Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 132 - The History of Truman Show Delusion
Abby and Alan discuss the history of Truman Show delusion, an example of cinema influencing culture and society. Have you ever felt like your life is a TV show and you're the unwitting star? It's more common than you think.
We talk through the research of Joel Gold, a psychiatrist who coined the term "Truman Show delusion" after seeing patients who believed they were starring in a reality show against their will. We discuss how individuals' beliefs about being the centerpiece of a reality show mirror the narrative of the iconic film, "The Truman Show," and raise questions about the power of media to shape our innermost fears and fantasies.
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Sources
- The Truman Show movie from 1998, directed by Peter Weir.
- Psychology Today article by Mark D. Griffiths PHD - The Truman Show Delusion
- New Yorker Article by Andrew Marantz - Unreality Star
- WEB MD article by Suzanne Wright called Truman Show Delusion
- New York Times article by Sarah Kershaw called Look Closely, Doctor: See The Camera?
- National Post article called Reality Bites from 2008
- IMDB + Wikipedia.
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Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the lunatics radio, our podcast. I'm Abby Brinker sitting here with Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And today we have a unique topic to discuss with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was a little baffled by this one.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to talk about Truman Show delusion or the belief that your life is an always on reality show with millions of viewers. Of course, we're also going to talk about the Truman Show because that's a big influence here. Typically, our remit on this podcast is to discuss the history of horror and how history influences horror, but in this case we are talking about how a film has impacted society.
Speaker 2:So this was was this a thing before the move? Sorry, what year did the Truman Show come out? 1998., Okay, so obviously they probably didn't call Truman Show disorder, but was it even in like the human zeitgeist of mental disorders before 1998?
Speaker 1:So the net net of what we're going to talk about today, the net net, the net net, the nutshell, the net net Too long didn't read. Yeah, it's a saying.
Speaker 2:Is it? Is it short for something? The net, net.
Speaker 1:Delusions have always existed, right, paranoia, all these things have existed before the Truman Show came out. Are you sure there's a group of mental practitioners who believed that the Truman Show sort of re-skinned these delusions for certain cases? For you know a couple hundred cases that were reported and we're going to talk a lot about this. But that's sort of the takeaway.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the movie just kind of like put a nice little label on it.
Speaker 1:Or the movie gave these delusions a certain spin, but in a different society, in a different time period. It wouldn't have been a reality TV show. It would have been that people thought a different thing was happening to them.
Speaker 2:Like what so say, it's little house in the prairie. Someone has this disorder. What would it look like?
Speaker 1:I mean it's a delusion, so the belief that is not found in reality and has no proof.
Speaker 2:I understand what a delusion is, but without the context of reality television.
Speaker 1:It could be anything Like what it could be, that they thought that all of the cows near the prairie were poisonous.
Speaker 2:Poisonous.
Speaker 1:It could be anything.
Speaker 2:So you can't eat the cows Right Poisonous, not venomous, right. So that's really simple you just don't eat the cows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are cows biting people? Sure, you only interact with cows typically unless you're a farmer by eating them.
Speaker 2:That's fine. Okay, I understand. Well, no, you milk them. Dairy cows, sure, sure. You grew up on the world's largest. You grew up on the nation's oldest dairy farm.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think you would know this.
Speaker 1:I do know it Okay.
Speaker 2:Cows are neither venomous nor poisonous.
Speaker 1:That's why it's a delusion.
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:There's a catch-22 around this concept. Is the Truman Show delusion, a modern variation of psychosis, or are actual reality? Shows and films like the Truman Show causing an uptick in this belief? We're going to talk through it. Two things I want to say. Of course, this episode is going to contain spoilers for the Truman Show. Definitely watch that movie if you have not before you listen to this.
Speaker 2:It's very good, very good. I'm not going to say it's Jim Carrey at his finest, because that's probably the mask. However, he does a great job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really truly love the Truman Show quite deeply.
Speaker 2:I don't know. He was a classic 90s comedy actor that as time went on, especially towards late 90s, early 2000s, he started branching into roles that had a lot more depth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to talk about that for sure. The other thing that I want to say is that Alan and I are not doctors. We are not psychologists, so what we're doing today is repeating and talking about research that other more qualified professionals and doctors and journalists have put together. Nothing we say anyone should ever take seriously.
Speaker 2:Yes, but we are expert armchair analysts.
Speaker 1:There you go Today's sources. Of course, the Truman Show, the film from 1998 directed by Peter Weir. A Psychology Today article by Mark D Griffiths, phd. The Truman Show delusion. A New Yorker article by Andrew Morance called Unreality Star. A Web MD article by Suzanne Wright called the Truman Show delusion. A New York Times article by Sarah Kershaw called Look Closely, doctor, see the Camera. A National Post article called Reality Bites from 2008,. Imdb in Wikipedia.
