The Consumer Republic

The Reel Deal By the time I got to the theater to see The Truman Show, I felt as if I had been watching this guy's life on television for the last 30 years. Surely everyone this side of Ted Kaczynski's old neighborhood is aware of this movie about a hapless synthetic Everyman unwittingly living a life that is literally made for TV. The film presses every worry button in the po-mo psyche: our queasy relationship with our own voyeurism, our fear of being controlled by manipulative media, our anxious confusion over what is real and what is not. No wonder the movie is the box-office monster that Godzilla was meant to be. It's reassuring proof that a resonant idea beats a king's-ransom worth of tie-in promos any day. Even if you haven't seen the movie, you've no doubt gathered that Truman, who treasures the fantasy of escaping to Fiji, triumphs over the manipulative engineers of his "perfect" life. As he exits the stage set that defines his existence, the show's audience, the willing accomplices of Truman's media imprisonment, bursts into shrieking applause. Sitting in the theater, we gazing moviegoers, the mirror image of the staring faces on screen, are supposed to feel the same. Yet in a movie about the triumph of the real over the fake, Truman's climactic blow for freedom regained is the most unreal of all. It is only in the fantasy world of the movies that our hero would struggle, risking his life to escape a fake designer environment. In the real world, we scramble to get in it. Consider: Faced with the challenge of simulating a completely contrived environment, the producers were saved the expense of creating a fake town because one already existed: Seaside, Fla. Far from being a confining prison of synthetic perfection, it's a desirable vacation village for consumers craving the endless summer our movie hero rejects. Seaside is the godfather of Disney's more notorious and ambitious Celebration (where, according to an apocryphal tale an Orlando resident once shared with me, town dog owners are paid by Disney to parade their pooches on the village green). Indeed, wherever there's a gated community or a cluster of luxury homes hugging the boundaries of a world-class golf course, the spirit of Truman's "Sea Haven" and its satisfied clientele burns bright. In this libertarian age, consumers are happy in controlled environments, provided the service is good enough, the restaurant cuisine fine enough and the antique shops quaint enough. In the invented movie universe, Truman is horrified to learn that his entire life has been watched by global zillions. In the real world, hordes of volunteers would line up around the block like MTV VJ-wanna-bes hoping to take his place. Before there was The Truman Show, there was The JenniShow, a Webcast direct from the star's bedroom, courtesy of the ever-watchful JenniCam. (Needless to say, if the JenniCam were placed in the kitchen, no one would ever have heard of the show.) At least Truman was duped into forfeiting his privacy; his real-life counterparts simply give it away. Not surprisingly, at the height of his existential crisis, Truman tells his best buddy he feels the world has been constructed for and around him. Well, who doesn't feel like that? The only difference between us and Truman is that we don't find the prospect creepy. We not only like it, we increasingly demand a world engineered to suit our individual needs. The fact is that our real fake environments are far more seductive than the movie's fake real one. Clearly Christof, the mastermind behind Truman's world, hasn't cracked a marketing book since 1955. Consumers junked his ideal universe of chirpy, macaroni-making wives and cooing mothers-who-know-best ages ago. No one today would point to a brain-dead desk job as a source of happy contentment. No one touts products by hoisting them shoulder high and spouting copy lines that would draw winces from a young David Ogilvy. The conformist world ruled by hidden persuaders against whom Truman rebels was already dead when our 30-year-old hero was born. The contemporary ideal world is one which offers its Trumans an endless array of ever-varied experiences. So when it comes to imagining an escape-proof paradise, real-world consumers are far better at it than the manipulative producer of The Truman Show. The hero of a perfect '90s life is more apt to be a high-tech entrepreneur than an insurance agent. He'd own a vacation home in Florida and take trips to Fiji. He would not charge the barriers of his artificial world crying, "Live free or die!" because the real-world marketplace fills subjective space and stretches across the globe. The problem with Truman's world is not that it's false and manipulated. Rather, by real-world standards, it's not contrived and personalized enough. No wonder we cheer when he escapes.

Brand Marketing

The Consumer Republic

Debra Goldman

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Debra Goldman