Kara Ireland
ENGL 3230
“You Know My Relationship with Truth”
Trust is a fundamental part of life that dictates one’s experience in the world. Without trust, one is subjected to an unfortunate life in which they might be taken advantage of, abused, and forced to survive in a constant state of uncertainty and paranoia. Trust can be defined broadly as reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; Trust is defined as confidence, in short. Upon further inspection, it can be narrowed down to being characterized by the willingness to be vulnerable, reliance on others, and positive expectations (Rousseau et al. 394). Functioning under these parameters, the focus is primarily on the relationship between “perception and preconscious expectation” within one and the other (Rousseau et al. 394). “The Truman Show” and “Memento” are two movies that prompt questions regarding how trust manifests and how it can be exploited. Under the broad framework of truth, I will explore how trust is granted, how it pertains to trauma and projection, and how characters demonstrate their trust in “The Truman Show” and “Memento.”
“Memento” provides skepticism concerning the limits of truth by exploring the trustworthiness of the protagonist. The protagonist of “Memento”, Leonard Shelby, suffers from anterograde amnesia following an altercation with the supposed rapist and murderer that caused his wife’s demise. His memory was in tact, prior to the accident. Unfortunately, because of that, his last vivid memory is of his wife being attacked and ultimately murdered in the bathroom of their home. This recurring memory serves as his motivation to avenge her death. With this traumatic experience lodged within the residual forefront of his hippocampus, it is the freshest memory and therefore the one that replays the most in his mind. It is worth noting that every time we remember an event, we are not remembering the event at hand, but instead remembering the last time we remembered the event (Shields 34). Shields also denotes that memory is essentially “the past rewritten in the direction of feeling” (32). Assuming that one believes this interpretation, Leonard is being encouraged by his animosity and bereavement to spur the connotations of the recurring memory. Because Leonard feels so strongly about his wife’s death, the circumstances are skewed around the truth of that event each subsequent time he recalls it. If this is Leonard’s internal, self-evident truth, how can truth be defined within his version of his story? Harwood offers some insight on this situation by denoting that the viewer must verify Leonard’s trustworthiness by deciphering if he is “well-intentioned, competent in the matter at hand, and not guilty of withholding relevant information” (44).
If one chooses to resonate and sympathize with Leonard’s pain, trust is granted through empathy. However, if one uses his pain and his condition as the factor that shifts his perception of the truth, trust is denied through the logic that his anterograde amnesia makes him incompetent in the matter at hand: remembering and retelling his story. His vitriol in response to the thought of his wife being sexually assaulted, then murdered, changes the mold around his memory. As he grows more incensed as time passes without healing, every following time he thinks about it, he is revisiting it through a narrower, more angrily acute lens. Because memory functions in a “quasi-narrative” structure, it requires a storyline to follow (Shields 32). Leonard is actively documenting this story in the form of incoherent tattoos, providing a relative narrative for him to adapt around – but one that is not concrete. Whereas his memory retains information within a five-minute window, Leonard cannot process new revelations he gets to further complete his story – meaning that he cannot accurately convey anything new. When Teddy insinuates that “[he] can only make [him] remember things [he] want[s] to be true,” he is acknowledging the misalignment of Leonard’s internal narrative structure and his emotions.