Speaker 2:I'm very relieved because you've been throwing out a lot of facts without citing any sources.
Speaker 1:There you have it. I'm not making it all up, just some. You'll never know which parts. In order to understand the impact of Truman Show delusion, let's first discuss its namesake. In June of 1998, peter Weir's the Truman Show was released. While not technically a horror film, I think most of us would agree that the premise is quite horrifying, but one that, strangely, some of us can perhaps relate to. The first iteration was called the Malcolm Show, set in Manhattan, with a much darker tone and intended to star Gary Oldman. It's actually really interesting because the writer wrote, I think, 16 drafts of the film before the director thought that it was okay to move into production. There was a lot of back and forth. The director was really trying to push it from a very, very dark film to more of a comedic, quirky movie.
Speaker 2:That was the director. Wait, the director wrote it.
Speaker 1:No, a different writer wrote it Okay.
Speaker 2:So the writer and the director collaborated through 16 drafts.
Speaker 1:Sort of because different directors were brought in, but by the end of it it had gone through 16 drafts.
Speaker 2:Which, honestly, is not a crazy amount of drafts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kind of standard.
Speaker 2:It's actually kind of a vanilla number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but as we all know, the film stars Jim Carrey, laura Linney and Ed Harris, though it's interesting to note that Jim Carrey and Ed Harris never actually met on set. They never filmed together.
Speaker 2:Huh, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So it makes sense. But also Jim Carrey had finished his scenes before Ed Harris was even brought on to play the role of Christoph. This was initially due to the fact that Christoph was first played by Dennis Hopper, who left two months into production due to creative differences.
Speaker 2:Wow, so he was in production for two months, so they probably filmed a lot of shit with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they filmed from December till April of the production year, so they filmed for quite a while.
Speaker 2:I get it. When you're dealing with a lot of A-list celebrities, unfortunately their opinions matter Because they can just throw their weight around.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is dumb?
Speaker 1:So Ed Harris actually went on to win a Golden Globe for supporting actor and an Oscar nomination.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to say Dennis Hopper won regardless.
Speaker 1:Jim Carrey also won a Golden Globe. The Truman Show is nominated for three Oscars, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, but it took director Peter Weir and Carrey a bit to find their groove as well. Jim Carrey took a massive pay cut for the role. Typically at this time he was paid $20 million for a film and he only took $12 for the Truman Show.
Speaker 2:What a champ Like. How does even someone live on $12 million for a single job?
Speaker 1:I know it's crazy. This is often attributed to the script and Carrey wanting to prove himself with a dramatic role. Weir was actually initially considering Robin Williams for Truman Burbank but wanted Carrey after seeing Ace Ventura, pet Detective, which to me is kind of mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like Ace Ventura, it's a wild wacky movie that is also not aged. Well, yeah, but I don't know. I can't imagine seeing a guy talking with his butt and then being like that's the guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like to me and I know this is controversial like Ace Ventura is on the bottom rung of the Jim Carrey spectrum for me personally, and the Truman Show is on the top of it and there's lots of stuff in the middle.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I know, I know People really love that movie.
Speaker 2:Well, the problem is a lot of people look at it through. You know, roasting to glasses. It holds a special nostalgic place because this is a lot of people's you know growing up movie yeah, and yeah, when you're a kid, watching some guy pop out of a rhinos butt is hilarious. I mean it's still pretty funny. Actually, jim Carrey was always just like a really funny guy that brought so much laughter. But then you see him in, like when he starts dipping into like horrorish elements like the cable guy, yeah, it's like, excuse me, you're supposed to be childhood friendly, you're supposed to be childhood friendly and this is not that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's one of the reasons why I love him in this role, because I actually do think he was the right choice for casting. Personally, yes, but he also, like you know, he has Jim Carrey quirks, which I love and I think I'm a big fan of him, but, like in the film, like the Grinch or you know, he has, like certain things, mannerisms that he does in every film.
Speaker 2:He's, his whole body is so crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he's so great at it. And in this film I think he only dipped into that in the car scene when he's driving with Laura Linney and he's trying to like escape, you know, and they drive over the bridge and he's going around that roundabout and around the roundabout and he has like this moment where he breaks into it with like that crazy Jim Carrey face and he's like, you know, like at her. But it's only once, and the rest of it he's so sort of charming and docile and it's just like a different. I feel like it pushed him in a different direction. It was really cool to see that.
Speaker 2:Well, there's also his like catchphrase of in case I don't see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a little Jim Carrey yeah. It's just a smile at the end.
