The Truman show essay In what ways do composers use image to portray people, places and ideas in your texts?

Essay by helen106High School, 12th gradeA, May 2008

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Images are pervading forces that sculpt our attitudes and beliefs about our world and ourselves amply through media production. Images of the media are used everywhere to portray people and places and are used to persuade the audience to feel and act the desired way. At times we become aware of the effect the images of the media have on us, yet we continue to take in the images we are presented with daily. Reacting the way composers of the media want us to. We comprise our thoughts, values, emotions, and actions but continue to accept the media because it has become customary.

In the film, “The Truman Show”, Peter Weir uses images to portray people places and ideas and a critique of certain aspects of the role of the media in our society. Images are also central to the film, “Pleasantville”, which portray the conformity of people in an ersatz town.

The film, “The Truman Show” confronts, examines and explores the moral and ethical boundaries of media consumerism, raising issues of audience dependency and the ‘cannibalistic’ hunger of spectatorship. The Truman show establishes the manufactured and limited nature of Seahaven using a combination of image, sound and lighting.

Truman’s world seems ersatz- too good to be true. This is conveyed through the use of a long, superior camera view overlooking the surreal town of Seahaven. The responder is shown a neighborhood in impeccable order, with houses almost carbon copies of each other. It is further conveyed where the director has deliberately composed the character of Truman to be well dressed and ceaselessly neat in presentation. This portrays the picture of perfection and an unreal environment in comparison to that which the responder lives.

In the opening scene we see an unkempt Truman Burbank who is looking directly at the...