The Real Truman Show

Before I begin, I want to give a shout out to my first cousin, once removed, son 'o "JFK" and one of my THREE regular readers. He made time to hang out with me one evening and, being raised right by his daddy, another Southern gentleman, made everything his "treat," including a gen-u-wine NYC cab ride!. Of course, being treated was only icing on the cake. He was great company and we hadn't seen each other since my grandaddy (his great granddaddy) died 20 years ago. Thanks, man!

I've had a hard time sitting down to write. And now I've waited until my finger is hurt and it's taped up and it's hard to type and I keep making a million mistakes, giving me a damn good excuse to put off writing just a little bit longer...

But I've been thinking a lot about Hyde's computer and how we found all those "virtual" index cards with one-line blurbs, one of which said, "The Real Truman Show." And, after watching part of the movie on T.V. the other night, I was struck by how perfectly that movie describes Hyde's perceptions. Yes, yes, I know "A Beautiful Mind" is specifically about delusions and even Hyde agreed that it was an accurate portrayal of how delusions work, but "The Truman Show" really shows how a paranoid, delusional person EXPERIENCES the world.

Think about it: Truman is the center of everyone's attention. People around the world are glued to their sets; they have to know what he'll do next. His life is extremely important to millions of people. Everyone knows his every move, his every thought, his every desire. There are people willing to go to great extremes to preserve their way of life, even if it means harming Truman psychologically and emotionally, if not even physically. He is so important that many people feel as if they'll die without him (Hyde for President!).

Truman, of course, doesn't know all this for a long time. His life is "perfect" (interesting how Utopias tend to really be sinister). But then the "star" falls from the sky and he starts to become suspicious that things aren't as they seem.

Now, I believe we all reach this point sometime in our life, to varying degrees. A moment at which we start to feel that things are rigged and maybe, just maybe, we're being watched and controlled (this is what many science fiction stories are based on). But most of us are able to put this feeling back in the realm of "kind of creepy but not really true." Our experiences don't really support the idea and we are able to sense that we are being paranoid.

Truman, however, discovers that, in fact, his whole life is fake, a show, and that everyone in his life (except for two people) was acting. And he was TRAPPED.

This is exactly how Hyde began to experience everything. Everything around him, everyone he came into contact with, was part of an elaborate show and he was the "star."

Hyde, like Truman, began to plot his "escape." Boy, as soon as I wrote that I thought, " But Truman escaped, Hyde didn't," and my next thought was, "What if he did?" Through death.

See, it gets all tangled up. Did Hyde die because he trusted no one and called no one, not even his sister? Or did he die because he wouldn't give all the "actors" the satisfaction of him begging them for help? Or did he make a conscious choice? Not suicide, exactly, but had he come to believe that there could be no more show without him and that would show "them?" THAT was how he would "win?"

It's so hard to reconcile the circumstances of his death with his express and explicit wish that he be "kept alive, no matter what his condition, for as long as possible." This he had told Jeckle and me MANY times. And we KNOW he had time to make a phone call and that he must have been aware of just how serious his situation was. We have proof that he was alive for at least a 1/2 hour while he was bleeding.

"The Truman Show" has a happy ending because Truman wasn't trapped in his MIND. He was able to escape his physical prison by finding out what was really true. Hyde, tragically, was trapped in his mind and fell prey to his delusions. Death, by reason of insanity.