Speaker 2:This also happens in what's the movie about? Another, the Schizophrenia one. That's not actually Schizophrenia, it's split personality Me myself and Irene. Oh yeah, that's a adult comedy. It's like American pie level humor, right, maybe a little more advanced. It's been years since I've seen this. It's definitely a comedy, but there's more dramatic elements to it because there's gravitas in that film a little. But he just every so often breaks into this like physical comedy that he has absolutely perfected over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he's a master of what he does.
Speaker 2:It's just such a shame Like I just want to see more of him as the mask.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, alan, what do you think the budget was for the Truman Show? Like 500 million 60 million Really, 12 of which went to Jim Carrey. Wow, and how much do you think it brought in 200? Billion 264 million.
Speaker 2:I mean that's also. These are 90s numbers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was free avatar, he was already up against some real stiff competition. I mean, titanic had come out just the year before, yeah, and so the precedent for what a movie needs to make to be wildly successful Like movies like that really just screwed the industry across the board.
Speaker 1:But I still think the Truman Show has like 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, like it's. I think it's sort of beloved, even though it's and what I really love about the Truman Show not to get on the side tangent here but this is going to sound like a pun, but I'm not meaning it to be it's actually quite simple and quite contained. When you watch it back and neither of us had seen it for a very long time it's simpler than you think, than you remember. I feel like it's very contained. Everything about it is, of course there's the world that they create, but they sort of create it in a way that feels as small as the actual world would be for Truman. And the script is simple. It's kind of a short film Like it's just how you get what's happening right away. It's not like this long drawn out tension built thing. Everything happens pretty fast and it just feels like this little slice of something you know and I appreciate that about it.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I feel like if this movie was made today, it would be presented in a very different way. I agree there would be so much more behind the scenes drama and, just like I don't know, a peek behind the veil of how it all works. We're just presented with this idea of a guy for 30 years living in this dome.
Speaker 2:And we get just enough of the behind the scenes, right, and it's done by the actors, you know. But you know, there's never any discussion about how these crazy weather effects are happening, yeah, how all these cameras are being put into place, what do they do for sound. You know, it's just like all these, like little details that, as I feel like as a more aware audience member, cause like I mean, yeah, granted, we work in the film industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people are just used to seeing the spectacle, seeing the cracks, because the cracks are fun. Yeah, but Truman Show doesn't present those, it just kind of hides them. Yeah, every so often you run into one, but it's always as a plot device, you know, like when? At the very end, when Jim Carrey's boat hits the edge of the dome.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, it's the best moment. I love it. It's so well done and you see how simple that is right, Yep. And it's so powerful, Like I always get chills when we watch that moment. It's just like what smart storytelling.
Speaker 2:And I mean we're going ahead of ourselves here. But the ending of the movie it wraps up with such a nice little bow that's still open-ended, which is we don't see him in the girl meet.
Speaker 1:We just see he leaves the dome and the girl leaves her house, but they don't make out right. It just like to your point it's kind of nice, it's kind of, and now it's what happens. Now is up to him. We don't follow him anymore.
Speaker 2:You don't get bogged down in all of the legalese about how this is happening, Like you get protesters that are against it on a fundamental level. But it's also like how are they doing this to this poor person?
Speaker 1:Because you get one line where they say this is the first production studio to ever adopt a human, and that's it, and that explains it all.
Speaker 2:And they never harp on it After he gets out.
Speaker 1:It's just like oh, he's not seeing them in court, that's it.
Speaker 2:Not, you are our little slave. Get back at monkey dance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing that's interesting. Obviously they didn't do this, but the director had really wanted to make the film experience in theaters meta and so he wanted to build in a moment where the projectionists would cut and it would switch to cameras that were planted in the theater and include the audience watching on the screen and then cut back to the film. And obviously that would have been insanely expensive to install cameras and technical, but they were trying to think of a way to bring it into the real world.
Speaker 2:That's actually a really interesting idea to think about. This is still during a time when I don't know I'm going to throw out an arbitrary number 90%, probably even more, of all projections were filmed. How would you even do that, like they have digital projectors, do they, I don't know, in 1998. I don't know how they would have done it. I know they had digital cameras but they weren't great. So to interface all that, there's a lot of technical hurdles.
Speaker 1:But it just kind of gives you a sense of how they were thinking about the movie. It's neat. Also, just a fun fact one of my favorite directors of all time, brian De Palma, was initially set to direct the film before Peter Weir took over. For anyone who needs a little refresher, the Truman Show tells the story of Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, who was officially adopted by a television studio after an unwanted pregnancy.
Speaker 1:Truman is the subject of an always-on reality program that streams every second of his life to viewers In the world of the film. The television station uses 5,000 cameras to cover every element of Truman's life and present a relatable and honest program for viewers. Truman lives in a giant bubble dome where everything inside is a set that centers around him and every single person is an actor. Truman finds out that he's living in a reality show that's being streamed around the clock and across the globe. There's actually, which is just so horrifying.
