The Truman Show gives us an intriguing answer with almost cruel stories and allegorical narration.
Obviously, Truman only belongs to Truman Show, a manipulated virtual world. His birth, growth, all joys and sorrows, including his death, will be staged on a stage artificially manipulated and designed, and watched by countless men and women living in the glamorous modern world. They merged with Truman and grew up together. Without Truman, their life would be unsustainable, the world would be in chaos and life would be meaningless.
However, a reality show designed for 30 years was finally shattered by Truman's suspicion and desire to explore. After experiencing the test of man-made storms, lightning and huge waves, Truman's ship carrying him to the truth ruthlessly shattered the beautiful but false blue sky. At that moment, a myth ended and a conspiracy was put in the sun. More importantly, this profound influence proves that as long as human nature exists, the mind cannot be manipulated forever.
However, Truman never belonged to Truman Show alone. He is also you and me who live in this world full of electronic smog.
From birth to growth to death, our understanding of the world has been limited, and we can never know the world as clearly as Almighty God. We have to rely on various carriers to transcend our physical obstacles, let our hearts reach the distant past, think about the distant future and imagine the world in a foreign country to satisfy our infinite curiosity and thirst for knowledge. In this sense, we have to agree with McLuhan's famous saying: "Media is the extension of human body".
However, the paradox of the development of civilization lies in that it often goes to the opposite of itself and becomes an accomplice in depriving freedom and dissolving subjectivity. Today, the popularity and rapid expansion of electronic media in the world have fully realized McLuhan's genius prediction of "global village". It is precisely because of this that people all over the world can watch The Truman Show on the same earth at the same time, thus showing the prying desire in human nature so incisively and vividly in such a vast space and time.
The tragedy of reality is that in this media age, no one can escape the fate of Truman, and no one has the full confidence to say that he has nothing to do with Truman. Won't we see Truman in all kinds of reality TV shows? When we cheer for Super Girl, won't we see the shadow of the audience holding TV with Truman? Today, when economic interests drive everything, the proliferation of business logic forces us to play with ourselves. We have to entertain ourselves and sell our money, privacy, freedom and even life at the moment of carnival.
From this point of view, The Truman Show, as an epoch-making manipulation metaphor, not only shows the boundary between truth and falsehood, but more importantly reminds us to step out of the deception of the times, approach our hearts, and keep a less fashionable freedom in repeated tenacious reflections.