“The Truman Show” highlights an opposing situation in which skepticism arises with the trustworthiness of the antagonist. Christof, the director and creator of “The Truman Show”, is the first person to legally adopt someone through a corporation. This adoption enabled Christof’s decision to broadcast Truman’s life to the world via continuous, unedited footage within a constructed set: Seahaven Island. When gauging the trustworthiness of Christof, the lines of morality blur due to the criterion of trust. With respect to Truman, Christof has gambled his own trust as a mutually reliant relationship exists between them. Rousseau et al. suggests that trust is born out of “the willingness to rely on another,” and Christof has exercised that by confiding in Truman’s behavior (394). He relies on Truman’s ignorance to pioneer his show, just as Truman inadvertently relies on Christof to orchestrate the way of life he has always known without the cacophony of finding the truth. That same confidence in his behavior poses a risk later, as Truman outsmarted Christof and their viewers when his curiosity reached a peak. His midnight deception juxtaposed “the willingness to be vulnerable under conditions of risk and interdependence” because in granting those conditions, they simultaneously employed their trust (395). However, when considering the assumption that one does not “hide information from us that has bearing on the matter at hand,” Christof fails to meet the standard (Harwood 44). “The Truman Show” depends on Christof’s deception and withholding of information to exist, because people indulge on infringing on Truman’s privacy. When that goes against the final unit of trustworthiness, being well-intentioned, it complicates the moral boundaries of granting trust. Christof was admittedly well-intentioned, though flawed in his execution. His desire to create an ideal world and to experiment with his philosophy with an ignorant subject muddles the intentional aspect of his integrity, however. Trust is not a behavior or a choice, but an underlying psychological condition resulting from those actions (Rousseau et. al 395). Both Christof and Truman have illustrated valid reasoning in their trustworthiness, though Truman’s trust performs through ignorance of Christof’s existence.
It can be traumatic to come to the realization that everything one knows has been one prolonged, constructed lie suited for the amusement of millions. Several things about Christof’s creation of “The Truman Show” are immoral and inhumane because it was all arranged without Truman’s cognition. Had he ever been made aware that he was a participant in such an elaborate documentary of sorts, there would be no qualms about it. Truman’s situation is perhaps the most detrimental to his sense of being because he is now aware of his total lack of privacy. With comedic films breaking the fourth wall to address the audience such as “The Office” and “Deadpool,” it has desensitized audiences to eavesdropping on people they perceive as characters. Placing Truman in the role of a perpetual character, rather than a man, dehumanizes him. He becomes likened to a spectacle no different than an animal, caged in a zoo. Breaking the fourth wall dates back to the eighteenth century (Auter and Davis 166). In a study conducted by Auter and Davis, it was discovered that viewers reportedly “liked being in on the joke” because it highlighted “the entertainment value and content sophistication” (170). Christof offers a quality viewing experience while providing distance from morality because people have viewed Truman as a character consistently.
Relational psychoanalysts claim that within the “lawful world,” when the laws of humanity are ruptured, it should elicit condemnation in lieu of the broken law (Benjamin 209). The viewers of “The Truman Show” have violated the lawful world because they do not resonate with their own dissociation from Truman Burbank, as a man, rather than “Truman Burbank” from “The Truman Show.” Sylvia’s spiteful character aligns with the mindset that “without confronting our own dissociation [...] we vitiate our witnessing self and replacing it with a self-justifying self in a blaming and blamed complementarity” (Benjamin 209). The mere acknowledgement of pain and suffering grants dignity to the sufferer, though there are no immediate reparations. Though Truman has been psychologically scathed as a result of uncovering the truth, he will feel comforted knowing that some people opposed his situation.
Leonard’s trauma reveals itself through the projection of his memories. Alternatively, all of Leonard’s trauma stems from the physical altercation that left him with his anterograde amnesia. The literal blunt force trauma from the blow to the head caused brain damage. Being forced to relive his most traumatic experience, more vividly than the rest, is also a form of post traumatic stress disorder because of the repeated nature of the trauma endured. The residual trauma of inadvertently killing his wife has prompted several defense mechanisms to preserve and protect Leonard’s sense of self. Below his subconscious radar, Leonard has produced false memories to override the event of administering his wife’s insulin. This Freudian defense mechanism is called projection.
Leonard projects his undesirable memories onto Sammy Jankis, who also has anterograde amnesia. During his time as an insurance claims investigator, he was introduced to Sammy. There, he was met with the possibility of Sammy faking his condition during his evaluation. “Remember Sammy Jankis” is an ominous tattoo on Leonard’s hand. That tattoo prompts the questions: why he should remember Sammy Jankis, and what he should remember about Sammy Jankis. However, Leonard has deprived himself of context, leaving those dire questions unanswered and subject to misinformation. This dead-end, sleuthing journey keeps the truth at bay – the fact that he is ultimately responsible for his own wife’s death. Leonard’s memory conflates with the truth he wants to believe and the Truth of what really happened to her. Some venture to say that his peculiar, vague tattoos were purposeful in his endeavors to forget the most relevant part of the story of his wife: his involvement.