Speaker 1:But there is actually a Twilight Zone episode from 1989 called Special Service that predates, obviously, the Truman Show with a similar concept. Special Service tells the story of a man who, like Truman, discovers he is constantly being recorded and streamed as part of a popular television program. J Michael Schekzinski wrote the episode. The episode is used as satire to make fun of the way humans believe the world revolves around them. There's also a short film from 1968 with a similar plot, the Secret Cinema, starring Amy Vane. The Truman Show is also credited with predicting the reality show boom that followed two years after its release with the first episode of Survivor. So I think that's really interesting because this is going to play into the delusion part which we're about to get to, that in this place and time 1998, reality TV is not really a thing yet.
Speaker 2:Wait, so Survivor was the first.
Speaker 1:So Candid Camera actually, I guess, is technically the first and there's some sort of one-off things. The American sportsman, an American family, real people, cops, real world, predates, survivor.
Speaker 2:Oh wait, real world rules. Oh, that was really Mm-hmm. That was like the challenge. I thought it was like early 2000s, Early 90s.
Speaker 1:Huh, big brother, but I think who wants to marry a millionaire? But I think Survivor really changed the game of reality TV. Sure, there's a handful of shows that predate it, but in the first episode of Survivor, aired in the year 2000,. Think about the landscape of reality TV now. For any die-hard Truman Show fans, there's actually a 30-minute documentary mockumentary from the set. So, peter, we are actually sent a doc crew into the world and had them interview the actors in the town as their personas, some of which made it into the final film, but the rest of the footage was turned into a 30-minute package that ran on Nick at night. The term Truman Show delusion was coined 10 years after the release of the film by Joel and Ian Gold, a psychiatrist and a neurophilosopher respectively, their brothers. Neurophilosopher, yes, at McGill University in Canada.
Speaker 2:It's a rock and roll title.
Speaker 1:Though it's not officially sanctioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, there are documented cases of this delusion. The true scope of any disorder is hard to know, but there are at least hundreds of reported cases. Joel Gold was a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City when he first came across a case of the Truman Show delusion. Quoting from Joel Gold in the National Post article, quote it's really a question of the extent of the delusion. The delusions we typically tree are narrow. There is Capgras delusion, where someone will think his family has been replaced by doubles, or the Frigoli delusion, where someone believes that one person is persecuting him a doctor, a mailman, butcher.
Speaker 1:The Truman Show delusion, though, involves the entire world. End quote. So let's quickly define what a delusion is. Essentially, a delusion is thought to be a belief held by a patient that is not based in reality and has proof to the contrary. So even though you could prove to somebody that no, you're not on a reality TV show, they still believe that that's the case. One of Gold's patients traveled to New York City after 9-11 because he was worried the attacks were just a plot twist in his own reality show, and he wanted to confirm if the tower still stood.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, so he just thought that this was just good TV.
Speaker 1:A different patient had been working as an intern on a reality TV program and thought that everything they did was being tracked by cameras, including voting in the presidential election in 2004.
Speaker 2:Wait, was that the presidential election? No, in 2004? It was Bush. This was the Bush-Al Gore. Yeah, yeah, that was the presidential election.
Speaker 1:Sure OK.
Speaker 2:That was when our country took a twist Plot twist.
Speaker 1:When he yelled that Bush was quote a Judas, he was taken to Gold's Carribell View. Another patient had traveled to the Federal Building in Manhattan's financial district in an effort to seek asylum from the show he thought he was being forced to star in. Finally, yet another patient thought he needed to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty to escape his show. He's been quoted as saying quote I realized that I was and am the center, the focus of attention by millions and millions of people. My family and everyone I knew was and are actors in a script, the charade, whose entire purpose is to make me the focus of the world's attention. End, quote. The entire reason that Truman Show Delusion is named as it is beyond the obvious is that three of the first five patients that Joel Gold initially saw for similar conditions all named the movie while being examined.
Speaker 1:In the next two years. Almost 50 patients were referred to Gold After the paper came out. So the brothers wrote a paper, dozens of more patients tried to contact them. So kind of the general timeline here is it's like 2002, 2004. Around that time Joel Gold, who's based in New York, starts being referred to these patients. He's at Bellevue and then he becomes kind of like the guy who's digging into this. So doctors are referring these patients to him. His brother, who is this neuro philosopher, whatever he is in McGill University in New York.
Speaker 2:Neuro.
Speaker 1:Manser. After a while they decide to write a paper, a psychiatric paper, about this, and then, eventually, I believe, they write a book.
