Movies

I should be happier than the proverbial pig in mud. One of my favorite movies from the '70s actually predicted some of what we are going through today. Now. In 2010. That's the good news, the bad news is that the predictions made in the movie aren't particularly good.

The movie was/is 'Network' with Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, William Holden and Faye Dunaway. It centered on a mythical fourth network television newsroom which was having money and ratings problems. Aging news anchor Howard Beale (played by Finch, who won a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal) announces that he is being sacked and that he will end his career by shooting himself on live TV. Beale eventually has visions and comes into his broadcast raving "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Because of the tremendous surge in ratings after the Beale rants, the news operation is put under control of the network's entertainment division - Beale's ravings are rationalized as editorial content and the ratings soar even further.

So far, the operation sounds a lot like Fox. Fox is primarily an entertainment company which just happens to run a news operation... with lots of editorial content and more than a few Howard Beales given the opportunity to entertain us with... editorial content.

In the place of Howard Beale, we have the presence of someone called Glenn Beck who, like Beale, developed a following and who, unlike Beale, has no real-world experience as a journalist, serious or otherwise. Also unlike Beale, Beck has an agenda. He has something to sell. The man comes across to me like a smarmy used car salesperson trying to pawn off a rusty '67 Buick with sawdust in the transmission and at least 50,000 miles rolled off of the odometer to some 18 year old kid with a few bucks burning a hole in his pocket. (To be fair to the used car salesman, at least he would find some way to keep from burning the kid.) Both Beck and Beale take/took themselves seriously. Beale claimed to hear the voice of God - Beck, these days, seems to be in the process of positioning himself as the personification of the 'second coming'.

Toward the end of the movie, Howard Beale is called upon to face the Chairman of the Board of the network, Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty in one of very few serious roles I have seen him in). Jensen convinces Beale that Beale's mission was to push public opinion in the direction Jensen wanted to have opinion pushed. Though I'm not really certain of it, I can imagine that Glenn Beck had a similar communication with Rupert Murdoch... which does raise an eyebrow. What business does an Australian billionaire have in attempting to be involved in American politics? Perhaps it has something to do with Arthur Jensen's world view... "The world is a business, Mr. Beale..."

When Howard Beale preaches the Gospel according to Arthur Jensen, his ratings drop and depression sets in among his audience. "No one wants to hear that his life is useless..." the narrator reminds us in the film. Howard Beale is the accidental messiah up to the point of his meeting with Jensen. From that point, his life and the ratings drop like a lead-filled balloon.

Beck, on the other hand, is so adept at the art of using smoke and mirrors that the overriding reality of corporate interference in our lives disappears. He is at least in partial control of his destiny and is setting himself up as a new messiah who will deliver us from the pain and misery of having to be subservient to brown-skinned people. We're all supposed to be happy little monkeys, content that there are people who are attempting to keep the Mexicans out of our sweatshops and that billionaires are able to keep their money without paying confiscatory tax rates or even having to trickle that money down to support our disappearing middle class.

And that's part of the reason why people gathered in Washinton last weekend to hear a former drug addict tell us that we are on the edge of another "Great Awakening". In the movie, Howard Beale unknowingly tapped the fears of the unknown to unleash an army of followers. In real life, Glenn Beck is knowingly tapping the same fears and is, in the process, attempting to equate religion with a political agenda.

When I first saw 'Network' in its initial run, I was impressed by how closely the film's reality was like the reality of the time (with references to the still-fresh Patricia Hearst kidnapping and mention of the UBS affiliate in Atlanta, WTCG*). Little did I know that some of the realities of the film would be played out 30+ years later in real life. Satire is wonderful, until it's taken seriously or being played out in reality as it seems to be happening now.

I still like 'Network' for the same reasons I liked it when I first saw it. I did not think of it then as a harbinger of the future nor did I ever think that a news organization would do nothing other than report the news. While FOX is attempting to bend our political system, ABC's news seems to be becoming a shill for the pharmaceutical industry. (I don't keep up with CBS, NBC or CNN... the only reason I do ABC news is that the local channel has what I consider to be the best news in the Metroplex.) These are strange times we are living in... strange times, indeed.


* As a quick aside, billboard owner Ted Turner purchased a relatively unknown UHF television station in Atlanta some years ago and changed the call letters to WTCG - Watch This Channel Grow... and it did. Yeah. THAT channel!


Be Seeing You!