Re: If Rohit is Truman, who are we?

Rohit Khare (rohit@fdr.ICS.uci.edu)
Sun, 07 Jun 1998 22:10:00 -0700


Had anyone else gotten the Rohit Khare is Truman Burbank meme? He's the
only real one, and we're just gathered around to give his life a patina
of meaning.

- dan

===============================================================

I'm not certain who everyone else really is, but I'm dying to congratulate
Christof...

I saw the movie opening night with Duck and two other friends of Adam's.
I was certainly the most blown away, but that figures. I do see something
deeper in Truman's performance (if not Carrey's) b/c I am enacting it as
performance art as we speak. Just think of the product placements on FoRK
already! :-)

I walked out, and I knew it was a success because of how many thoughts it
set in motion. I have a hypothesis there will be Truman people and Christof
people: whom do you immediately have the most sympathy for? How hard is it to
live in a world for one man, or to create it?

This is putting aside all the other consequences inherent in the scenario:
why not two or three "real characters" in the world? What do we do for a real
TRAVELMAN yen? How *can* the information flow from the outside be used
productively (kind of like "Law & Order" reran cases from the headlines a
few weeks later -- would they rerun the OJ case in Trumania and see what
happened?)

Where would Truman graduate to? He could probably be president, and better
than Reagan!

Yeah, it moved me, even if it's possible better movies could be edited and
plotted out of the same premise. (they also deserve credit for resisting
the temptation to explore more of the outside world --- only a book could
do that well, a la Contact. The screen canvas widens at its peril: look
at how small the cast was for *creating* this meta illusion!)

Most of all, though, I asked: what do you do for the 97% of life that's
utterly and totally uninteresting? Even FoRKumentaries are a tiny, tiny
fraction of reality. And 97% of those are boring as hell.

Yesterday, for example, was a thoroughly ordinary evening out on the town
with a wonderful woman and witty conversation and wacky cliches. It
must have been such a totally prosaic slice of contentment I can't begin
to imagine boring y'all with details.

:-),
Darryl Zero