Speaker 2:It's also easy to see some kind of correlation, where some guy comes up with this hot new theory that's based on this thing that is very popular at the time, and then you have all of these psychological disorders, which probably vary quite a bit, but they don't currently fit into any established mold. So, but now you have this nice new one and they're probably shoving all these people into this fancy new box. Uh, because they have enough similar symptoms.
Speaker 1:Well, I would disagree with that on one piece, which is that these people who are coming in are naming the film which is why they're being put in a box.
Speaker 2:But this was after he published his findings.
Speaker 1:No, before, even before.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's her.
Speaker 1:But I do think it's not so much that they're putting people in a box who have random conditions. I think in the kind of, the point of the episode is that for the first time, people have people have always had delusions. Again right, for the first time those delusions are taking the form of reality TV, because reality TV has not really existed before and coupled with the boom of reality TV and the film the Truman Show, people who are going to have delusional beliefs anyway. That's kind of what they're latching onto Right.
Speaker 2:So previously people would just be paranoid. People are always watching me, but now you have this very acceptable reason for being watched because it's television, and television is entertaining. Why would people?
Speaker 1:Well, like in the fifties. Someone who had the same mental disorder might be like I'm being chased by fucking Russian spies. Now they think they're on the Truman Show. Yeah, because it's the place and time of where we are in society.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, I agree Okay.
Speaker 1:I also want to say it's important to pause on the fact that the patients are naming the film, because that means that the film itself directly sort of influenced these delusions, didn't cause them right, but skinned them, if you will. In the film, as Truman starts to understand that something isn't right about his reality, we can see him slowly start to question his surroundings. He becomes consumed with this paranoid, confused, angry right. It kind of mimics reality there. Sure, the New York Times article by Sarah Kershaw makes the point that in the 21st century, extreme anxiety and psychosis can have a distinct lens to it. For example, fear of the water supply being compromised, fear of a microchip in your brain, alien abduction, fear of intense surveillance and or being on a reality show against your will. Obviously these are specific to the time and place right. These fears wouldn't have existed before those technologies existed.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? Contaminated water has been around forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there was kind of like a fear of that going on.
Speaker 2:In. Like the middle ages, you used to dump a body down the enemy's well and you poisoned the whole town.
Speaker 1:So there's probably the same sort of fear happening back then too.
Speaker 2:I mean, you don't have to use a person, you can just throw a goat down there or something.
Speaker 1:The point is that generally, fears or delusions reflect the current fears of society right and the current pop cultural zeitgeist. I also read a New Yorker article that did a great job explaining this in layman's terms, so the article is by Andrew Morance. It's called Unrealty Star, still available on the website. Definitely recommend that you go read it. It was excellent, but it unpacks the case of Nick Lotz. So Nick Lotz was a student at Ohio University and genuinely believes that he was being followed and recorded by TV cameras at all times. Okay, it all started in 2007 when he felt isolated and alone at school. This soon developed into paranoia that people were posting photos and videos of him online, making fun of him though he never actually found any, but he was he kind of. He went to school, right, he was kind of othered, wasn't fitting in, started drinking, started self medicating and then kind of became delusional and thinking that all these classmates who weren't really bonding with him were actually like posting videos of him Online. But those that's just not true, right Okay.
Speaker 1:His parents tried to get him into rehab and he agreed to go if he was allowed to go to a music festival. Seems reasonable, yeah, he went with his sisters. I think that's why they were like okay, you have a chaperone at the festival while on drugs and during a Dave Matthews band set.
Speaker 1:he was convinced he had figured out his entire life, quoting from the New Yorker article quote. Suddenly, lots solved the puzzle of his life. Since starting college, he had been the star of a reality TV show. The network had kept the cameras hidden as in candid camera and punked. That night was supposed to be the finale. All he had to do was call his father, who'd find him in the crowd, lead him on stage and present him with a check for a million dollars.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's a good deal Lots took out his cell phone, but he was too strong out to place the call, it was too late.
Speaker 1:He'd missed his chance to make the cameras turn off and quote. Later on, back at rehab, he took the therapist's explanation that the patients will be watched as a direct acknowledgement that he was on a reality TV show, right? So the nurse kind of onboarding the rehab. People were like of course we're going to be watching you guys at all times and he was like you and the rest of the world, right, yeah, he was already used to it, though Eventually he left the program and he went back home where he was like. He left the program where he would even take to leaving his laptop open because he was convinced that there was cameras inside and he wanted the audience to get a better view of him.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So once he's kind of back home he's slipping even further into this delusion. Because I should say the rehab programs refer drugs not for sort of like mental rehab Right.
