Ed TV

In the movie Ed TV Ed agrees to be fallowed around by a camera crew and has every moment of his life documented. I was a big fan of The Truman Show with Jim Carey where he doesn’t even know that he is on TV as the center of a huge reality show. The differences between the films are that Ed willingly chose to be on the show whereas Truman was on the show from birth without any consent on his part. Both films seem to merge together though since they both slowly become aware of the effect they are having on the masses of people and it begins to change their actions and the actions of those around them.

Another similarity between the two movies is that the directors of the shows have input on the daily events that happen in the characters lives. In Ed TV the director has a future love introduced to Ed, and she knows so much about him from the show so she is likely to seduce him. On The Truman Show the main character is also introduced to a heavily scripted love interest who begins to make him suspicious since she knows everything about him.

Both movies are very interesting as they deal with issues of surveillance and voyeurism and seem to take them to the extreme. Both characters end up having break downs and break out of their surveillance since they won’t accept it as being a true reality. The Truman Show was a bit more interesting to me since he has no idea that he is being watched and that his whole life has been a fabrication of a television station. This applies quite well to the topic at hand, what is reality TV, especially if the characters know they are being filmed, they will act differently and unrealistically.