The Truman Show: Deep Thoughts About Narcissism, Product Placement, and Parasocial Pop Culture

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. And if I don't see you: Good afternoon, good evening, and good night!Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show, based on a screenplay by Andrew Niccol and starring Jim Carrey, was praised for its pop culture prescience because it came out just before the explosion of reality television. But as Emily argues on this episode, that cultural commentary misses the point. Reality TV may be the storytelling backdrop of The Truman Show, but the fantasy world that Ed Harris's Christof creates for Truman without his knowledge or consent gets to a deeper social and cultural issue than having cameras everywhere. This film offers a pop culture allegory for abusive control that calls itself love--to the point where many who have escaped from high control religions see themselves in Truman. (Also, product placement is never seamless!)You may not be able to cue the sun, but you can cue up this episode!Mentioned in this episode:What The Truman Show Reveals About Its CharactersThe Truman Show, Mormonism, and the Philosophy of QuestioningWhen Does Truman Figure It Out?This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirlsWe are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find. We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!