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Reel Rage - Network
from BoF 2
Would
John Logie Baird be proud? As millions
across the nation gather around Animals Kill
the Funniest Things or The Jeremy
Kyle Show and struggle to notice the difference, girths expanding at an
exponential rate and critical faculties slumping to pre-school levels, perhaps
the industrious Scott would regret his early enthusiasm for transmitting
flickering images from one point to another.
Especially if one of those images included the word Hollyoaks. Television
dominates the western world as the number one leisure activity*
forming opinions, styles and tastes of generation after generation. Those select few who control output wield
formidable power. And it is these people
who come under the critical microscope of Network.
Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film has been both hailed as an
incisive satire on the worst excesses of the television industry and dismissed
as a heavy handed, hysterical attack on the medium, blinded by nostalgia. Both praise and condemnation support the fact
that Network takes the prize as the pinnacle
of angry man cinema. The story of Howard
Beale, the news anchorman who looses it big time but stays on the air, is a
prime example of a film that divides audiences along angry lines. Content folk who enjoy their job and going
shopping, or the insane as they are otherwise known, are most likely to wonder
what all this shouting is about. Those
who seethe impotently at the world with its injustices and absurdities, i.e.
BoF readers, are most likely to hail Network
as a prophetic masterpiece. Which of
course it is.
Initially the film plays Beale’s breakdown as farce. Following his announcement that:
I will be retiring from this
program in two weeks time because of poor ratings and since this show was the only
thing I had going for me in my life, I have decided to kill myself. I’m going to blow my brains out right on this
program a week from today.
a gaggle of panicked cameramen and sound operators
attempt to prise Beale’s fingers from the desk and the resultant chaos is
interrupted by everyone’s comedy favourite, the ‘temporary difficulties’ cue
card. However, as the film progresses it
becomes clear that Beale’s awakening has increasingly serious
implications. Beale’s friend and Head of
News Division, Max Schumacher, sees the outburst as the beginnings of a breakdown and later decries how Beale is used by the
Network. The longer Beale stays on air,
the more the rage flows.
The key to appreciating Network’s fury is in listening to Beale. Strangely, criticism of the film rarely gives
room to analysis of his outbursts. It is
the machinations of the characters around him that are the focus. These rants make for uncomfortable listening
and are easily dismissed as grumpy old man syndrome with a psychotic edge. Yet early on in the film a vital element of
its thesis is introduced:
Yesterday, I announced on this
program that I would commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I just ran out of bullshit…
Bullshit. A word
easily said and dismissed but loaded with philosophical implications. So philosophical, philosopher Harry G.
Frankfurt wrote a book about it:
[The
Bullshitter] is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.
His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the
liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting
away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe
reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his
purpose.
Beale’s first two on air outbursts bookend the
introduction of Diana Christenson and Frank Hakett. From Christenson’s introduction we have:
…when I took over this
department, it had the worst programming record in television history. This network hasn’t one show in the top
twenty. This network is an industry
joke. We better start putting together
one winner for next September… And, by the way, the next time I send an
audience research report around, you all better read it, or I’ll sack the fucking
lot of you.
And from Hackett:
But the business of management is management… I am
therefore pleased to announce I am submitting to the Board of Directors a plan
for the coordination of the main profit centres, and with the specific
intention of making each division more responsive to management.
For Christenson, her purpose is
ratings and for Hackett, profit. Every
utterance they make in the film is therefore bullshit to these ends. The extent of Christenson’s obsession with “a
30 share and a 20 rating” is most graphically portrayed as she consummates her
affair with Schumacher whilst outlining plans for her new show:
…All I need… is six weeks of
federal litigation… and “the Mao Tse Tung Hour” … can start carrying it’s own
time slot! (she screams in consummation…) What’s really bugging me now is my
daytime programming…
The character of Christenson is
often criticised as anti-feminist and has been described by one critic as a
“conventional misogynist narrative”:
The film holds up the sexually
emancipated, professionally ambitious woman of the seventies in horror**
That the portrayal of Christenson
is unpleasant is undeniable, but it does not automatically follow that because
Christenson is a woman she is unpleasant.
She is unpleasant because she is a bullshitter. Both Hackett and Christenson are exemplars of
the corporate bullshitter that Network
decries, and both are repellent in equal measure. Admittedly, it is Faye Dunaway that gets her
kit off, rather than Robert Duval, and we are mercifully spared the sight of a
saggy William Holden in all his glory, so misogynistic elements are indeed
contained within the film’s male gaze.
