Monday, June 13, 2011

The Truman Show: Rated X

While flipping through the channels the other day I stumbled onto The Truman Show on TBS (I guess I caught the two hour block that day where they weren't peddling some unspeakable Tyler Perry abomination) and every time I watch it I am even more impressed by what a truly good film it is. But this time, something else, something very different, struck me about it.
I thought to myself, with the unbelievable amount of reality TV churned out and napalming our brains each year, how far off are we from a real-life Truman Show? Honestly, I'd give it maybe two, three more years before some psycho heads to the office of a development exec and pitches a show that secretly tapes a baby for the entirety of its life. And don't act like you wouldn't watch it. If you soak in six hours of Teen Mom every week, you'd watch this. But this notion struck me with another, much more troubling question; just how much gratuitous self pleasuring must there have been in the taping of The Truman Show?!
"I swear I can feel their eyes on me..."
Think about it, throughout the film, tons of loyal viewers are shown glued to their television sets, addicted to even the smallest minutia of Truman's life. Now think back to ten or so years earlier, when Truman was but a budding young man in the frenzy of pubescent transformation. Now, if Truman is anything like every other boy in the world, around age thirteen his most prominent pastime quickly shifted from after school cartoons to just completely annihilating himself, often several times a day. And if in fact this was the case, logic says that for a large chunk of years in the long-running 24/7 broadcast of his life, the viewers were watching young Truman come home from school, lock himself in his room, and work over his not-yet-fully-grown wang like he was pumping it for information (and what the ratings did in said years would really say a lot about who the show's core viewership really was).
For shame you fictional perverts, for shame.
Anyway, sorry for ruining The Truman Show for you, but if I have to deal with these questions, so should you.

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