Hey hey hey. How’s it going? I hope you’re well. I myself am adjusting to being back in the office again. It’s only two or three days a week, so not terrible by any means, but it’s been a bit of a struggle. I sometimes hear people scoff at the idea that some people are finding returning to the office difficult, “You used to do it before Covid.”. Yeah, we did. I spent over 10 years doing it. Getting up early, travelling on packed trains, dealing with cancellations and delays, commuting 60-90 minutes into London (depending on where I was living and where my office was located). There are many people out there who had to do this for decades! But guess what, we’ve spent two years not doing it, so of course it will take time to get back into the swing of things. Also, we’ve survived – and in a lot of cases, thrived – working from home. We’ve proven it can easily be done. Which is maybe why we’re reluctant to go back to the way things were. But ultimately it’s out of our control and we can’t really change the situation. And speaking of not being in control of your own destiny, today I’m going to talk about The Truman Show. Worst. Segue. Ever.
If you haven’t seen The Truman Show, what the hell’s the matter with you? I kid. But seriously, there will be SPOILERS. Maybe go watch it and then come back to this blog? It’s cool, we’ll wait…
All done? Nice, let’s move on.
As you all now know, The Truman Show is all about a man slowly figuring out that he’s the unwitting star of the most elaborate reality show ever. This film is actually very ahead of its time. It’s not that reality TV didn’t exist in 1998 (the year the film was released), it’s just that it was nowhere near as prevalent as it became a few short years later. Reality TV went through a real boom in the 00’s, so it was impressively prescient that the movie tapped into the addictive nature reality TV can bring out in its audience.
In the late 90’s, the plot of this film probably seemed quite farfetched. Viewing it now through the prism of social media and many people’s desperate desire to do #numbers by almost any means necessary, the plot suddenly doesn’t seem too unrealistic.
But I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about sex. Specifically, I want to ask the question: were Truman and his wife having sex?
Now on the surface, this may seem like a bit of a childish question to ask. But if you really think about it, it raises all sorts of further unanswerable questions.
Some background for those who didn’t heed my prompt to watch the film earlier: Truman lives in a fake environment. His town is in fact a massive studio set. Every person in his life is an actor, including his “parents”, “friends”, and his “girlfriend” who he later “marries”. All the actors know that their job is to continually dupe Truman into believing he is living in the real world.
Now, let’s say Truman and his wife aren’t having sex. It would be perfectly understandable that the actress wouldn’t want to engage in sexual activity as part of her job, so we could assume they’re not. But the question this then raises is: what does Truman make of this situation? Does he just think that sex isn’t something you do unless you want to have a baby? Does Truman even really know what sex is?
Don’t forget, all his teachers would have been actors. How much actual education (of any kind) would Truman have received? Did what he contributed at school even matter. Or were his grades and exam results determined by the whims of the show’s writers? “Give him an F this week, let’s see if we can’t create a bit of turmoil with his parents.”
But let’s say he received the same education as the average American child. For whatever that’s worth… I’m sorry, that was a cheap shot. I’m just playing America, you know I love you. But if Truman knows about sex, does he think all couples aren’t having sex? Or does he feel like his relationship is abnormal?
Now onto the flip side of the hypothetical: let’s say Truman and his wife are having sex. The implications for this could be huge.
The first question this raises for me is: is his wife a sex worker? The casting department maybe felt that it was easier to give a prostitute acting lessons than trying to convince an actress to have sex for money. The show creator is already barrelling down Unethical Boulevard by creating the fake construct that Truman calls home. Add in facilitating Truman to sleep with a sex worker without his knowledge, forget unethical, it’s plain evil.
Somehow, his wife not being a sex worker might actually be worse. It should be said that I have little sympathy for the wife; as far as I’m concerned, everyone who knowingly worked on the show was complicit in hoodwinking Truman and are almost as bad as the show creator. However, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which she was coerced into having sex with Truman.
It’s worth remembering that her character was introduced as a potential love interest when Truman was a young man (I think they meet in college). I don’t know how the actors’ contracts worked on The Truman Show, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have given her a 20 year contract – with a promise that she’d later become Truman’s wife – without first seeing how well she was able to interact with Truman. If I were in charge of the show’s contracts, I’d be giving actors a small contract as a trial. A couple of days or weeks, maybe a couple of months for a top actor. Then you try them out and see how they react to the pressure of performing live, what their chemistry with Truman is like etc etc.
All of this is my very longwinded way of saying, it’s very unlikely sex would have been part of the conversation with the actress before she took the role, considering they didn’t even know if Truman would like her, let alone whether he’d want to marry her.
So when would the subject have come up? Later down the line, when the actress was established on the show. You can imagine how that conversation went down: “Jane, fantastic work on the show! The fans love you and we’re really pleased with how your relationship with Truman is blossoming. The writers have been discussing ways that we can take the relationship to the next level… you’d better sit down, Jane.”
Now who knows, perhaps the actress (Jane in my head, for some reason) was right up for it? Perhaps she knew what she was signing up for and assumed this is where the story was heading for her character. Maybe she was fine with it.
But come on, it would be understandable if she was reluctant. And given what we know about real life Hollywood, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine how she might have been threatened into complying. “Do what we say or you’ll never work in this town again.”
I’m not sure which scenario is worse. Either Truman was not only kept prisoner, but denied the opportunity to have a sexual relationship and start a real family. Or, a young woman was coerced into having a sexual relationship with a prisoner…
And on that depressing bombshell, I think I’ll leave it there for this week. If you took the time to read my mad ramblings on a film that is almost a quarter-century old, I thank you. Not unlike Will Smith, I’ll hit you up next time. Goodbye. And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.
Rob Recommends
Turning Red – Film – Disney+ – 7/10
Carrying on their recent tradition of telling stories about different cultures and from the perspective of a wider range of people, Disney has once again delivered a fun, interesting story.
Being a Pixar production, the film is of course beautifully animated. I particularly enjoyed the nod to Asian culture with certain design choices clearly influenced by anime/manga.
The story was a little predictable at times, but it is certainly something that will entertain families. Having said that, the film is rated 9+ and I’d recommend not letting anyone under this age watch. There are a couple of moments that might be scary for younger children, and the themes of the movie are definitely more suitable for slightly older kids. Definitely worth a watch.
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