5 Reasons Why The Truman Show is Postmodern

1. It’s about a alternate reality, Truman lives his life unaware that he’s in a massive controlled dome with over 5000 cameras making his life a show. The dome makes reality realer than reality outside the dome actually is, he could go to the beach and the people controlling the dome can make it a perfect day more perfect than reality could ever.
2. The Truman Show embodies the distrust of ideals, a characteristic of postmodernism. Postmodernism is about our own representation of reality and exploring our own beliefs and ideals, we know that everything Truman knows and believes is a lie and he can’t distinguish this lie. However the film makes us question what is real? Whatever we perceive and believe to be reality is our reality. It deconstructs our belief of what reality actually is, not the world we live in but our representation of it. Also Truman’s mind is being deconstructed as he begins to question the events around him and it will be reconstructed outside of the dome again encouraging us to question what a reality actually is and to challenge relativism.
3. Towards the end the unreliable narrator is revealed, like Inception we are given all the information we need to follow the story and understand what’s happening but we aren’t given a solid ending, he leaves the dome and the rest of the ending is down to the viewer to decide, does he finds the woman he first fell in love with and go Fiji? Maybe he lives a happy life or the real world is too much for him to handle, he might be a target for criminals now he emerges into the world famous, does the world try to force him back in so they can have their favourite show back? etc etc. We don’t get an answer just a load of questions.
4. The film is a work of metafiction, there are multiple realities within a larger reality a film about actors acting. It’s reflexive as it acknowledges itself to be a tv show via the product placement and random commercials, it is aware of what it is.
5. Pastiche is used in the film, it takes 50s and 60s American culture and controls it with 90s technology. It is a blend of genres, comedy, drama, the suspense that comes with horror/thriller films. Irony is used, a bridge’s and a road’s purpose to take you somewhere, although they are placed everywhere in the set they ultimately take you no where despite their existence. The viewers want Truman to leave and have a happy ending without completely realising they’re about to lose their favourite simulation