Speaker 1:So when he's back home he's leaving laptops, he's trying to sort of play up his role. He even thought that the production had hardwired some sort of speaker into his head so that the audience could hear his thoughts. He lost 50 pounds because he thought the producers were telepathically telling him to look better on camera. Quoting from the New York article quote psychotic disorders typically emerged between the ages of 18 and 30. One such condition schizophrenia affects approximately 1% of the population, a figure that appears to have remained stable across epochs and continents. End quote. Nick eventually came to outgrow the delusion, in a sense. He just sort of figured out at some point like he didn't you know this was from 2007, but he didn't at the time the article was written say like oh, that never happened. He just sort of said I think it's over now. Like he still believed it, but he believed that it had ended. And then he eventually spent an hour on the phone with Dr Gold.
Speaker 2:I thought you're going to say and then he eventually found all of the episodes on YouTube. No, that'd be so wild. It would be wild, I'd be upset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course Truman was upset.
Speaker 2:He was perturbed, I feel like most people would be far more upset.
Speaker 1:I feel like he was upset Truman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was. His feathers were ruffled.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would have gone on a murder spree.
Speaker 1:You kidding me? He's so cute at the end with his red shoes. I love his outfit. You love his red shoes, I do.
Speaker 2:You make a lot of comments about his red shoes. I love them, yeah, I think it's charming. But no, I mean. What is the normal reaction to finding out that your entire life is a lie? And it's a great question. Everyone around you is in on the joke.
Speaker 1:I mean the thing to me that's and again kind of going back to the Truman show, the Truman show not showing you everything right. The parts that are so disturbing is that you understand because of the context that Truman has sex with a woman who he thinks is his wife, but as a paid actor.
Speaker 1:That like it's never happened, no, but he's not aware of it. Like it's, it's very dark when you think about, like all of the little things that happen in his life, like all the things that he does when he's alone. He thinks he's alone and people are watching. When he was seven or eight, you know, it's just like it's very dark to think about that stuff.
Speaker 2:They do kind of glance over a lot of things, like the fact that it's a 24 hour live broadcast, quote unquote, unedited. Yet there's some human things that are never even discussed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and to me it's like leaving that to our imagination, because I think those are the first things people are going to think about makes them grosser.
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, and he's like 30, you know it's he's lived a full life. I mean, honestly, it was kind of a gift, for I mean, if we're taking, if we're on team giant media corporation that he got out when he was just over 30. Now he's boring. No, he's boring. He's hit a lot like all of the growing up milestones, yeah, and like I don't know. After this, this is when people typically start to like quote unquote, settle down.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So-.
Speaker 1:Well, you could see them pushing him to like have a kid, because that would be the next thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but like again, how interesting is he going to be at 65? It depends, it does depend, but like, how interesting is he going to be at 85?
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably not very. I just read a book that I didn't expect to have any correlation to this movie at all in this episode, but it is a book called Never Let Me Go. It's a dystopian novel and I'm not going to spoil anything about it because I actually think everybody should go read it. I think it's incredible, but it has this similar question. It made me think about Truman's lack of free will, because even though he has, I'm sure, some minute level of free will in his role in this life, he really doesn't right Because they're kind of he tries to. He falls in love with this one girl and they push him towards this other girl. They get me. You know, everything is being manipulative, everything around him is being manipulated all the time.
Speaker 2:The one woman that he does fall in love with was not scripted, so she got removed from the entire simulation.
Speaker 1:Right, it's just like that's also. The horrifying part to me is, like this whole life that you've lived you've actually not had the ownership of it, that you thought you did. You were being produced but you weren't aware of it Like that's horrifying. Sure, are you real, alan? Are you an actor? No comment. I'm going to quote again from the New Yorker article by Andrew Morance. Quote If form is fixed, content is not. Between 1995 and 2004,.
Speaker 1:The International Study of Psychotic Symptoms, a survey of 1,100 patients from seven countries, found that the mind supplies the contours of delusions and culture fills in the details. Grandios schizophrenics from largely Christian countries often claim to be prophets or gods, but sufferers in Pakistan, a Muslim country, rarely do. In Shanghai, paranoid people report being pricked by poisoned needles. In Taipei, they are possessed by spirits. Shifts in technology have caused the content of delusions to change over the years. In the 1940s the Japanese controlled American minds with radio waves. In the 50s, the Soviets accomplished this with satellites. In the 70s, the CIA implanted computer chips into people's brains. End quote. Again, it's really the theme of this right. It's important to understand that the nature of delusions evolves depending on society and pop culture. So it's kind of more so just a testament to the power of the film to have created this sort of subgenre of delusion than anything else right. Thousands of films come out every year, but rarely do films have hundreds of cases of delusions associated with them.
Speaker 2:I do wonder and I'm sure the study was done by somebody somewhere if how many people are reporting this kind of delusion who didn't see the film.
