Simulacrum: The Truman Show and Essay

Truman has no idea what unscripted life is like, or that there is a world beyond the world of the television program, or that the woman playing his wife is an actress who does not love him. Of course, Truman is understandably upset when this deception is revealed and the film chronicles his attempt to break free of his televised prison -- but the genuineness of 'real life,' in contrast to the soundstage remains an open question. After all, even the 'real world' inhabitants are often more transfixed by Truman's false life on television than their own.

The Matrix is another exercise in hyper-reality: in the film, the hacker Neo-discovers that the real world is not 'real' at all but is rather a creation of villains known as Agents who have implanted the reality of the 'matrix' into the minds of all humanity, and live off of their bodies as parasites.In this dystopian film, there is no original sense of 'the real.' All of the inhabitants of the matrix have known nothing but total control over their minds ever since they were born, even the final fight between good and evil takes place in the mind, not in an exterior reality. The hyper-real world of the matrix is actually more real and impactful than the lived existence of the dwellers. Not only has the simulacrum transcended and replaced the real -- it actually has a longer and more durable existence than the real, from the perspective of most of the inhabitants. As in the Truman Show, the created alternative universe has so impinged upon and dominated what is real; it has rendered the real meaningless.

Works Cited

The Matrix. Directed by Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. 1999,

The Truman Show. Directed by Peter Weir. 1998......