the Matrix (for their own times) makes me think about the Spiderverse movies today 🤔. Have to think on it.
Awesome videos as always say man.
Of many CZcamsrs you really know how to analysis movies and their ideology and how this are not at simple as we inicially thought.
The best wishes for you and your loved ones 🌍🌟
I really love stuff like this, Jared. Reminds me of the Wisecrack glory days.
Good to see you still producing content Jared loved your takes on the Wisecrack channel. Would love to hear your take on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Loved this movie when it came out. I just rewatched it
"Kalsarikannit"? HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE?
Finally someone who understands the Matrix sequels. I thought I was crazy.
cosmonaut level juggernautics, man
Long time no see!
Hey Jared, are you planning to do any reading groups?
You’ve been watching the matrix again, haven’t you
I love that the best friend became an alcoholic.
It's the many layers of abstraction we've placed on top of the real world. There are people out there that don't even understand that food grows on a farm, they think it's just in the store, from the storeroom. We're so far removed, that even people that say, work in a slaughterhouse, have many parts of their lives abstracted away as well.
The purist form of reality would be hunter/gatherer survival, much like most of human history. It's from the creation of this machine we've built (Modern society, that believe it or not, has infected the entire world, except maybe north sentinel island), that has removed us from how we "evolved", and true life.
This has afforded us the ability to use our big brains to invent fake realities, instead of having to run from predators on the daily, and spend every waking moment trying to find calories.
Now we just need to find ways to deal with the fake, because it doesn't always work for some people.
7:12 Nine Nine!!!
OMG, Jared! Downer ending! Jajajaja
What’s the movie the calendar footage in the opening is from?
If I had been writing the third movie, the reveal of Neo's powers working on the machines in the "real world" would've been because...it wasn't the real world. Rather than Zion being "an element in the equation" that "needs purging" or anything of the sort, it would be revealed that even those who are fighting to escape the Matrix are not escaping it. They're just jumping to a different part of the simulation. The simulations aren't even truly nested; why would they need to be? Just as both are sets in a movie studio IRL, in-setting, they'd both just be programmed maps in the virtual "game" world that is the Matrix. Zion and its war for liberation is just there so that those who start to realize something is wrong (or just who need the adventure to be pacified) are given the struggle they crave to satisfy them that they're actually doing something...while lying, still, insensate in their pods.
Did Jared just tell people the cave is just as valid and real and the real world?
Always has been... 👨🚀🔫
@@LedtallicaZombie not really. When one gets to know the real world it's kind of hard to go back to the illusion. One might say this is there struggle of humanity and the um lower class, to fight those with power that oppress them. Everyone wants freedom.
@@LedtallicaZombiein the real world people eat chlorinated chicken and fight in banker's wars, no thanks
I was tracking for abour 12 minutes and then he hit me with the post modern existentialism 😂
I always thought that the Truman show movie is a chapter 1 of Truman’s life. Chapter 2 (which should not be an actual movie btw) is Truman figuring out what real life is all about. Maybe he likes it maybe not, but he accepts it eventually perhaps. Maybe he even longs for the old world in some way.
Where is the Japanese family audience?
Truman's "father" didn't seem to have come back to tell Truman the truth and get him out of there. It seems he wanted the fame and money from being on the show again.
Jared! Just found your channel, happy to see you're making content again.
13:00 The Matrix sequels make perfect sense (I haven't seen 4 & don't intend to) when you understand that the end of Revolutions Neo makes the same discovery he made at the start of the first movie: he's in the Matrix, because Zion is just another Matrix. But he also realizes that this discovery won't free him from the Matrix, and every subsequent Matrix created is more miserable than the last.
It's really sad that your takeaway from the latest matrix film is still surface level and its surprising given how your thought process and views are generally deep curious and interesting. With the new matrix film, there's a good few deep dives out there that do a great job of interpreting the last matrix film in a manner that is much more interesting and meaningful.
This part of why I think attempting to find “true reality” or objectivity is a mostly pointless venture. It’s like sure I could agree there are objective laws that govern reality, but the process of discerning them is too complex unless you plan on actually devoting time to studying them. And even that is mostly impossibly to do as a whole, so one must devote their life to specific part of a relentlessly complex system. To make objective claims about how reality works without doing that, requires you to reject the previous model taught to you and replace it with a new model you have constructed or has been construct for you, which often is simply the previous model but inverted. I suppose one should instead just strive to learn as much as possible about the current models and past models and maybe even predict upcoming models. But trying to reject the dismiss model entirely almost always results in a new model being constructed. And this model becomes your new “objective” reality.
