On The Truman Show and the Pursuit of Privacy

“Survivor” wasn’t the pioneer in reality TV shows, but perhaps it was the one that helped give way to the explosion of similar shows that now hog most of the prime time slots. Whereas “Survivor” was a breath of fresh air to viewers in the early nineties owing to its original content and format, the slew of reality TV shows nowadays make for monotonous, frustrating, and even boring viewing. It is a case of what economists would call the law of diminishing returns.

If networks could produce a TV show similar to the “Truman Show”, then they might hope to revive an interest in the genre.

Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lives a peaceful and contented life in the fictional town of Seahaven. He works as a successful account executive for an insurance company and is happily married to his doting wife, Meryl (Laura Linney). But when Truman encounters his father (who is believed to have drowned in a boating accident when Truman was a child), he begins to suspect that everything in his life is not what it seems.

Truman is in fact an unwitting (and much later, unwilling) star on his own immensely popular TV show. He was chosen out of five unwanted babies and was raised to adulthood by a “family” of professional actors. The entire town where he lives in is really a gigantic studio and the townsfolk, an entire cast of actors. Truman’s life is captured on camera 24/7, and broadcast to millions of voyeuristic viewers worldwide.

The death of Truman’s father was staged to instill in him a fear of water in order to keep (trap) him in Seahaven. But (as every viewer knows) he yearns to travel as far as Fiji to find his one-time sweetheart, Lauren, whom he became romantically involved with in college. Lauren genuinely cares for Truman and tried to reveal to him the truth about his life, and this resulted in her getting fired from the show.

Slowly, the truth about his life unfolds before Truman’s eyes: His wife spews out advertising one-liners because the show doesn’t have time for commercial breaks; his best friend’s main task on the show is to keep him out of trouble since they were kids; he is living in a controlled environment where even the weather and sunrise/sunset can be manipulated.

In the events leading to the film’s climax, Truman finally overcomes his hydrophobia and embarks on a sea trip to escape Seahaven. The show’s creator, Christof (Ed Harris), tries to stop Truman from leaving by unleashing a storm, and almost kills him. Truman survives the storm and reaches the end of the studio: his boat crashes into the “horizon” — a wall painted blue to resemble the sky. He finds a flight of stairs leading to an emergency exit.

As Truman opens the door and is about to leave, Christof (who, along with the show’s production team, is stationed in the “moon”) speaks to him in a booming voice not unlike God’s. Christof tries to convince Truman to stay, and tries to justify why he has imprisoned Truman in an environment of constructed reality. Truman, however, ignores Christof’s reasoning and – after delivering one of his famous lines, “In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.” – takes a bow and steps out.

The film raises a few questions on the right of people to privacy, especially celebrities who are under the public eye. For me at least, it is a chilling reminder of how harmful invasion of privacy is. It made me remember the death of Princess Diana several years ago, when she and her lover, Dodi Al-Fayed, died in a fatal car crash in an attempt to elude pursuing paparazzi.

It is also somehow ironic that a lot of people would want to join reality TV shows, especially in the case of Big Brother, even if they have to showcase themselves and their lives to other people in exchange for fame and fortune. This is a stark contrast to that of Truman’s experience and beliefs. Has personal privacy become so dispensable and irrelevant in this day and age?

The Truth

(A drunk sits next to you in a bar, thinks you are his or her close friend and starts confessing “the truth.”  Write about what “the truth” is in at least 200 words.)  

 

The bartender scoops up some ice into a tall highball glass. He pours some Bacardi into the glass and fills it to the rim with Coke. A garnish of sliced lemon follows. After a few stirs, he hands the cocktail to me. He wipes his hands on his apron and walks over a few stools away to the next customer, a fortyish man with a graying buzz cut.

 

I take a sip of my drink and mull over why a Cuba Libre tastes better when mixed with Bacardi. An expert bartender with a few thousand mixes in his resume might get away with using cheap white Tanduay rum, but an amateur almost always messes things up. Might as well use the real thing than risk earning the ire of a dissatisfied customer.

 

Halfway through my third Rum Coke, buzz cut approaches with a shot of Smirnoff in hand. He sits beside me and sets down his drink.

 

“Haven’t seen you for a while,” His voice sounds like he’s been soused up since noon. “How’s the wife?”

 

Staring into my drink, I don’t bother looking at him. “Excuse me?” I manage to blurt out, still toying with a couple of ice cubes with my stirrer.

 

“I’m asking about your wife, Rick. How is she?”

 

I look to the bartender for help. He gives me a shrug and proceeds to wipe some glasses, as if to say “It’s your problem, dude. You’re on your own.”

 

A sigh of resignation escapes me. Maybe it’s just better to play along. “She’s fine.”

 

Buzz cut clucks his tongue. “Fine,” The word escapes his lips with a tinge of sarcasm. “That’s what they all say. If everything were fine, you wouldn’t be here, would you, Rick?” He punctuates his statement with bitter, cracking laughter.

 

I pretend not to hear him, but I change my mind at the last minute. I turn to stare at him and ask: “How about you? How’s the wife?”

