摘 要

“戏中戏”作为一种艺术技巧，在文学领域中占有重要地位。莎士比亚在《哈姆雷特》和《仲夏夜之梦》等作品中广泛运用了“戏中戏”的手法。《楚门的世界》是一部“戏中戏”的经典作品，具有很强的讽刺意味，并被改编成电影。它讲述了一部流行肥皂剧的主角楚门的故事。楚门周围的一切都是假的，他所有的亲戚和朋友都是演员，但他对此一无所知。最终，楚门为了摆脱内部和外部的观念，逃离了虚假的世界。近年对这部作品的研究主要从媒介影响理论、大众心理学、原型理论等方面展开。本文运用心理学、色彩学和跨学科的研究方法，分析自私、无信仰等各种典型观念的形成，并通过洞穴隐喻分析我们如何从观念中解脱出来。结果表明，观念的形成主要受周围环境和周围人的影响，为此我们需要遵从本心而活。

关键词：楚门的世界；戏中戏；观念

Abstract

As an artistic skill, “play within play” plays an important role in the field of literature. Shakespeare widely used the technique of “play within play” in his works, such as Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Truman Show, as a classic work with “play within play”, is highly ironic and has been adapted into a movie. It tells the story of Truman, the protagonist of a popular soap opera. Everything around him is fake and all his relatives and friends are actors, but he knows nothing about it. Eventually, Truman escapes from the virtual world in order to get rid of internal and external concepts. Previous researches on this work are mainly from the perspectives of media influence theory, mass psychology, archetypal theory. This paper uses psychology, chromatology and interdisciplinary research methods to analyze the formation of various typical concepts such as selfishness and infidelity, and analyzes how to disentangle from concepts through the cave metaphor. The results show that the formation of concepts is mainly influenced by the environment and the people around, and we need to live by our own heart.

Key Words:The Truman Show; play within play; concept

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Entanglement of concepts 3

3 Concepts in the play within play 4

3.1 Inveracious Seahaven island 4

3.2 Hypocritical people 6

3.2.1 Director’s desire for control 6

3.2.2 Cast’s desire for fame and wealth 7

4 Concepts in the play 9

4.1 Earthly world 9

4.2 Complicated mortals 10

5 Disentanglement from concepts 13

6 Conclusion 16

References 18

Acknowledgements 19

Truman Show: Play Within Play

1 Introduction

Throughout the ages, computer science’s “nest”, a technique of a story within another story, appeared in many literary and artistic works. “Nest” refers to the method of embedding one object into another when an existing table, image, or layer is added to it, or when two objects have an assembly relationship. This kind of method is also applicable in literary works, and has two concrete forms of expression: one is to take the fragments into a larger plot series so that they can gather the work’s focus; the other is to exceed the main plot in both quantity and quality in order to reduce the main plot to a frame(Chen, 2014).

At the same time, “nest” applied in literature has a literary and artistic term called “play within play”. Specifically, this common artistic skill and technique of expression refers to a play in which other dramatic stories besides the play itself are performed (Carol, 1969). It is an indispensable part of the whole play, with independence and integrity. “Play within play” originated from Shakespeare’s plays. The play within play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is called “the saddest comedy and the myth of Pyramus and This be” from Ovid’s Metamorphosis (Qiao, 2019). There is also a Greek fairy drama in the play, with all kinds of lines, including prose, plain poetry, double-line poetry and a variety of dialogues (Adam, 2018).

Many scholars have studied the role of “play within play”, and generally three points can be concluded: Firstly, “play within play” can exert its great effect on the local and even the overall plot structure, effectively promoting or even directly controlling the development and evolution of the drama plot. Secondly, “play within play” has its own unique function in expressing the ideological connotation of the work because it can often promote the development of the plot, which is generally presented in the surface structure, and expand the subtle effectiveness of the drama theme in the deep structure. Thirdly, the ingenious and proper use of “play within play” can also give the audience the psychological illusion that it is false, but it feels real, and make them sad or happy, or surprised or worried, so as to achieve a unique dramatic aesthetic effect(Hu amp;Chen, 2004).

The Truman Show is one of the most classic works with play within play in the 1990s and has been adapted into a movie. Many of the scholars have studied the use and arrangement of play within play in this work, but this paper lays more stress on the arrangement of contents, especially the concepts in the work rather than the realization of skills. The Truman Show is a microcosm of western countries at the end of the 20th century with rapid development of science and technology. So, the study of the work is of significance to learn and research the concepts of people in the environment of material enrichment, and scientific and technological progress.

The purpose of this paper is to deeply analyze the reason for the formation of fixed concepts in the play within play of this work so that the theme can be elucidated that people in the real world should disentangle from concepts and live by one’s heart.2 Entanglement of concepts

The word concept is always on our lips, but few people pay close attention to its essence. In the popular sense, a concept is an abstraction or generalization from experience or the result of a transformation of existing concepts. The concept reifies all of its actual or potential instances, whether these are things in the real world or other worlds. Concepts are treated in many if not most disciplines both explicitly, such as in psychology, philosophy, etc., and implicitly, such as in mathematics, physics, etc.

There are generally two ways of generating concepts, one is in the process of communicating with others and accumulating personal experience, the other is in teaching. Both approaches cannot be separated from two important factors—the environment and the people. A concept is essentially an idea which may be good or bad and the criteria here are relative. For example, in the early days of China’s liberation, the population was insufficient and the productivity was relatively low. In the situation, people naturally believed that there is strength in numbers. Under the influence of this concept, China’s population is growing rapidly. Coupled with the gradual improvement of economy and the cessation of wars, the population grew at an unprecedented rate. Because the concept is not updated in time, the problem of population growth of China gradually appeared. In recent years, the population policy has been relaxed again due to the shortage of labor force and the pressure on children to support the elderly. It can be concluded that concepts are always changing and old concepts are always hindering our progress.3 Concepts in the play within play

The Truman Show presents the dramatic life of a real man to the audience with black humor. The protagonist, Truman Burbank, is an ordinary employee of an insurance company in Seahaven. However, it is such an ordinary man that his actions are broadcast to the world in real time 24 hours a day under the surveillance of more than 5,000 cameras that are omnipresent all the time (Zhu, 2015). Because he is the main character of The Truman Show, he has been living in the real world he thinks of since he was born, and it is all just director Christof’s set. Truman is surrounded by professional actors including his wife Meryl and his best friend Marlon. The entire town where he lives is a giant camera shed with cameras hidden in every corner of the town. Truman heard the radio about his whereabouts on an accidental way to work, and then thought of what his first girlfriend had said to him when she was forcibly taken away, so he began to suspect that all of this was just a conspiracy. Finally, in spite of the director’s numerous obstacles and temptations, he resolutely got away from this virtual world. Why didn’t Truman leave the island until 30 years later, and why didn’t he find when almost everyone around him was cheating on him? The main reason for this is that Truman is trapped by the stereotypes of his world. This concept comes from the environment and the people around himself.

3.1Inveracious Seahaven island

In The Truman Show, the protagonist Truman lives in the dreamlike Seahaven that most people in the real world yearn for. Here, people live in harmony with each other and live a peaceful life. In their eyes, this town is the happiest place and almost like a real heaven. But it is ironic that near real heaven is not real heaven. As the saying goes, the more beautiful the thing is, the easier it is to confuse people’s eyes. In order to create this “heavenly place”, the director used blue, white, grey and green, which represent different meanings in our concept (Zhu, 1989).