Speaker 1:But then maybe it's being categorized a little bit differently, because it's not Truman Show delusion, it's reality show delusion, sure or who knows? For example, turbosis is the delusion that one is covered in sand, which certainly is regional.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, covered in sand.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's way more prevalent in the Middle East than in the US. Okay, would the New York Times article by Sarah Kershaw also points to another example. In West Bengal, india, some people who are bitten by dogs had started to believe that they were pregnant with puppies.
Speaker 2:Okay, I, I believe that one, but covered in sand like you have sand on you all the time.
Speaker 1:You know like you're wiping sand off of yourself huh. Okay, I'm gonna quote from psychiatrist Peter Weiner. Quote in the 40s Psychotic patients would express delusions about their brains being controlled by radio waves.
Speaker 2:He goes by peener. Now delusional patients commonly complain about implanted computer chips and quote sure I mean, yeah, look at COVID and how everyone thought that vaccines implanted microchips that they could feel a thousand percent.
Speaker 1:That's a great example. Also, now it feels like so many more people are delusional, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's also just because the internet gives idiots megaphones.
Speaker 1:But yes, and also think about how, like, tick-tock, amplify shit like that. You have a conspiracy theory. You know someone who's delusional can really Latch on to that? Right like right now, there's conspiracy theories that Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift who are I don't know if you know who they are, alan, but Travis Kelsey is a NFL player and Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift they're in a relationship and there's right, and there's these conspiracy theories out there that for some reason, they're in like a PR relationship To get Biden elected again. Oh yeah, it's like that kind of stuff, that like it's just Bonkers, you know, I mean not that it could be a PR relationship, but I don't believe that it's for the love of Joe Biden.
Speaker 2:I was reading something the other day about how the vocal minority Ruins. So many things. Yeah, like what so, like you know, an example be like Well, there's the vocal minority being a.
Speaker 1:Very who are allowed, but in the minority but, yeah, a very small group of people.
Speaker 2:But because the internet let's you talk to the rest of the world simultaneously, yeah, if you speak with enough enthusiasm, confidence and just like proper diction and Way, more people listen than should, sure, and so like the best exit. So a great example of this was the whole vaccines cause autism. Sure, and you know it. This was started for whatever fucking reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then all these other people started popping out of the woodwork saying like, oh my god, it's the same thing for me, simply because, like it be gave them something to talk about. They got so impassioned about it, yeah, and and confidence is contagious, sure. So they just start speaking about this and then, all of a sudden, they have this massive following that was started with Effectively nothing, and then now the whole, and then, and then you have this topic of vaccines Are they safe? Is part of a larger, is part of the a Worldwide conversation, when it never should have been yeah, absolutely it's.
Speaker 1:Also, you know, and you have people who are going through something mentally right or in a bad place, or going through Some with some sort of condition and are somewhat vulnerable. They latch on to things like this, like I've had people in my life who are awesome, amazing people, but in dark times have latched on to beliefs and delusions and even conspiracy theories that I thought was, you know, some of the smartest people. I know that, but it's kind of like a symptom of a thing, right, and that's what we're talking about. So All the love to everybody and, you know, keep questioning and go see a doctor. It's generally believed that the Truman show acted as an answer to patients who are experiencing other conditions. It gave explanation and presumed to context to the feelings they were having. Even the golds don't think of the Truman show delusion as a condition on its own. Rather, quote a variance unknown, pursuitory and grandiose delusions and quote Gold classifies the Truman show delusion as a symptom of psychosis. But the brothers have gotten some negative pushback from other doctors who don't necessarily disagree with them, but rather don't think it's so unusual for patients to identify with a particular character or movie. And you know, I think that's true, that's. You know the point. And the point of this also isn't to say that it's so special, it's. It's kind of just to talk about this moment in time when this was a thing you know, and I'm gonna admit this now.
Speaker 1:I certainly have, I would say, many intrusive thoughts. Sometimes it was more prevalent when I was a kid, but thoughts that, oh, people can hear my thoughts or People are watching me or there's cameras set up. I had a quite a phase of that at one point. Even now, sometimes I'm always I can get suspicious that people can read my thoughts and I'll think something like, okay, tap my shoulder if you can, you know, give me a sign. And I've talked to a few friends about this as we've been researching this. We have one friend in particular who had quite an intense version of this when he was growing up. Another friend Also told me she did it as well. So I don't think it's so unusual, especially for our generation again growing up in sort of this reality TV world, when You're you're growing up, you're trying to explain things, even as an adult, sometimes to think, okay, it's like a this surveillance mindset.
Speaker 2:I Did not have this. I did not grow up with reality TV. There you go. Instead, I grew up with Ninja Turtles and Street Sharks.
