Truman Burbank and Me

or, We’re Not in Seahaven Anymore

The Truman Show just kicked off its silver anniversary tour. Which means that Truman Burbank, that wide-eyed and sweetly earnest 29-year-old fellow we fell for (and felt for) in the late ‘90s, is just now turning… 25.  

It’s been a hectic — and not very sweetly earnest — quarter of a century since the release of one of the most incisive and innovative films of the modern era. A movie that helped rewire and re-route my brain at a pivotal moment in my life. 

I first saw the film when it hit theaters in June 1998, a few weeks after I graduated from a conservative Christian high school. Its pristine, poetic rendering of a brilliant, bonkers premise left me staring at the big screen in astonishment. What a set-up! What an execution! What a score! What an emotional payoff! 

My second viewing was less than a year later at a conservative Christian college, on a vastly smaller screen in a cramped library carrel via VHS. And this time the film turned my mind inside out because it all felt so personal. Truman’s life put my own under the microscope in granular detail.

But first, the zoom-out. 

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The Truman Show was written by Andrew Niccol, who also penned the future-tense unsettling Gattaca and the present-tense unsettling Lord of War. The man behind the camera was legendary Aussie director Peter Weir. Nominated for 4 Oscars, Weir’s films include Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, and Master and Commander. 

If you held a gun to my head and asked me which was Weir’s most defining (or devastating) work, Truman or Dead Poets, I might tell you to just fire away. Both films decimate me. And both are among my 10 favorites of all time. Which, come to think of it, might justify naming Peter Weir the master and commander of my top 10 list. 

Both Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show are about an authentic man, presided over by authoritarian figures of various stripes. Both are about a man who refuses to surrender his innate curiosity and freedom. A man animated by joie de vivre, in the grip of joyless automatons who undermine free expression and bristle at the notion of free will. 

One of those men, John Keating, imparts his “carpe diem” ethos to a band of admiring young protégés. The other man, Truman Burbank, simply tries to preserve his own battered independence and resilient humanity. That is perhaps where the narrative similarities end. But both films constitute a kind of “barbaric yawp” that I can only imagine might have made Walt Whitman proud. 

[For those who have been waiting patiently for a quarter of a century to finally watch the film once it turns 25: Spoilers will follow. You’ve been warned.]

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The Truman Show’s protagonist is a man whose entire life has, without his consent or knowledge, been turned into a TV show. While Truman Burbank was in utero, a television studio bought the rights to his life story and his life itself — and thus stole all of his innate human rights.

Truman (aka True-man) lives out his days under the eye of thousands of hidden cameras that document his existence. An existence that is entirely fabricated except for one thing: the man himself. But deep into his adult years, Truman realizes that something is off. His ensuing hero’s journey is one of fighting tooth and nail to liberate himself, even though he can’t comprehend his bondage or the nature of his invisible oppressor. 

Most readings of the film over the years have focused on reality TV, which was still in a nascent form in 1998, and how Andrew Niccol’s script was eerily prophetic in imagining a dystopian endpoint for this ironically named television genre.  

Other cinematic readings have cited the dangers of playing God (i.e. Christof) with human life, and the ethical horrors of a corporation co-opting the free will of an individual in the name of profit or technological innovation. Both of those takes are salient, provocative, and quite fitting. 

But I saw something a bit different when I revisited the film as a wide-eyed, newly skeptical freshman at an evangelical college and watched Truman Burbank’s story with new eyes: I saw myself.  

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Truman Burbank has spent the entirety of his adolescence and teenage years, and a number of years beyond that, in a dome-shaped bubble called Seahaven. This shiny-happy microcosm of the world has been carefully calibrated by its creators, and filled with creature comforts. The goal being that Truman will happily and obliviously remain within its confines for the duration of his natural life — which is a fundamentally unnatural life. 

Each detail of the Seahaven bubble is arranged so that it appears to be complete unto itself. So that Truman has no reason to believe any other place is worth exploring. Once, when Truman is a boy and tells his teacher he wants to be an explorer like Magellan, she tells him “Oh, well you’re too late! There’s really nothing left to explore.”