But it is the corporate bullshitter, man or woman, that the film ‘holds
up in horror’, rather than the “professionally ambitious woman”.
The development of Beale as the
‘mad prophet of the airways’ from the ashes of Beale the respectable news
anchorman elaborates on the critique of bullshit. The film’s most famous section sees Beale
break from the boundaries of the news desk to deliver his message, disrupting
the comfortable frame that complacent viewers have become accustomed to:
"All I know is first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, I’m a human being,
goddammit. My life has value”. So I want you to get up now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go
to the window. Right now. I want you to go to the window, open it, and
stick your head out and yell. I want you
to yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Such direct chastisement of the great American public
bristles with some critics, who are perhaps a little too quick in their
dismissal of Beale:
“Okay, we get it: we’re drones,
and we need to wake up. But what
then? It’s all very well for the madman
Beale to argue for engagement without an underlying message, but I’m not sure
Chayefsky should be allowed the same luxury”
Sadly, the above writer seems to
have missed the second half of the film, suggesting a common reluctance to
engage with what Beale is saying. Anyone
who has endured the office meetings, the call centre conversation or the
learning and development training session will understand Beale’s
awakening. What Network posits as an alternative to the drone hell of corporate
bullshit is the humanism espoused, first by Beale, then more fully by
Schumacher. Under the influence of the
‘corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen’ Beale outlines the ‘humanoid’ theory:
The whole world is becoming
humanoid, creatures that look human but aren’t… The whole world’s people are
becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things useful only to
produce and consume other mass produced things, all of them as unnecessary and
useless as we are.
Your call is important to us… But Beale does offer solutions. First and foremost:
…the only truth you know is what
you get over this tube!.. if you want truth go to God, go to your Guru, go to
yourself because that’s the only place you’ll ever find any real truth, but
man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear… we
deal in illusion, man! None of it’s
true… you’re beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are
unreal… In god’s name, you people are the real thing! We’re the illusions. So turn off this goddam set!
His earlier orations demand the
opposite of the humanoid mindset, they demand emotion, emotion that is free from
the clichés provided by the television script.
It is Schumacher that ultimately demonstrates the action Beale
demands. When leaving Christensen,
Schumacher states:
You’re one of Howard’s humanoids,
and if I stay with you, I’ll be destroyed!... everything you touch dies with
you. Well, not me! Not while I can still feel pleasure and pain
and love.
“pleasure and pain and love” are what separate Hackett
and Christensen from Beale and Schumacher.
The scene where Schumacher tells his wife of the affair stands out in
the film, as it is a depiction of raw human emotion that Beale calls for, as
opposed to the corporate machinations that dominate the film. Louise Schumacher spells it out:
I’m your wife, damn it! If you can’t work up a winter passion for me,
then the least I require is respect and allegiance! I’m hurt.
Don’t you understand that? I’m
hurt badly?
Network has been criticised for
presenting Schumacher as the film’s ‘noble figure’, yet this seems to miss the
point of character completely.
Schumacher is
…just as much a confused coward
as almost everyone else in the film – do we fail to notice this just because of
his magnificent steel-grey hair and imposing jowls?
Rather than noble, Schumacher’s
is a tragic trajectory. It is his
awareness that he is embroiled in the ‘TeeVee generation’ of Christensen that
live lives according to a script played out on television that sets him apart
and gives him a tragic awareness:
Max: She has devised a variety of
scenarios for us to play, as if it were a movie of the week. And, my god!
Look at us Louise. Here we are going
through the obligatory middle-of-act-two scorned-wife- throws-peccant -husband-out
scene. But, not to fear, I’ll come back
in the end. All her plot outlines have
me leaving her and returning to you, because the audience won’t buy a rejection
of the happy American family…
Louise:
You’re in for some dreadful grief Max
Max: I know
Even as he leaves Christensen in
an attempt to escape the humanoid trap, Schumacher knows he remains within the
script:
It’s a happy ending, Diana. Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns
to his wife with whom he has built a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her artic
desolation. Music up with a swell. Final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week’s
show.
***
New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael took
issue with the didactic approach of Network,
describing Beale’s orations as “vindictive, moralizing condescension” and that
“Chayefsky apparently thinks that not reading is proof of soullessness”. Well, if not proof, it’s surely a bit of
circumstantial evidence. Fundamentally
disagreeing with Beale she states:
There are a lot of changes in
society which can be laid at television’s door, but soullessness isn’t one of
them. TV may have altered family life
and social intercourse; it may have turned children at school into entertainment
seekers. But it hasn’t taken our souls,
any more then movies did, or the theatre and novels before them.
