Has this entire planet become a reality show? That’s the contention of Portuguese writer João Pereira Coutinho, who writes in part for Brazil’s Folha:
“The epidemic of the 21st Century has a name: Truman Syndrome. The name belongs to the 1998 film The Truman Show with Jim Carrey in the principal role. You don’t remember it? I do: Carrey’s character was a kind insurance salesman who gradually discovers the existential fraud that surrounds him. From the cradle, his life is just a gigantic reality show filmed by hidden cameras 24 hours a day. And all the people around him – his wife, family, neighbors, friends and enemies – are mere actors hired to represent their roles. … It turns out that the nightmare has become reality.”
João Pereira Coutinho*
Translated By Brandi Miller
December 1, 2008
Brazil – Folha- Original Article (Portuguese)
The epidemic of the 21st Century has a name: Truman Syndrome. The name belongs to the 1998 film The Truman Show with Jim Carrey in the principal role. You don’t remember it? I do: Carrey’s character was a kind insurance salesman who gradually discovers the existential fraud that surrounds him. From the cradle, his life is just a gigantic reality show filmed by hidden cameras 24 hours a day. And all the people around him – his wife, family, neighbors, friends and enemies – are mere actors hired to represent their roles.
The film ends in a heroic moment, with Carrey about to free himself from the nightmare, in other words, abandoning the studio where he lived enclosed (and filmed) for decades.
It turns out that the nightmare has become reality. I now read in the press that the number of people who genuinely believe that their lives don’t belong to them is growing at a frightening rate. Their lives appear to belong to a television producer who has built a gigantic all-encompassing illusion. As in the Jim Carrey film, these people feel watched by imaginary surveillance cameras and look at their lives as if there were a pre-written script.
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