Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
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