Altering family life and social
intercourse. Is that all? Kael denies the malign power of television
that Network riles against. Equating TV
with movies, theatre and novels suggests there is no fundamental difference
between the mediums. However, unlike
movies and theatre, TV is in the home, attempting to broadcast 24 hours a day,
attempting to sell 24 hours a day. It
demands both sight and sound in a passive experience, unlike the novel. And, crucially, television frequently poses
as reality in a way not experienced before.
Look at where Network is set – The news department, where real,
emotional events are interpreted as fodder for advertising revenue. Where politicians and other incarnations of
our corporate leaders attempt to avoid any sense of truth and project their
specific, bullshit agendas. Thus does
television spread bullshit like no other medium. To lend some academic credence to our shaky
argument, let’s bring Harry back:
Bullshit is unavoidable whenever
circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about
Circumstances such as the requirements of 24 hour news perhaps, as, with almost practiced
ineptitude, eager young careerists attempt to talk at length about incidents
that historians will spend years researching to tease out meaning and
truth. Instant reaction news demands ill
informed and ill thought out soundbites, sentimental banalities and phony
emotionalism. Possibly
the reason for the vast increase in bovine related effluence in modern society
can be laid directly at TV’s door, as people emulate roles and mimic behaviour
that pour from ‘the tube’ every hour of the day.
As the Beale show reaches new
ratings highs and Christenson exults in the hit she has created, the irony is
that life has no value to the corporate bullshitters. It is only ratings or profit that have value. And when bullshit dominates, authenticity
declines. Network highlights this irony of a cry for authenticity which owes
its existence to the chase for ratings.
Christenson:
Howard Beale got up there last night and said what every
American feels – that he’s tired of all the bullshit. He’s articulating the popular rage. I want that show, Frank. I can turn that show into the biggest smash
in television… I’m talking about a hundred, a hundred thirty thousand dollar
minutes!
Paralleling the duplicity involved in the Howard Beale
show are the machinations involved in the creation of the ‘Mao Tse Tung
Hour’. Christenson, calls for
‘counterculture, I want anti-establishment’, yet fails to realize the paradox
that establishment figures such as herself cannot be anti-establishment. Just as a performer with the clichéd
‘x-factor’ would never go anywhere near a tacky and sadistic fame hunt such as X-Factor, anti-establishment authenticity
cannot be found in Christenson’s audience research reports. As television continues to push for
authenticity in its constant quest for ratings, authenticity moves further and
further away. The ELA could not ‘produce
footage of an act of political terrorism’ once Christenson asks for it, as it
is simply no longer authentic. Much like
the observer effect of scientific experimentation, authenticity dissolves as
soon as a television camera is pointed.
Indeed, there is a strong case to be made for Beale to be viewed as the
televisual equivalent of a Schrödinger's cat.
But not by me, as I don’t understand what Schrödinger's cat is, no
matter how many times I read the Complete
Idiots Guide to Quantum Mechanics.
However, Network is prophetic in this depiction of the quest for
authenticity. The dizzying array of
‘reality shows’ that followed in the wake of the king of the genre, Big Brother, testify to this prescience. Television continues the futile search for
authenticity just as the wailing, self conscious and media savvy performances
of the ‘reality stars’ contradict the notion.
Harry’s back:
This unsettling sense of
phoniness is perhaps the prevailing characteristic of television. And, judging by ratings, perhaps the
executives simply don’t care, as authentic human behaviour and emotion is lost
under layer upon layer of post-modern phoniness. Beale’s protestations echo 30 years later as
Jade Goody and her ilk once again mash their faces into our living rooms. Perhaps just as the Victorians gazed at the
insane for authentic truths that could not be found in their hypocritical society,
it takes on air a meltdown for a person on television to appear authentic today.
Ultimately, rather than lamenting
the ‘golden age of television’, the film laments the triumph of corporate
bullshit over authenticity as Beale’s journey ends with the pronouncement that
began it; his brains are blown out on live television. As the credits roll over the image of the
dead Beale Network suggest that
television and its audience are shown to have chosen to ignore the message that
enthralled them, a message which echoes more loudly with each fresh news
bulletin:
I want you to yell, “I’m mad as
hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!
*Accurate citation avoided by the author to
enhance one-sided argument.
**Citation is for pussies
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