Twenty years ago, Paddy Chayefsky’s brutally frank satire about the future of television came to the big screen. “Network” was a dark, hilarious movie that was far ahead of its time. “Network” imagined just what could happen if national networks were owned by large, faceless corporations and the lines between entertainment and journalism were blurred.
Two decades removed, “Network” couldn’t be any more relevant.
” `Network’ is what’s happening now,” says Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley.
Schell recently watched “Network” twice. “I was just mesmerized by it.”
Anybody renting the acclaimed film will have the same reaction. If the recent sweeps month taught us anything, it’s that “When Animals Attack II” and “Cheating Death” are not that far removed from the terrorism show proposed on “Network.”
What was Schell’s initial reaction to revisiting “Network”?
“I thought I was seeing something extraordinarily fresh. And I thought what I was seeing was true.” In perhaps the truest comment one can make after seeing the movie, Schell said: “In a funny way, you’d have a hard time doing `Network’ now.”
That’s because it was satire 20 years ago. Now it would be a documentary.
For those unfamiliar with Chayefsky’s vision, “Network” is about the fictional USB network, and its Walter Cronkite-esque anchor, Howard Beale (Peter Finch). William Holden plays the idealistic president of the news division. Faye Dunaway is the scheming vice president of programming. And Robert Duvall is the numbers-crunching hatchet man for the parent corporation.
Duvall wants the news division, a perennial money-loser, to come under the entertainment umbrella. Beale’s numbers are sagging, from a 16 rating and a 28 share (of the available audience) to a 22 share, and then a 12 share. The decision comes that he must go.
Next time on the air, anchorman Beale flies into a rant. Overnight rating: a 27 share. “We just increased our audience by 20 or 30 million people in one night!” Dunaway says. She’s dreaming about advertising at $100,000 a minute.
Ah, the bottom line. You can’t help but think that shows like “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition” thrived on just this kind of attraction to sleaze. The American public loves sex, violence and brutal death–witness the sweeps month offerings. The parallels from “Network” come fast and frequently.
“The American people want someone to articulate their rage for them,” Dunaway says. Hmmm. Didn’t Rush Limbaugh have his own TV show?
Soon USB sees it can use Howard Beale as a blunt instrument. He’s billed as “a latter-day prophet” and “an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisy of our times.” A distant cousin, clearly, to Howard Stern, who has a show on E! Entertainment Television, and Don Imus, who has a show on MSNBC.
Beale begins to get into his role. He hears the voice of God one night. He’s asked to spread the word. “Why me?” Beale says on the air. “And the voice said, `Because you’re on television, dummy.’ ” And that sets him off for his now famous, pop culture gem: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Beale pleads for everyone to shout it out their windows.
Under Dunaway’s influence, the nightly news turns into a carnival. Revolutionaries are allowed to have their own show, where they show film of crimes in progress. Overnight ratings: a 47 share. Of course, you could draw a family tree straight from that fictional idea to “Cops,” “Real TV,” any number of Fox specials and, ultimately, every tabloid TV show invented.
Life imitating art. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.
The longer we watch “Ricki Lake” and “Jerry Springer” and “Inside Edition” and the Simpson trial, the more twisted we become.
It wouldn’t be so bad if there were a filter, or at least a popular option. But, as Howard Beale rants about television, “This tube is the gospel. Right now there is an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube.”
Remember, this was 20 years ago. There has been a constant tearing down of limits since then. From Morton Downey to Geraldo Rivera to televangelists and “caught on tape” video and military footage of “collateral damage,” we’ve come a long way.
And so have the real-life networks. Every one of them is owned by a major corporation. Main anchors make millions of dollars. Program ratings decide ad rates which produce revenue which, in turn, creates a lot of pressure to produce. Schell points to CBS and “60 Minutes” backing down from the tobacco industry as “a very obvious case” of bottom-line decision-making.
In other cases, it’s more subtle but just as insidious. Schell points out that the success of tabloid news shows “exerts pressure on more serious shows.” And so normally staid national news programs turn to graphic video to hook us. Or they spin off newsmagazines which are forced to compete in the entertainment arena to survive–turning, eventually, to the tawdry to keep us interested.
As viewers, we’ve grown accustomed to thinking about TV shows–dramas and sitcoms–as influencing society. The TV industry was recently forced to come up with a ratings system for its shows. But it’s not “NYPD Blue” we need to worry about. It’s reality shows such as “When Disaster Strikes” and lowest-common-denominator talk shows such as “Jenny Jones” we need to fear. And maybe even our slowly crumbling news and information shows.
It has been 20 years since Howard Beale urged people to go to their windows and shout. Maybe it’s time we all watched “Network” again.