In fact, each time Truman expresses a longing to venture beyond Seahaven and explore far-flung Fiji, he is bluntly informed that exploration is pointless — or even fatal. (The travel agency scene is brilliantly comedic, including a poster depicting an airplane impaled by a lightning bolt with the caption: “It could happen to you.”)

After all, Seahaven can only continue functioning as Seahaven if no one leaves its confines and goes public about its true provincial nature. Or if no one goes rogue from within. 

The one time someone does defy Christof, when Truman’s estranged “father” returns to Seahaven and contacts Truman after being banished, that rogue element is violently removed from Truman’s sight.

Nothing is allowed to interfere with the false purity of the narrative Truman has been fed. 

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So how about me?

Well, I spent the entirety of my adolescence and teenage years, and 2 years beyond that, in a dome-shaped bubble called Evangelicalism. This shiny-happy (but oddly also depravity-fixated) microcosm of the world was carefully calibrated by its decidedly lowercase-C creators, and filled with spiritualized creature comforts. The goal being that I would happily and obliviously remain within its confines for the duration of my natural life — which in some crucial ways was an unnatural life.  

Each detail of the bubble was arranged so that it appeared to be complete unto itself. So that I had no reason to believe any other ideological place was worth exploring. Once, when I raised my hand in youth group and pushed back with some earnest, wide-eyed hard questions, my youth pastor pulled me aside afterward and chided me for impeding the discussion.  

Just to be perfectly clear, this wasn’t a scene in a movie. My youth pastor scolded me for asking honest questions. That is a thing that really happened.

In fact, each time I expressed (either publicly or to myself) a longing to venture beyond Evangelicalism and explore some other place, I was bluntly informed by a respected leader or a Christian apologetics text that ideological exploration was pointless — or even fatal to my immortal soul.

After all, Evangelicalism can only continue functioning as Evangelicalism if no one leaves its confines and goes public about its true provincial nature. Or if no one goes rogue from within.

And above all, nothing was allowed to interfere with the false purity of the narrative I had been fed.

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But Truman himself, at long last, does go rogue. Once he sails out to the edges of his small world, he finds to his existential shock an outer wall, and he presses his quivering hand against it. He finally understands that his physical world — his very existence — is a fabrication.

After 29 years in Seahaven, he is finally given an audience with his human “creator.” Christof’s voice echoes down from the pastel-painted heavens and tries to assure him: 

“There’s no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you. Same lies, same deceit. But in my world… you have nothing to fear. I know you better than you know yourself.” To this, Truman indignantly replies, “You never had a camera in my head.”  

Then, after pausing for (frankly overwhelming) dramatic effect, and with the eyes of the TV-watching world on him, Truman makes his life-defining, red-pill-in-The-Matrix choice. He cuts the strings of his lifelong puppeteer, does a deep stage bow, and bids adieu once and for all to the safe, sterilized, artificial, and insidiously oppressive world of Seahaven.

“Good afternoon, good evening, and good night,” he tells (off) Christof. And he walks through the door in the sky, into the great unknown.

My own exit from the bubble in which I grew up wasn’t nearly so clean, soothingly scored, or cinematically stylized. And the eyes of the world were assuredly not on me.

But for me, it was every bit as dramatic. It was an agonizing trauma, a bit like Truman’s stormy sailboat lashing, followed — eventually — by a sense of profound liberation. A discovery of the wider world. And a realization of how narrow the place was that I had always thought was the whole wide world. 

For 29 years, Truman Burbank had no idea he was living in an unnaturally controlled simulation. 

And for 19 years, neither did I. For those 19 years, my own Seahaven felt like more than enough. 

Until I realized that it wasn’t nearly enough. And after that point, I knew I could never go back.  

Now, 24 years later, I am still looking for my own Fiji. The destination of Truman’s starry-eyed dreams, about which he said: “You can't get any further away before you start coming back.” 

I don’t think I can get much farther away from Seahaven. 

And I’m not coming back. 

Image by Audrey Billy