DeConick A.D

52
THE GNOSTIC TRUE MAN
Figure 2.1 Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) examines a fallen spotlight in The Truman Show
(1998).
tells him that everybody knows everything he does. “They are pretending.
Do you understand? Everything I am telling you is the truth. Everything’s
a fake. Get out of here.”
What we know that Truman Burbank does not know is that he is
trapped in a fake world of reality television, a movie set conceived and
constructed by the arrogant TV mogul Christof, whose own headquarters
is in the lunar module built into the domed ceiling of Truman’s world.
In the opening scene of the 1998 film The Truman Show , Christof ruminates
over Truman’s predicament. Although he inhabits a counterfeit
world created by Christof, Truman himself is entirely genuine. Christof
remarks that Truman has no script, no cue cards. Nothing about Truman
is fake; he is merely controlled from Christof’s throne in the moon. “It
isn’t always Shakespeare,” Christof explains, “but it’s genuine. It’s a life.”
Gnostic Spirituality and the Experience of God
The Gnostic revolution in the first and second centuries CE was sparked
by hairline cracks that some of the ancient people noticed in the surface of
their world, things like Truman Burbank had noticed, that were not quite
right, that did not align as they should.