73 - Network: A Film Critique

Network: A Film Critique
By Clifford Elliott

By Paddy Chayefsky, directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by Howard Gottfried. A Metro-Goldwyn Mayer film released through United Artists, 1975. With Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall.

IT is the middle of the night. A man is asleep in bed. The light shines on his face and a voice calls to him: "I have chosen you. I want you to go and tell the people the truth." The man is stunned: "You're kidding," be stutters. "How should I know the truth? Look, if this is the burning bush, I'm not Moses." The voice replies: "And I'm not God. We're not talking of eternal truth, just transient truth." "But why me?" protests the man. "Because you're on TV, dummy. I'm not asking you to go around in sackcloth and ashes. I'm asking you because you're on TV." "Okay," says the man. Vision over.

What kind of movie script is that? Well, ask yourself: "If God were to call some person today to go and lead the people out of their slavery, whom would he call? What would he say to him? How would you write the story of Moses-for popular consumption?"

Paddy Chayefsky's answer in the film, Network, is contained in the dialogue just reported. "Moses" is a TV news anchorman for United Broadcasting Systems. It's a fictitious network that has seen better days. Its ratings are low and the news doesn't improve them. So Howard Beale, the anchorman, is fired, with two weeks' notice. He goes on the air and tells the public he is going to kill himself "right in the middle of the 7 o'clock news-a week from tonight." The network is embarrassed and Beale is dragged out of the studio right on camera. But his superior yields to his plea just to go on one more time. When he does, he goes berserk and tells the audience in blunt scatological terms that he is quitting because he has nothing more to say. The top management screams but the ratings shoot up, and Beale is returned to the show as a special feature. It is then that he has his vision-his call. He reports it to the people on TV. He describes it to Schumacher,

Clifford Elliott is the minister of the Bloor Street United Church (of Canada), Toronto, Ontario. Dr. Elliott is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon. He has also studied at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and at Columbia University where he received his doctorate. In addition to his pastorate, Dr. Elliott serves part-time as Chaplain at Victoria University, and he is a frequent contributor to The United Church Observer.
Since this critique was written, Network tied for first place in the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Peter Finch, who died January 14, was nominated "best actor."

74 - Network: A Film Critique

his superior. It was a "cleansing moment of clarity. It wasn't religious. I feet more as if I was in the center of a magnetic field. I feel connected to all living beings. I am not having a breakdown. I never felt so whole in all my life." Then he collapses.

That becomes his pattern. He goes on the air to tell people that everything is going crazy and the world is getting smaller and all we want is to be left alone. "Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. You've got to get mad. Say, 'I'm a human being, goddamit.' Get up and go to the window and shout: 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more.' " People are entranced. Someone is speaking the truth.

"Woe to us," says Moses, now turned Amos. "Woe to us because only three percent of the people read books and only fifteen percent read newspapers. Woe to us because we listen to TV and believe everything it says. TV is not truth. It's amusement. You're not going to get any truth here … We'll give you anything you want to hear. We deal in illusions. But you think that we're real and that you're the illusion. It's all wrong. Shut off your TV sets. If you want the truth go to God, go to your guru, go to yourself." Trembling with excitement and rage he falls in a dead faint. The camera zeroes in. Up the music. Ready the commercial. "You have been listening to Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves. Listen tomorrow night at the same time for more news and commentary from Howard Beale. The mad prophet!"

It's incredible. But it's powerful. And its preposterous plot shouts the truth. The network doesn't care what Beale says as long as it raises the ratings and increases income. But, inevitably, he turns on them too and they have to get rid of him. They kill him, live on TV, of course.

This is a prophetic movie. It has humor, prophecy, sex, suspense. But it's different. Howard Beale is, indeed, a modern Moses, telling us that we are in bondage to the TV slave masters, who in turn crack the whip at the bidding of Exxon, Dupont, and other multinational Pharaohs. We are losing our identity as human beings. He calls us out, to wander in the wilderness perhaps, but in search of a promised land flowing with the milk and honey of truth.

Beale is a modern Amos, too, preaching doom to a materialistic society that cares nothing for anybody or anything so long as it increases power and profits. In one gripping scene, the head of the whole corporation calls Beale in and speaks to him like God. He thunders: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature and you will atone! The world is business. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will see the perfect world-business will provide all the necessities, tranquilize all anxieties, amuse all boredoms."