Hey nice shirt, I have the same one lol. South Park rules! And great, thought provoking video.
Yeah.
genius as always
I know this sounds stupid and if topic but is there any chance to get your perspective on the rap battle Jared?
But in a meta sense we have become those tropes on the outside. So many people and film their lives online as tho they are characters in their own Truman show but they are somehow above Truman because they are aware of the show.
Jared not to insult your name but you definitely need a more memorable title name. You will always be known as wisecrack or more so wisecrack will always be known because of you. I just want you to do really well, your videos are so important. Would you consider a more easier to remember/catchy channel name?
Had to laugh at myself the other day. While watching The Andy Griffith Show, I was annoyed with obvious tropes, until I realized I was watching one of the SOURCES of those tropes...
I think the idea that illusion isnt a good thing is maybe wrong. We've always told stories, and they play a huge role in both our personal lives and society. Illusion or imagination doesn't mean there isnt any truth there, and either way, playing make believe is one of the first things children do, so its pretty core for us all.
I feel that this dual non-reality was already explored in the movie. Truman is within a construction, and the viewers are being presented with that construction.
Inside out, and outside in.
It is clear that the viewers are being duped as much as Truman, and we see only Christo and his cynical workers, the architects of the construction, are aware of what is really real.
The other really real things ( according to the movie) are true love, the desire for freedom, and Christo’s hubris.
I enjoyed your video a lot, thanks for making it, but for me your interpretation didn’t bring anything more than what is already explored in the film itself.
@4:00 not to meantion the crazy street preachers
Why use entertainment when I could just dissociate lol
one of the best movies my mom ever recommended!
The people watching the show was meant to comically depict the target audience of live TV. Lauren's segments of watching the show in her apartment were less tropey and depicted as the most real person attached to Truman.
Have you ever been told that your voice sounds like the creator of the channel Think Story?
Dude, was waiting for your analisis for ages
Like the big city greens say you need a balance between offline and online lives
Wisecrack sucks without this guy.
For real. It's never been the same. I tried so hard to watch any of the wisecrack videos after he left and it was just unbearable each time.
This.
realer than real
Please do a discussion on the Fallout TV show, especially on the debate over political correctness/restorative justice and the moral degradation of humanity constructs that are innate.
So you sayin, Jared, choose steak? lol ;p
Isn't reality just survival when it comes down to it? Not just to the aim of the immediate personal, but also the future and the familial and communal, and environmental.
We need to attend to all of those factors to survive, and we have the awareness of those factors and our mind automatically builds it's worldview with those factors.
Any questions that come after the issue of survival are pointless if you died. Survive first, ask the big hitter questions second.
And as mentioned above, survival doesn't mean to be selfish and hurt others for your own benefit. You don't last long that way, and besides we are all wired to be social. So personal survival means we connect with others in prosocial manners; it means we don't interfere in other people's lives; it means we take responsibility for our own needs; it means we care for our families.
So, my question is: where is the diabolical puppeteer controlling our lives in the above when we are part of a functioning society? Seems like all this is naturally emerging structures that redundantly support themselves in benefiting all within the structures.
Actually just watched this for the first time last night and I loved it. Prophetic as hell. Look forward to checking out this video later. Keep up the good work Jared.
Jared is going hard on Mark Fisher's old road. Take it easy, man.
Don't know who that is, but I also feel this trend of his, academically or philosophically saying everything is miserable and authenticity is impossible, is its own form of perputating the system. It's pretty irritating to me how pessamistic and complacent it comes off. It might be foolish, might be too "iDeAliSt", maybe even cliche, but these stories are necessary because the PURSUIT of truth is what's important. That or until the day comes when all People say "Enough is enough!" and put it to action.
At least that's how I feel...
Great essay. Me and my friends have, for a very long time, saw our lives as TV show seasons. You are right on how the allure of the hyper real can get us, even if it feels just like a joke among friends
Lived in New Orleans. Can confirm the suffocating humidity. Don’t go during the summer!
The best text in this "genre" to me still Don Quixote. Even I know it's not good representation, but ya know.
(Spoiler) The last scene when everyone cries especially because he is demystified, best ending.
I think it's supposed to be The Truman Show was proved real
Tru-man(not Tru-mp) vs Matrix… Donnie Darko better. Teen on Prozac confronts hidden Christof (Koch) reality? Aka the “Witness” aspect. Giant bunny rabbit with antlers isn’t a bad representation. Drew Barrymore acted/ produced & probably wants to forget those years. But not the music.
Missed you man you just disappeared from wisecrack and bummed me out stopped watching it