In his 1998 film, The Truman Show, Peter Weir has the director-character say at an earlier part of the film that 'people accept the reality with which they are presented'. This is a rich philosophical comment from a film rich in philosophy about such distinctions as reality and appearance, reality and illusion, and essence and appearance.
In the film, the central character called Truman is led to believe that his world is as it appears to him, but it's really an illusion created by a film studio for tv audience consumption and for the commercial/financial interests of the tv network itself (the real point of it all).
As the tv audience watches the 'happy life' of this one individual from orphan infant to a young adult man, they accept the reality that they are presented with on tv. That is, they accept how his 'happy life' immediately appears to them on tv and consequently accept it as reality. (To 'accept' things in this way, it should be noted, is to do so uncritically, since there is no questioning of anything). However, what they are accepting as reality is just a tv illusion, created ultimately for the purpose of making financial profits through tv advertising (the ultimate essence of it all).
This young adult man also accepts the reality he's been presented with about his 'happy life' by the tv studio. As a consequence, he too accepts how things immediately appear to him, despite everything being in reality an illusion created by the tv studio. (Although this is the case, his 'happy life' is still a real lived experience for him; ie, he acts as if everything around him and what has happened to him throughout his lifetime is real. In that sense, there's nothing illusionary about his life; it's just not what it seems.)
So, as can be gleaned here, there are many distinctions being drawn between notions of reality and illusion, reality and appearance, and essence and appearance.
Now, what this film seeks to do as a work of art is to tear away all the tv props which conceal the underlying reality of this young adult man's 'happy life'. It does this by having him gradually noticing things which jar with his picture of a 'happy life' (ie, discrepancies in the world, like light sets, staff lunch rooms, his 'wife' telling conflicting stories about their 'life' together, and the sudden appearance of his real father who was presumed 'dead'), and which make him question the reality of it all. In short, he begins investigating how things appear to him and how they really are, which are not one and same.
Eventually, he discovers the real truth about his life and the world he lives in. He discovers that his 'happy life' is an illusion and that it's been deliberately created by the tv studio/network for its own commercial/financial gains. In the end he frees himself from it all and goes to live in a real world - one in which there are no more illusions which might trick him into believing in something that's not real.
Importantly, the film ends on a critical note about the tv audiences themselves who consume such shows as 'The Truman Show' as a form of vicarious home entertainment. While they have watched Truman's story unfold ultimately to his moment of liberation from the paternalistic but nevertheless exploitative situation of his life, they nevertheless will continue to believe in whatever reality is presented to them, whether it's by a tv studio/network or by any other media platform or any other medium or the world at large. This is illustrated by the two nightshift workers switching to another tv station to watch another (possibly) tv reality show. This is the moral of the film, at the end.
So, overall, the film's message is ultimately about how we might uncritically accept the reality with which we are presented via the story of this young adult man, named Truman. This is a critical message which needs to be understood by us (the film audience). Peter Weir is trying to show us via the story of Truman how easily and uncritically we might accept the way the world immediately appears to us, which we take (at face value) as being reality. Thus the film is trying to go beyond the way the reality of things immediately appear to us at face value, which may also be based on certain types of illusions, to show how things really and/or essentially are, ie, things which are not apparent on the surface of things and so are hidden from our immediate view. In a sense, what this film as a work of art does is pull away the 'curtains' of the world to reveal the truth about things. That's it's critical function as a work of art. It's a work of enlightenment.
Although this film is art and not science, it nevertheless reflects what science primarily aims to do. This can be illustrated by the following comparison.
In science, as articulated by, for example, Marx in his critique of political economy in Capital, and paradigmatically illustrated by the Copernican through to the Kepler-Newtonian account of our solar system and universe, the aim is to go beyond the immediate appearances of things in order to reveal their underlying essence. In short, the scientific aim is to reveal the truth about how things essentially (or really) are.
So, for Marx, the aim has been to go beyond how the wealth of any society based on the capitalist mode of production appears as 'an immense collection of commodities' (the appearances of capitalism) to their inner-core in order to reveal how the wealth of such capitalist societies is actually produced (the essence of capitalism). And, for Copernicus through to Kepler and Newton, the scientific aim has been to go beyond how the Sun, the Moon, the planets of our solar system and the stars of the universe too all appear to revolve around a stationary Earth at the centre of everything (the appearances of our solar system and universe) to a more accurate account of it all, which has the Sun at the centre of our solar system, with all the planets, the Earth and its moon included, orbiting about the Sun instead (the essence of the matter).
Now, whether it's one of the sciences of the social world (as represented by a Marx) or one of the sciences of the natural world (as represented by a Copernicus through to a Newton), science generally endeavours to discover the essence behind the appearances of things in order to get at the truth. (This, of course, is not the only thing that science aims to do; it also aims to make predictions, for instance.)
Now, as can be seen here, works of art like Peter Weir's film, The Truman Show, can also seek to reveal, as science also generally seeks to do, the underlying essence behind the appearances of things. So, this is what they can have in common, especially in terms of pursuing a similar goal in which the aim is to show that the reality which we are initially presented with and how things essentially are, are not one and the same - ie, there's a discrepancy between them. And that, for various reasons, this might be a useful if not a very important thing to know.
However, it's important to not overstate the comparison here between the two. As already said, art is not science; but equally, science is not art. While science may seek to reveal a discrepancy between the way things appear and how they really or essentially are, it goes one step further in a crucial way. Science, as already discussed in other blog posts, aims to show how the hidden causal foundations of the phenomena of the world (both of the natural and social varieties) produce their observable features. Art doesn't actually do this, but it certainly can at least do the other basic thing of just revealing the discrepancies in the human world via telling a story about it in a critical manner, whether for example it's in the form of a film, a novel or a painting.
Anyway, what this comparison between art and science has shown is where they might overlap in terms of such philosophical distinctions as between reality and appearance, reality and illusion, and essence and appearance - as well as to what extent they might do so.
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