Leonard demonstrates projection by “transferring subjective psychic elements onto [Sammy] that [he] wishes to deny in [himself]” (Newman 980). However, the intricacies of his Sammy Jankis story should strike one as uncanny at best. How is it that he remembers Sammy’s details so vividly, if he was merely another client? There is a subliminal scene within the movie that shows Leonard in the place of Sammy in the asylum. This sheds light on the interpretation that Leonard is Sammy and that he has “expelled whatever within himself has become the cause of displeasure” (Newman et al. 981). In Newman et al.’s account of projection, one must be “unaware of possessing the trait they see in others” (980). Viewing it through this lens, Leonard’s claim that Sammy was faking his amnesia now requires more scrutiny. This correlates with the interpretation that Leonard is using his selective memory to decide how to go about his revenge.
Leonard has trouble organizing his path for finding John G. because he lacks details in his tattoos. He cleverly reminds himself of his goal through concise tattoos, but he does not accurately convey the messages. What one understands during certain contexts at one time may not always bee evident upon a later date. Leonard was aware of the circumstances he was referring to with his mementos, but once his memory faded, he did not have enough to effectively surmise from them. Jacques Lacan has proposed a theory called “the mirror stage,” which can explain Leonard’s compulsion with tattoos. Leonard uses the reflective technology of the mirror to write himself secret messages in the form of backwards tattoos on his body. The “imago” of one’s body manifests during hallucinations or dreams, but a standard mirror provides one with “double real-time physical realities” that the imago cannot deduce from (Lacan 442). Lacan also expresses the mirror stage as a “spatial identification of fragmented body images,” in which Leonard parallels with his tattoos (443). The fragmented nature of his tattoos provides minimal insight onto his situation. He does himself a disservice with the minute details he leaves. With such little information present, he cannot trust in the messages he reads in the mirror because he is deprived of context, per his own mistake.
Leonard’s obsession with Sammy Jankis hinges on the fact that he has projected the story of his wife’s death onto another with similar experiences. Some speculate that Leonard is a cold-blooded killer who capitalizes on his condition by means of “forgetting” that he has already requited his wife’s death. While I do not believe that interpretation fully, it does have merit. The validity stems from the possibility that Leonard is a victim of his own subconscious projections. He loved his wife dearly and cannot bear the thought that he may have aided her death. It is “egocentric ascription” in action because it “reduces [his] faults” (Miceli 282). The conviction that he has killed his wife lessens, every subsequent time he remembers it with minute details of Sammy Jankis. Now, this is Leonard’s truth and it cannot be debated, even with the secondary facts Teddy attempted to provide.
Truman’s origins of trust are horridly misaligned and the ways he expresses them are inauthentic, as a result of an inauthentic interactive atmosphere. Rousseau et al. observes that trust can be narrowed down to four major sectors: vulnerability, reliance, expectations, and confidence (395). Vulnerability is born out of the assumption that one has privacy, yet privacy is not a tangible factor in Truman’s life. Living under twenty-four-hour surveillance, broadcasted to the entire world does not offer any privacy. He is not afforded with the ability to choose who he wants to share something with, because he is constantly sharing everything with viewers all over the world, unbeknownst to him. Additionally, no one expects to be in Truman’s situation. Not even schizophrenic-induced delusions produce feelings of grandiose to that degree (Newman 1084). However, Truman’s life has been broadcasted to anyone’s curious eyes for the duration of his whole life. Positive expectations behave subconsciously, and Truman had little reason to be suspicious of everyone. Considering Truman’s experience, Harwood suggests that people should “start with distrust and give trust when it is earned.”
Leonard employs his trust abnormally because he can only trust external accounts of his own narrative. He cannot perceive truth because the time it takes to process information exceeds the span of his memory. As a result, three of the components of trust are already compromised. He is forced into vulnerability the moment he explains his condition to someone. That person’s character then indicates whether they will capitalize on his disability. Leonard succumbs to an innate dependency on his counterparts once they gain insight into his lifestyle. Along with his compulsion to take vengeance for his wife’s death, he overshares with people that put him in compromising positions. Natalie and Teddy simultaneously harp on his state with ulterior motives, disguising themselves as his friends. Objectively, Leonard does not think that his friends will betray his positive expectations – but positive expectations are not overtly present. He can possess positive expectations while simultaneously retaining his suspicion, as that is merely one facet of trust. With regard to his condition, Leonard does not have the discerning ability to be suspicious, effectively. His suspicion is easily manipulated to fit Natalie and Teddy’s agenda, simultaneously. Ironically, Leonard is suspicious of everything, careful not to be taken advantage of in lieu of his condition.
