News anchor Howard Beale, given the pink slip and distraught, concludes his broadcast by saying he plans to kill himself on TV. When his boss and longtime friend Max Schumacher allows Howard to go on air and apologize, the anchor uses the screen time to rant about life being “bullshit”. For the incidents, Howard and Max are both fired until the network’s head of programming, Diana Christensen, notices how the tirade boosted ratings. She convinces network head Frank Hackett to keep Beale on and “develop” the news show. Beale continues to have a mental breakdown and spiels: “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE”, inciting chants from angry citizens across the country. With this momentum, Christensen develops the news show into a highly produced, rage-inducing sermon from the mentally-declining Beale. With ever-high ratings, all is great until Beale uses his platform to attack the network’s parent company, the CCA. In response, changes are made until Beale’s ratings begin to evaporate. Dangerous and no longer useful to the network, network management fulfills Beale’s character arc.
When I chose “Network” to be my ‘4th of July week’ film, I already knew it was prophetic in depicting corporate-owned news media and anger-inducing punditry. But as the satire played, I was saddened by the thought that, 45 years ago, our modern reality was so far-fetched that Beale’s behavior could only be explained away in-script by a “mental breakdown”. On the contrary, I believe the pundits on air today are perfectly sane, amoral con artists that are fully aware they’re playing characters to anger their audience for profit. To me, anger, and our search to resolve our anger through belief systems (and products), played as the real theme of the film and is why this flick could be made today. Though occasionally derailed by impassioned but too self-aware, stage-play’ey monologues and an awkward romantic subplot between Max and Diana, the film mostly holds up and should be considered required-viewing for any self aware citizen.