Network : Main basse sur la TV

"Network" is a fantastic movie that illustrates just how the "mob" and the media can exploit even the best intentions for mutual profit.

Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is an on-air personality that, after finding he is not bankable anymore, snaps and starts to speak his own uncensored, and highly inflammable commentary about the hypocrisy of modern life.

In his mad-hatter routine, somehow he sparks his audience's interest, and in a twist of fame finds himself, the not bankable as prime market share for prime time television. And naturally, his bosses and those who stand to profit from his actions, use his fame to better their own cause.

Beale's rise to stardom is only one facet of this intricate story about how the mob influences media. Throughout "Network" we as the audience are constantly shown, to nausea, how ruthless popularity and trend mold what we see as consumers of entertainment. Most of the main characters are in fact trapped in their roles - and powerless to the bottom line, which is that media relies on advertisement and ratings to generate revenue.

In fact, I believe that is what the point of "Network" is - this movie shows us, that "news" is entertainment, and how we as viewers (whichever demographic you are) are willing to suspend all common sense, class, independence, honor, integrity for a few moments of triumph or more pragmatically, how we relish tragedy.

"Network" is too heavy for most people - it is meant for people who do not like TV, who think that product placement is ridiculous, and in general do not like to think of themselves as a "market". If you need your reality spoon fed to you, this movie is not for you.

However, if you have had enough, and wish to feel for a moment like you are an empowered free thinker, i would humbly suggest that this movie is for you.

I can't put it more perfectly than Turner Classic Movies' Robert Osborne who said "What was originally a satire is a stinging mirror of television news today." I strain to think of a film that is a more brilliant take on society, and all of the flaws it has. It's obedience and entertainment by those who rebel, no matter how insane they are. The exploitation of those in peril for any kind of economic profit. And the fact that everything Beale preaches is completely true and completely bashes the people who are producing him. I was amazed by how much he sells out while continuing to rant about how terrible the people he works for are, and the fact that they just keep him on the air because they want ratings.

It couldn't be more related to today. Turn on the news and you see videos of how horrific the war on terror is and how horrific American society has become, but it stays on the air because people don't want to see the good things in life. They care about the bad and the corrupt. People must have laughed it off back then, but it was such a foreshadow to the near future. The performances are just as brilliant as the social commentary. Each actor becomes so absorbed into their characters that you can't even tell they're acting. It feels like you're watching these people in their daily lives, interacting and becoming more and more corrupt. Finch and Dunaway easily give two of the greatest performances of all time. I could write 20 more pages about it's brilliance, but I'll stop now to keep me from rating. I just have to say that it's so rare to find a film as incredibly flawless as this.

In 1976 when this film came out, there was no cable television, no internet, no cell phones. All that existed, apart from newspapers and radio, were three or four "broadcast" television channels. Since then, technology has exploded with a cornucopia of communication devices. Which renders the story in "Network" painfully dated. And yet ...

The story's theme is as valid now as it was thirty-three years ago. The theme is that the ratings business has corrupted television, because ad revenue, and therefore profit, is tied to the ratings. Programs and events then, and now, get aired if, and only if, they are likely to result in high ratings. It's all very seamy, very dishonorable, very shabby, and very relevant to today's world of ten thousand channels.

Though most of the characters in "Network" end up being corrupted by television, Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is one who does not. His vision is pure. And he speaks the truth: "... television is an ... amusement park ... a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of ... story tellers ... jugglers, sideshow freaks ... and football players ... You're never going to get any truth from us (television) ... We lie like hell ... We deal in illusions, none of it is true. But you people ... believe the illusions ... You do whatever the tube tells you ... you even think like the tube". Worse yet, people elect their leaders based on how they look and sound, and how their words are interpreted by boob tube "pundits".

"Network" is a film wherein thematic import is conveyed almost entirely through dialogue. Some of the dialogue devolves into speechifying, which may come across to viewers as preachy. Still, the film's message was highly prophetic. Except for the film's climax, everything predicted in this film has already happened. And credit should go to script writer Paddy Chayefsky for his futuristic vision.

Some parts of the film seem superfluous in retrospect, like the romance between two main characters. But the film has a sense of realism, helped along by the use of technical jargon and a general absence of background music. The film's technical elements, including direction, casting, acting, editing, and cinematography, are fine.

As social commentary, "Network" is one of the best films ever made, despite a dated, time-bound, story. That "there are no nations, only currency" is becoming increasingly obvious, and as Ned Beatty's arrogant character explains in a frighteningly ominous tone: "The world is a business, Mr. Beale".

This movie came out when I was nine years old, and I saw it on network TV the following year, lured by the brouhaha that surrounded the use of the "barnyard epithet" during prime time. I loved this movie before I understood it, and I worship it now. Like "Elmer Gantry" or "1984," it's a work of didactic art that only fails on an imaginative level -- Sinclair Lewis couldn't grasp how debased evangelism would become, Orwell couldn't foresee the excesses of Mao or Pol Pot, and Chayevsky couldn't envision the absolute decline of television from a vast wasteland to a malevolent sewer. Fox News, reality TV, even the OJ chase, "Network" anticipates every vile bit of it.

Now, it's ridiculously overwritten -- NO ONE is as articulate as the characters in this film, and most certainly, no one who works in television is as literate as Diana Christensen (the Faye Dunaway character). I doubt that poet laureates or even Eminem could spew as witty an aside as "muttering mutilated Marxism." But damn if that isn't part of its charm. Plus, outside of Max Schumacher (William Holden), the characters are pretty much archetypes instead of real people (the Robert Duvall character might as well wear a black cape and top hat), but their two-dimensionality works as a good metaphor for Max's seduction into the "shrieking nothingness" or television. Plus the actors are so superb they make screeching caricatures into almost-sympathetic characters: Duvall is a credible and charismatic villain, Finch is a fine mad prophet and Faye Dunaway manages to make a shrill, manipulative, soulless neurotic so damn cute and sexy you'll want to leave your wife for her, too, just as long as she promises to keep sitting cross-legged on your desk and hitching up her skirt. (Therein lies the real eroticism, forget the intentionally mechanical, unerotic coupling later in the flick). Anyway, this is complex, high art masquerading as popular entertainment, go rent it now.

Now, here is a film that everyone needs to see, especially today.

Children should be raised on the truth instead of fiction.

Television seduces, entertains, divides, desensitizes, and corrupts not just kids but adults as well. It's gotten so bad over the years it's like some kind of a disease now. Most people believe everything they see, read, and hear. Fortunately for me, I'm not most people. There are things that I question and there are things that I know are very wrong. Lying to the American people in every possible way is very, very wrong.

I've never seen anyone open up their window and stick out their head and yell that they're as mad as hell and they're not gonna take this anymore. I've never seen anyone say that they were a human being and that their life had value. We're so screwed up in the head we don't even deserve to be called human beings. We're like pre-programmed, numbered, clones enslaved from the cradle to the grave; clones that are programmed and structured to obey authority of all kinds.

"Network" deserved the Best Picture Oscar for '76, but it lost to "Rocky". How the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allowed that to happen is beyond me.

That's all I have to say about that.