Beale is a modern Christ, only he can't quite fill the role. When he is tempted to believe that democracy is sick and dying, and individuals don't matter after all, and dehumanization isn't so bad if mass production can provide our needs for us, he succumbs. When he is killed, it is part crucifixion, part commentary, for some of him has already died with his compromise.

75 - Network: A Film Critique

The movie shows in a disturbing way how religious and liturgical the business world can be. The meetings of the Board of Directors of the TV network take place around a long, polished table, lighted only by green lamps at each member's place, the chairman presiding at the head, the reports read out like scripture lessons, exegeted by the officers in charge of each department. The table might well be a communion table: the elements of profit and rating symbolized in graphs and reports. The meeting of the shareholders is in a large hall with all the features of an evangelistic rally. The president is the evangelist with the gospel that a messiah has come (Howard Beale) and blotted out all previous failures. Faye Dunaway is the seductive songstress, singing out: "We're Number One!" until the whole assembly joins in the pentecostal chorus.

The forces of temptation are as strong as the forces of good, and they speak with almost identical voices, using the same terminology. When the president of the corporation calls in Howard Beale to brainwash him, he takes him to the Board Room and there calls on Beale to preach his evangel of the kingdom that business will soon bring in. When Beale cries: "I have seen the face of God!" the president replies: "You might just be right."

The film shows not only what TV does to the public but what it does to those who work in it. Ratings are gods and people are mere tools in TV's hands. Truth is whatever builds an audience and makes a profit. News is not the transmission of fact but an entertainment program. Worst of all, people lose their normal sensitivities. When Schumacher and Deanna Christenson, the woman executive, have an affair, it is doomed from the start. In an ironic reversal of the usual roles, she is the one who is "all business." She cannot stop talking about it even while making love. Finally, he has to leave her for fear she will destroy him. He must go back, he says, to a world where there is pain and pleasure-and love, a world she knows not of.

An intriguing "insert" in the story is the role of the "Ecumenical Liberation Army." It is a caricature of a protest group which takes films of itself while robbing banks to get funds for the movement. The TV network sees it as a great program possibility-each week they would show pictures of a recent holdup. Christenson says it is a chance to help people articulate the rage they feel. The phony idealism of the group is exposed when they quarrel among themselves, and with the network, over contracts and fringe benefits. In the end, it is they who agree to kill Howard Beale, the mad prophet, with whom they should have had so much in common. Niebuhr would smile knowingly at how reformists (and the church) are as vunerable as others to the corruption of fame, money, and power.

Network, in spite of its implausible plot, portrays the struggle of good and evil far more powerfully than a shocker like Jaws. The network becomes the man-eating shark-devouring both producer and consumer. It can be defeated only by those who defy its standards and are willing to be crucified in the process. It is a commentary on the

76 - Network: A Film Critique

Scripture that "we wrestle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12).

And all this is done without cheap sensationalism. It is done with wit and irony. The spectacle of a TV show that features an astrologer, the mad prophet, and the Ecumenical Liberation Army has just enough truth to make it hilarious. Beale's very denial of any religious dimension to his vision makes it all the more believably spiritual and lets the audience identify more easily with him. They laugh at him, at his opponents, and at themselves. It exposes viewers to their own sin and folly and makes them like it-enough to provoke any preacher's envy!

But the film is not without hope. Though Beale is finally brainwashed and murdered, he cannot be forgotten. One man, for a few months of his life, stepped out of his passive conforming pattern and dared to tell the truth. He dared to believe his vision. He dared to respond to a call and the effect is electric. It makes you believe that Moses, Amos-and Christ-could come again. And that one of us might get the call.

Peter Finch as Howard Beale, the mad prophet, is appealingly human and vulnerable. William Holden as Schumacher, President of U.B.C. News Division, is strong as a man torn between the pressures of TV's impossible demands and his own decency. Faye Dunaway as the aggressive program director, is brilliant, ruthless, sexy-and tragically insensitive ("TV Incarnated," Schumacher calls her at the end of their affair).