 

He matches my gaze and pierces me with cold, black eyes. “I really don’t know, Rick. Haven’t seen her for a while. Maybe she’s dead, but why do I care? Maybe I even killed her.”

 

Silence, as we both sip our drinks. The bartender sets down a small plateful of peanuts. I scoop up a handful and pop a couple into my mouth. Buzz cut helps himself and chews noisily. He washes down the mouthful of nuts with more vodka.

 

I wonder if he was telling the truth. A morbid truth.

 

“Hey Rick, wanna hear a joke?”

 

“Sure,” I say.

 

“A woman walks into a bar and settles into a stool. The bartender comes up to her. ‘What will it be?’ he asks.

 

‘I’ll have a beer please,” The woman says.

 

‘Anheuser-Busch?” The bartender asks.

 

‘Fine,” The woman says, visibly irritated. ‘And how’s your cock?!’”

 

The bar is suddenly filled with roaring laughter. Buzz cut’s body is convulsing, in synch with his cackling. The bartender’s face is red and he is clutching his sides. After three drinks, it is the first time I hear the bartender’s voice and unluckily for me, it comes out as boisterous laughter. The other customers aside from buzz cut and myself– an elderly couple having dinner at a booth in the far corner, and a heavyset woman several stools away with a mug of beer in hand – are all chuckling.

 

“Get it Rick? And how’s your bush? And how’s your cock? Hahaha!”

 

I finish the rest of my drink, fish out three hundred pesos from my wallet, and place the bills down on the bar. I was heading toward the door when I heard buzz cut call out to me.

 

“Hey Ricky! Where are you going? I haven’t finished the joke. The woman ended up shooting the bartender between the eyes!” More laughter.

 

I exit the bar and walk out into the night. I could still hear faint laughter from within even as the door closes behind me.

 

And I wonder if the bartender is still laughing.

A Carpool Article

Anyone living outside Cebu City can attest to the problems brought about by commuting to work. I live in Talisay City and with the recent opening of a new school term and the onset of the rainy season, I was inspired (based on my personal experience, of course) to come up with a commuter’s guide to surviving a rainy weekday morning:

 

-Grab an umbrella and step out of the house.

-Try your best, although impossible, to fend off the lashing rain. When your foot sinks into ankle-deep mud, swear loudly. You will notice that by now you are dripping wet.

-Claw your way through violent, rabid passengers and scramble aboard a jeepney. Try to enjoy the stifling humidity, the gagging smog, and the heavy traffic. Remember: Commuters cannot be choosers.

-If you arrive at the office late, try to read the morning news to cheer you up.

-If the morning news says the President is encouraging everyone to walk or ride a bicycle because of the rising price of gasoline, stop and think if she is willing to do any of these in the pouring rain to get to Malacañang.

-Buckle down to work. You have better things to do.

 

And don’t get me started on taxis. I remember something Jessica Zafra has written about taxi drivers here in the Philippines: “Cabbies may refuse a passenger on the grounds that her destination is too near, her destination is too far, traffic en route to her destination is too bad. And my personal favorite: He’s not going that way.”

 

So when my father got a new car and handed down his old, gas-guzzling ’95 Corolla, I was ecstatic. I used the car to drive to work for a while– eventually the car was sold and I moved on to a 2000 Corolla — but when a series of unprecedented oil price hikes hit the driving public hard, this brought me back to reality. It made me think of the things I could get for the price of a single liter of petrol:

 

1. A tapsilog with free iced tea at Ron’s Grill
2. Two or three days’ worth of prepaid cell phone credits
3. A cheeseburger meal at McDonald’s
4. Just add 1,500 + pesos for a good rice cooker
5. Just add 750,000 + pesos for a brand new and fuel-efficient Toyota Yaris!

 

Then a simple solution was flaunted by fellow Talisaynon Cathy Ramirez of Systems: Why not start a carpool service? Cathy even offered her car and agreed to be the designated driver. The only catch was that we (including carpool mates Abigail Mancelita and Richard Khe of Software Development) each needed to contribute a certain amount to help pay for the gasoline costs. Who could resist such an offer?

 

Also known as car-sharing, ride-sharing, and lift-sharing, carpooling has been around in a structured form since the mid ‘70s. Needless to say, aside from helping save the world’s rapidly depleting oil reserves, carpooling reduces the number of cars on the road, thereby helping to combat rising traffic congestion. Also, in reducing the number of cars on the road, carpooling decreases pollution and the need for parking space. In a global perspective, this reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Carpooling can also reduce driving stress. And I’d like to drive home this point (pun definitely intended) by saying that nothing can be more relaxing on the way to the office than listening to Mama Cathy’s motherly advice, Richard’s sure-fire tips on how to live a frugal life and save money, and Abigail’s off-hand jokes and cracking laughter. And of course, wishful thinking aside, I’d like to believe that they also enjoy my company no matter how obnoxious I can get.

 

Carpool, anyone?

Reading Update for May

1. Bangkok Eight by John Burdett

2. Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk