Netflix movies on demand make it easy to go back to movies from long ago and find insights that you didn't have at the time they were first seen. We did that last night with Network.
It was a satire in 1976. But, Atlas Shrugged was interpreted by many in the mid-'40s as an apocalyptic love story without much relationship to reality. Today both Atlas and Network are reality.
You naturally remember the catchphrase of Howard Beale. You may even remember the whole pajama clad spiel urging to people to rush to their windows, throw them open and shout it into the streets, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
Maybe more chilling in terms of what I see every time I face a community college class is this description of the information-seeking habits of modern Americans. It is much worse than even Howard Beale thought:
TV Controls Your Mind
Maybe the most critical soliloquy of the movie is this one delivered by Ned Beatty in the Howard Beale style:
The Reality Is Not What You Think
Art becomes reality.
2 comments:
Very good as usual. I hadn't seen Network, but the two scenes you put up are interesting, and probably true, but George Carlin probably said it best when he said "They've got you by the balls, and they're comin' for more". I probably avoid too much realism in movies, I'd rather be entertained to take my mind off reality...ha
It's funny how some art - in retrospect - clicks a switch in some minds as being a 'prophetic' work for its time.
Unfortunately, almost all of these writings and screenplays - from 1984 to Atlas Shrugged and even Network - merely applied a little bit of speculative 'future' exaggeration to things that had already happened by the time they were written.
For the record, the TV networks (and virtually all of the 'legacy' media: broadcast, print, and cable just down the road) turned into propaganda agents in early 1968, with Walter Cronkite at the lead, reporting the 'crushing defeat' of US and Allied forces during Tet in VN.
By the time the Network movie was released, the news networks were long gone as valid reporting media, and Hollywood was right behind them, trying to shape our culture to fit their worldview.
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