How Does the Film "The Truman Show" Tell the Audience About the Influence of the Media?

Christoff’s role in “The Truman Show” is to control every detail in the Seahaven set, to ensure that the show runs smoothly and captures the audiences attention to bring in income, and to manipulate Truman such that he would remain in Seahaven. We can see this from the way Christoff orders his group of producers and technicians in the main control room to adjust the dimness of lights, angles of different cameras, to clean up on-set screw-ups (e.g. falling spotlight, radio channel). For example, we can see Christoff ordering his technicians to jump from “camera 1” to “camera 2” to get a better view of Truman when Truman is reunited with his father. He used the position of the camera to show Truman tearing in joy, thus producing a warm feeling among the audience. Christoff’s biggest role in the programme would be to keep the show running, by containing Truman in Seahaven by any means possible. Christoff sometimes takes the place of the people interacting with Truman and in so doing, controls what they say, or uses props to brainwash Truman to want to stay in Seahaven. One example of Christoff’s manipulation of Truman was in Truman’s childhood, where Truman announced that he aspired to be an explorer, but was put down by his teacher, who mentioned that he was “too late”, as there was “nothing left to explore”. Truman was thus discouraged by his teacher’s words and never did become an explorer. Another example was when Truman “secretly” wanted to go to Fiji. To discourage Truman, his boss sent him on an assignment to leave Seahaven by boat, that reminded him of his fear of water.

Christoff’s role is similar to that of programme makers in real life, because both Christoff and programme makers in real life aim to provide entertainment for viewers and in so doing to generate profit, and to ensure the smooth running of their programme. Christoff plays the major role of coordinating the filming and technical processes, just like any other programme maker in real life...