Metanarrative’s relationship with trust is malleable as it relies on some degree of divergence from truth to exist. Metanarrative and artificiality must coexist, but it balances truth with the acknowledgement of its artificial pieces. The thrill of “The Truman Show” is in watching people watch Truman, as some favorites include the guy in the bath tub and the woman with the Truman pillow. “The Truman Show” is overtly metanarrative because it functions by subjecting Truman to fabricated experiences while others are aware of the fabrication. The metanarrative element of “The Truman Show” is integrated through Truman’s ignorance of his situation, during everyone else’s cognition of it. Moreover, in “Memento”, its metanarrative features are in the cinematographic expertise of unchronological scenes. Having to determine the order of scenes along with the validity of them is an aspect of metanarrative because the contention sheds light on the artificial component. The cinematographic tricks may fool an eye that is not keen on its tactics, but one looking for metafictional qualities can identify them as such.
As an overarching concept, truth is an integral part of the interpretations of both “Memento” and “The Truman Show”. The conclusions one reaches banks primarily on how trust is afforded to each of the characters. “Memento” has so many opposing stances because of how people determine Leonard’s truth. Deciphering whether Leonard’s condition is a ploy, whether he is projecting, and whether he can survive against foul play dictated my viewing experience. My viewpoint shifts every time I consider it from a new angle. Similarly, “The Truman Show” prompted so many discussions because of how people think truth should be conveyed to Truman. Deciding whether Christof’s creation is immoral depends on how staunchly one wants to stick to the outlined parameters of trustworthiness, and if it stands against the moral third. Both films reveal how the exploitation of truth and trust produce moral dilemma. Gauging the trustworthiness of the characters is essential to gauging how their truth unfolds.
Annotated Bibliography
Auter, Philip, and Donald Davis. “When Characters Speak Directly to Viewers: Breaking the Fourth Wall in Television.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Vol 68, No. 2, p. 165-171.
Auter and Davis conducted a study that demonstrated that films that broke the fourth wall were rated significantly more entertaining with respect to the semantic differential scale. They were also significantly more sophisticated than the clips that did not break the fourth wall. The study found that programs that break the fourth wall prompt more cognitive involvement in the viewers. It was characterized as the audience eavesdropping on the characters that function within a three-walled environment. I used this article to explain how The Truman Show had so many viewers. It is because people are desensitized to watching others when under the impression that it is for entertainment.
Benjamin, Jessica. “Acknowledgment of Collective Trauma in Light of Dissociation and Dehumanization.” Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Vol 8, No. 3, p. 207-214.
Benjamin examines trauma with regard to dissociation. She explored how dehumanization works to break down one’s sense of self. She came up with the concept of the moral third, which resonates with the suffering of humans. It acknowledges pain and suffering and grants dignity without reparations. It also says the recognition of suffering connects people, as it works to humanize them. Responsiveness when laws of humanity are denied or ruptured reaffirms the presence of the law. When it elicits scorn in lieu of law being broken, it stands. I used this to explain how Sylvia and the others showed opposition to “The Truman Show.”
Harwood, William T. “The Logic of Trust.” PhD thesis, University of York. 2012. p. 35-122.
Harwood explores the depths of trust from its origins to its employment. He describes Luhmann’s theory as creating certainty in the face of uncertainty to allow action as opposed to endless indecision. He highlights that essentially trust makes things predictable, brings people together, and enables people to work together, borrowing from the belief that knowledge and beliefs contribute to the development of trust. He explores Potter’s Virtue Theory of Trustworthiness, which involves an expectation or belief that the trustee person has good intentions with regard to take care of something we value and the ability to carry through with said expectations. He also provided information on the willingness to depend, the subjective probability of depending, rational belief, and the concept of promises.
