Abstract

The Truman Show is an American movie. The movie won four 56th Golden Globes Awards and three 71st Oscar nominations. This movie tells about the hero Truman pursuing his freedom. As a typical black humor movie, it is a tragedy as well as a comedy. The embodiment of black humor can be found in every part of the movie through the expression of paradox, irony, simile, metaphor and gemination. All these techniques of expression are applied to show the pitiful life of Truman and highlight the theme of freedom. Different from the studies made by previous scholars on the movie which are mainly based on the development of mass media and the difference between Chinese culture and Western culture, this thesis will analyze black humor from different aspects — environment, characters and plot, hoping to help the audience to obtain a better appreciation of the black humor in the movie and a deeper comprehension of freedom.

Key Words: Truman  black humor  freedom

摘 要

《楚门的世界》是一部美国电影，该片曾在第五十六届金球奖获得四项大奖，并获得第七十一届奥斯卡大奖多项提名。这部电影讲述的是主人公楚门追求自由的故事。作为一部典型的黑色幽默影片，它既是一部喜剧又像一部悲剧，其通过自相矛盾、讽刺、明喻、暗喻和首尾重复的表现手法，使黑色幽默的痕迹在影片中随处可见。这些表现手法的运用都是为了表现楚门令人同情的命运并突出影片自由的主题。因此，区别于以往对这部电影大多基于大众传媒与中西文化差异的研究，本研究将从环境、人物以及情节的发展来分析黑色幽默在影片中的体现，旨在让观众更好地去欣赏影片中所表现的黑色幽默，并且对这部影片自由的主题有进一步的审视与思考。

关键词：楚门 黑色幽默 自由

1 Introduction
The Truman show is an American movie. The movie won three Oscar nominations, seven Golden Globes nominations and gained four Golden Globes Awards in 1999. The movie tells a story about a hero named Truman who pursues his freedom.
Studies made by previous scholars on the movie mainly are based on the development of mass media and the difference between Chinese and Western culture. Gu Qin (2012) clarifies that The Truman Show is a movie which shows the influence of the media development to the people’s life. Zhai Shouzhan (2010) points out that the western aesthetics emphasizes the unity of beauty and truth while Chinese aesthetics maintains the unity of beauty and kindness through making a comparison of The Truman Show and A World Without Thieves.