On The View Of Reality In The Movie The Truman Show

The movie The Truman Show tells a story of a real man’s life in a constructedfilm studio. He is unaware of this live show after decades of years. Finally, heescapes. This thesis aims to point out that under the control of media, people’s viewof reality in postmodern era has been overturned. This movie causes a lot of thinking,for it reflects man’s real life. This thesis makes use of Baudrillard’s theory onsimulacrum and Marshall McLuhan’s idea about media analysis to announce thatmedia influence man’s cognitive style. Under the control of media, people’s realityhas been overturned.According to people in different scenes, the author divides the thesis into threechapters and analyse them respectively. The first chapter describes the influence ofmedia on Truman’s view of reality, and then associates him with people in real life;the second chapter analyses how both performers and backstage staff themselves takeadvantage of media to create the virtual world and then get lost in it, and how theaudience know this world between the screen and their real life; the third chapterputs great importance on the analysis of the audience in the movie and those whowatch the movie. They have got confused between the real world and the mediaworld.The research of truth is being core subject of philosophy. Philosophers putforward views like “reason”,“objective existence”,“imagination”,“dream”, ect.Until1960s, postmodernism has been widely discussed. Most people hold thatboundaries between worlds of duality have been fuzzy. Baudrillard raises the threeorders of simulacra: counterfeit, production and simulation. He argues thatpostmodern era is the era of simulation. There has been implosion betweensimulation and the real. Postmodern era has been made up of information and signs.Baudrillard holds that simulation produce hyperreality, in which it’s hard to tell thedifferences between the real and the unreal, even the latter one becomes more real than the real.Through the analysis of the movie The Truman Show, the author gets theconclusion that the postmodern view of reality has become hyperreality.