Upon its initial release, few moviegoers could have predicted that The Truman Show would not remain a pure fantasy for decades to come. The very idea that millions of Americans might one day sit around 24/7/365 watching what essentially amounts to a secret recording of a victim's daily life a kidnapping, as if he were some kind of real celebrity, was clearly the most outrageous and fantastical idea in the film. . While The Truman Show was clearly intended as a satire, the fundamental quality of satire is that it maintains a certain distance from reality and the distance between that conceit and the uglier realities of society that the film was about. the satire definitely seemed detached. However, less than two decades after its release, The Truman Show can be seen as an almost eerily prescient prediction of the commodification of victimhood as entertainment in a process that increasingly makes spectators complicit partners in exploitation rather than victims of a more passive nature. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Watching The Truman Show and rejecting its premise that watching a kidnapping victim live their life as entertainment for the masses as something that could never be accepted by American society is no longer something easy to make. The show contained in the film presents what seemed at the time to be a satirical extension of the concept of reality television to its most impossible extreme. Truman is, after all, from a legal standpoint nothing more and nothing less than a victim of the federal crime known as kidnapping, and it is only the unawareness of his situation that is the only aspect of his state which allows the secret filming of this life to become entertainment. . He is held against his will; such a situation is definitely contrary to every aspect of American values. This element of the film was therefore so far removed from expectations of the possibility of the future of television that it is clear evidence that Truman's situation was not intended to reflect reality and, therefore, was rather conceived as the last lost foot. on a slippery slope. As the years go by, however, such an improbable scenario comes closer and closer to something that could happen any day. This slippery slope in real life has already taken viewers from Big Brother to Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire. Clearly, the American capacity to accept what seemed clearly unacceptable has been in a state of devolution. The film also points the way towards a society where victimization is the new entertainment and there no longer seem to be any boundaries between content producers. will not cross over when it comes to exploiting victimization for entertainment purposes. Truman seems much happier than most of the real-life "stars" of so-called "reality TV shows," but that's probably because he doesn't know he's the star of a TV show. -reality. On the other hand, the actors paid to play roles in Truman's life — including what amounts to a prostitute playing his wife — don't seem particularly happy. As recently as 1999, it seemed ridiculous to suggest that billions of people around the world would tune in to watch the mundane and – let's face it – completely boring daily routine of one person's life, 24 hours a day, but the rise of YouTube sensations.