EOC WEEK 9 NETWORK

The film "Network" is about a television anchor that with age has lost his strong ratings he had once had. Upon finding out he was fired, Howard Beale had an outburst during a live taping of his segment. He made a statement that the following day he would shoot himself on television. With that statement controversy soon followed.

When the next day had come he had made this statement, “Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. And then, there's the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for thirty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.” “I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

With this, Faye Dunaways character that is obsessed with ratings comes up with the idea of giving Howard Beale his own television show. She knew that it would instantly become a great success because of all the market research that she conducted. It was the first show of its kind and because of how controversial he was it had a huge following. Just by seeing how everyone in the streets would come out and yell “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” you could tell that if he was a great success just by one segment on the news, he would be just as successful on his own.

So he then gets a show where he can say whatever the hell he wants. Unfortunately for the network, he exposes the ties between the corporation that owns the network, and business interests in Saudi Arabia. Arthur Jensen, explains to him his belief that money is the only true god, where Howard Beale completely turns his message around. Before, he told people their lives had value and meaning, but after his meeting with Jensen, he says the opposite. His ratings soon drop, but Jensen orders him kept on; network executives order him to be assassinated. The film then ends with the murder of Howard Beale on national television.