Speaker 1:There you go. Whichever side of the debate we all land on, it's sort of irrelevant to the topic today. The point for us is that the Truman show had a lasting impact on society, no matter which way you look at it, and we can't take for granted the power of art and pop culture in 2024. There are indeed reality shows that you can watch for 24 hours a day, big brother, for instance. There are also shows that literally use surveillance cameras mounted in bedrooms to document what the Inhabitants of the summer house or winter houses are doing at all hours of the day and night.
Speaker 2:That seems very specific.
Speaker 1:It's from the show summer house and winter house. Part of the heaviness of the Truman show are the moments we don't see as the audience right, but in reality shows that's what they want to catch. They want to catch the two people having sex or the weird shit that they're doing. But it's kind of this weird flip where now it's like obviously it's consensual, these people are aware of that, they're being taped, but it's it's kind of this bizarre thing where we minimize it right as we expect access to people, especially in the reality TV worlds. So anyway, I don't know what what the really the takeaway is of this, except to say that I Think reality TV, I enjoy it, I actually will watch it quite a bit, but I do think it can take a toll on you and you're watching a lot of it, you don't say, and I think it can be dehumanizing.
Speaker 1:I also I also think that the movie, the Truman show, had a had a large impact on it, on a generation really happy to just have a breakthrough. No, I'm not gonna blame any of my issues on reality TV, all right, but I do think sometimes it's good to turn it off and listen to music instead, you know, or watch anything else? Yeah, read a book, great. Go on a walk. Play a game Depends on the game. What's your big takeaway from this episode?
Speaker 2:My big takeaway is that the Truman show is a frickin baller movie baller. I haven't, we hadn't watched, I hadn't watched in many years. Yeah it's great. It comes from an era of. I don't know this is a very biased statement, but the 90s cranked out some incredible movies.
Speaker 1:I have to say there's also this I don't know how to define them, but films like being, john Malkovich, the Truman Show Adaptation, which all seem to have come out kind of around the same time-ish but the same kind of decade and it's like this meta-quirky but not comedy, but not drama. It's like they're so specific and I just have a deep love for them. Sure, I think they're really a unique, mini-micro subgenre film. What would you call that genre? Meta like meta-dramaties, meddramaties.
Speaker 1:I'd say psychological comedies, but all of them are sort of meta to the world of film. Being John Malkovich is about John Malkovich, right. Then you have adaptation, which is about writing films, and then you have the Truman Show, which is about making content. There's a layer of meta-ness to it.
Speaker 2:I'd say fourth-wall, intrusive comedies.
Speaker 1:Ooh dramaties.
Speaker 2:Fourth-wall intrusive dramaties, Ex-perfection. That's your favorite genre outside of horror.
Speaker 1:It's not my favorite genre, but I have a love for it.
Speaker 2:And the Little Mermaid. I'm honestly surprised that the Truman Show never went on to have any sequels or spinoff shows. I don't know, it just seems rife. But we're also coming from the future, where everything has to be a franchise.
Speaker 1:Everything has to be three hours and a franchise and a spinoff. That's why I also respect it a lot, because I feel like it didn't overstate its own importance.
Speaker 2:Now they can't even come up with any new stories. Now they're telling fucking Napoleon.
Speaker 1:As always you guys. Thank you so much for being here. I know this one was a little bit different, but again, we have a deep love for the Truman Show and it was fun to watch it and talk through how film in general impacts real life kind of the opposite of what we usually do when we talk about. The history of horror. Flipped it on its head for this one.
Speaker 2:It really is so easy it really would have been so easy to remake this movie as a horror film.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just someone's entire life. One day the veil is dropped and everything is a lie, and it all comes crumbling down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I honestly think it's. I like the way that they handled it because I think it would have been, I don't know. It feels more unique this way, with this tone, versus as something that's darker.
Speaker 2:Well, I think in the film they really drove home how Truman was very beloved. He was never being made fun of. His comedic behaviors were more endearing than Despite the fact that he was a comedic guy. People were laughing with him rather than at him, and Ed Harris with his God Mike. They have a big conversation about this, about how Truman means so much to so many people, whereas it's very easy to imagine someone just being laughed at. Someone is the butt of a joke, someone is the rat in a maze that the whole world is watching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Totally, Absolutely yeah, and it's almost like a stepford wife in a way, like the fact that it's not a horror and it should be. It's a little bit creepier to watch because everybody's fake smiling through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then just the cracks immediately get steamrolled over and you move on.
Speaker 1:Right, because it's like a giant, it's like such a production company, but whatever, yeah, it's fascinating. Anyway, thank you guys so much for listening. It has been a pleasure, as always. We will be back very soon with some darker content for you. I can promise that. Stay spooky, stay safe and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Transcribed by ESO is a słow Unic gebaut.