Ismayilov, Huseyn, and Jan Potters. “Elicited VS Voluntary Promises.” Journal of Economic Psychology. Vol. 62, No. 4, p. 295-312.
These people explore how trust is granted when giving and accepting promises. In some cases, promises are. Truth is prompted by guilt aversion. Third-party promises do not elicit trust in trustees because they are aware of the difference in the circumstances. This article was useful because it provided information on how trust is interpreted. People gauge trust differently when it comes in different contexts. People are subject to making promises more often and more genuinely when there is a mutual benefit present.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Reading French Psychoanalysis, Routledge (1949).
Jacques Lacan has theorized that infants from the age of six months, forward, one can recognize own image in mirror. The identification exists, though they cannot perform simple tasks, or even sit up. He focuses on the relationship between virtual complex and the reality it duplicates. It is the “imago” functioning in the earliest stage of life. They see their image as the “ideal-I” of libidinal normalization. The baby viewing itself anticipates the mirage as a maturation of power. The imago of one’s own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, but a mirror provides us with double real-time physical realities. It’s presented as the spatial identification of fragmented body images as a form of totality.
Micelli, Maria, and Cristiano Castelfranchi. “The Plausibility of Defensive Projection: A Cognitive Analysis.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior. Vol 33, No. 3, p. 279-301.
Micelli and Castelfranchi go into depth about projection on different realms. They explore projection in terms of attribution and ascription, defensive projection, and defensive mechanisms. By defining ascription, attribution, attributional bias, consensus effect, and egocentric ascription, they offer a more rounded view of projection. These researchers defined projection as the ascription of one’s ow mental attitudes to others, ascription as attribution of mental attitudes to others, and attribution as placing things onto others. Projection favors the tendency to tailor information about target person to suit pre-existing refence schemas, stereotypes, and categories. The consensus effect deviates from dictates of logic.
Newman, Leonard, et al. “A New Look at Defensive Projection: Thought Suppression, Accessibility, and Biased Perception.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 72, No. 5, p. 980-1001.
Their description of projection is essentially the unconscious transfer of the subjective psychic elements onto an outer object. Defensive projection is the act of perceiving in other people those characteristics that one wishes to deny in themselves. They claim that one must possess the trait they are attributing to others, while simultaneously being unaware that they possess the trait itself. The most important issue is not the possession of the trait, but if the possession of the trait threatens the person that possesses it.
Rathbone, Clare, and Craig Steel. “Autobiographical Memory Distributions for Negative Self-Images: Memories are Organized Around Negative as well as Positive Aspects of Identity.” Memory, Vol 23, No. 4, p. 473-486.
Rathbone and Steel have proposed that identity and memory are intimately correlated. People remember how other people react to them, and it subconsciously contributes to the identities we all portray. Memory and identity create an evolving cycle that can reinforce either positive or negative self images. There is a bidirectional relationship between the two that help contribute to one's self image and their attitudes.
Rousseau, Denise, et al. “Introduction to a Special Topic Forum: Not so Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View of Trust.” The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul. 1998) p. 393-404.
This group explains the intricacies of trust with respect to how it is employed. It has its origins in confident expectations and the willingness to be vulnerable, as well as the willingness to rely on another. They summarize it with vulnerability, perception, and preconscious expectation. They go on to define trust as a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another. Rousseau et al. also notes that intrapersonal trust differs from interorganizational trust due to the objecting focal point. They also identify that trust is not a choice, nor a behavior, but a psychological condition that results from interaction.
Shields, David. “Memory.” A Journal of Literature and Art, No 46, 2009, p. 32-36.
In “Memory,” David Shields delves into his perception of how the brain curates memory, and what it does with the memories it manufactures. He goes into depth about how people perceive and adjust their memories, noting that memories are merely fulfilling a storyline of sorts. He offers insight on how we make sense of memories by aligning them with our feelings, and thus the story that we want to tell. Memory conflates fact with emotion, which is why it is unreliable. The selective nature of memory also negates its validity. I used this article to reference how Leonard’s memory is subject to his emotions regarding what he is remembering.