SOCIETY, Commentary: Who and What is Real Today?
By Li Jiajia
We are used to confining ourselves in the "concrete forests"; we seldom communicate with our neighbors; we always keep guard against strangers, for fear that they might be potential criminals. We are so possessed with distrust of the world we live in that television becomes our resort for reality--then true men shows find their way to the screen.
I don't think the protagonist of the movie "The Truman Show" was named "Tru[e]man" coincidently. From the day he was born, Truman's life was exposed to cameras. The world he lived in was just an enormous artificial film studio, in which everything, including the expanding sea, the rising and setting sun and even raging natural disasters, were controllable to the producers.
Thousands of people were hired to work as his family members, neighbors, colleagues and other characters necessary to the running of the world. Every detail of Truman's life was recorded by numerous cameras and transported to the screen of every household all over the world.
This movie seems to be the story of our possible future: lonely and insecure, we need to peep into others' life to seek a sense of belonging. At first, seeing a bunch of people risk their lives in the wilderness was enough to feed our curiosity. But over time, boredom gradually crawled into our mind for having seen so many similar struggles against nature.
So people locked themselves in a small world and struggled against each other to survive, just as we do everyday. We keep asking for more reality and we may finally choose to pick a pregnant woman to share her pain of delivering, to witness the first step of her baby, and when the baby has his own life, we will keep a close eye on every move he takes, from having classes to having sex. In this movie, people's faithfulness to "The Truman Show" mirrors the loneliness and vacuity in their real life, and throughout the show, the media plays accomplice.
For all the obstacles posed by the producers, our hero managed to overcome them and pull himself out of the artificial world. When he finally stepped outside, the whole world was moved to joyful tears--they are overwhelmed by the strength of man's will power. However, what they didn't expect is, when "The Truman Show" ended, the little fun of their spare life ended, too.
"What else can we see tonight?" one asked, but no answer was heard. The spiritual lives of the people in the movie were suffering from desertification, but wait a minute, aren't ours the same?
We are used to confining ourselves in the "concrete forests"; we seldom communicate with our neighbors; we always keep guard against strangers, for fear that they might be potential criminals. We are so possessed with distrust of the world we live in that television becomes our resort for reality--then true men shows find their way to the screen.
I don't think the protagonist of the movie "The Truman Show" was named "Tru[e]man" coincidently. From the day he was born, Truman's life was exposed to cameras. The world he lived in was just an enormous artificial film studio, in which everything, including the expanding sea, the rising and setting sun and even raging natural disasters, were controllable to the producers.
Thousands of people were hired to work as his family members, neighbors, colleagues and other characters necessary to the running of the world. Every detail of Truman's life was recorded by numerous cameras and transported to the screen of every household all over the world.
This movie seems to be the story of our possible future: lonely and insecure, we need to peep into others' life to seek a sense of belonging. At first, seeing a bunch of people risk their lives in the wilderness was enough to feed our curiosity. But over time, boredom gradually crawled into our mind for having seen so many similar struggles against nature.
So people locked themselves in a small world and struggled against each other to survive, just as we do everyday. We keep asking for more reality and we may finally choose to pick a pregnant woman to share her pain of delivering, to witness the first step of her baby, and when the baby has his own life, we will keep a close eye on every move he takes, from having classes to having sex. In this movie, people's faithfulness to "The Truman Show" mirrors the loneliness and vacuity in their real life, and throughout the show, the media plays accomplice.
For all the obstacles posed by the producers, our hero managed to overcome them and pull himself out of the artificial world. When he finally stepped outside, the whole world was moved to joyful tears--they are overwhelmed by the strength of man's will power. However, what they didn't expect is, when "The Truman Show" ended, the little fun of their spare life ended, too.
"What else can we see tonight?" one asked, but no answer was heard. The spiritual lives of the people in the movie were suffering from desertification, but wait a minute, aren't ours the same?
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