Retro Review: Network (1976)
I was born in 1983. The cold war was all but over. I’ve never seen an episode of M.A.S.H, and I’ve always known minivans, McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, and the Nintendo Entertainment System. David Letterman has always been on Late Night, and I can’t remember a time when FOX was not an available channel on our television. Perhaps the only thing that saved me from the nihilistic attitude stereotypically associated with the “MTV” generation was that my family didn’t have cable when I was growing up, we simply had a 40-foot tall antenna attached to our rural home and we could pick up signals from all the major networks. 
I remember watching Perfect Strangers, Night Court, Family Matters, Quantum Leap, Full House, and Matlock. I never had the privilege of having Walter Cronkite read the news to me; in fact I don’t ever recall watching television to get the news when I was growing up. We read the newspaper around my house and as soon as Netscape came out with the browser, I was on the internet. Television to me has always been about cheap entertainment, and by cheap I mean in cost and in value. I’ve never been much of a television watcher, always preferring film or the written word.
So what is it about a film made seven years before I was born and focusing on a topic that doesn’t pertain to me that I find so appealing? That is a hard question to answer. I suppose it has to do with the cultural impact of television. Aldous Huxley said about television, “In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.” We have become a vegetable garden of people, we do nothing but absorb, hoping to be entertained. However, even a fleeting moment of entertainment only leaves us more hopeless because we have no one to share it with. As T.S. Eliot once said, “It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”
Yet, somehow despite the verbosity of Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant script (I mean no one really talks like they do in this film), and the absurdity of the story, it has proven itself clairvoyant. We live in a world today that very much resembles the imagined world of the film. 
That is why I would classify Network as a Science Fiction film. It is a comedy and a drama to be sure, but the best Sci-Fi stories take a current trend and play it out to its obvious conclusion. Only a few years after this film’s release, FOX began to steal away ratings from the traditional stations by airing sensational fluff pieces. They became known for their willingness to air anything that would get the ratings regardless of what the censors at the FCC thought.
Network is really a remarkable film, it is not only watchable but compelling. It doesn’t have any computer graphics, no explosions, and no nudity, it is filled with long stretches of talkative monologues. It was made before the computers or the internet took over the world, but the actors made this film wonderful. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, half of those were for acting. It won three acting Oscars (only the second film in history to do so), and Paddy Chayefsky won for his brilliant script. 
Somehow, Rocky stole the Best Picture and Director categories. It is a film that few people my age have seen or even heard of, but it is a film that is worth every penny a DVD will cost you.
Peter Finch will always be remembered for his role as the “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves”, especially as he told his listeners to get up, stick their heads out their windows and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” He died just a few months before the Academy Awards, and remains the only person to win the Best Actor Oscar posthumously. He delivers his lines with such conviction and passion that you could easily be fooled into thinking that hie has been touched by some spirit that is guiding him towards a truth that he must proclaim to the masses from his own Mt. Sinai inside our televisions. And Faye Dunaway is frenetic and driven as this woman in a man’s world. She is obsessed with nothing more than the ratings numbers. She plays them like the stock market, unconcerned with the content of the show, only whether people will tune in or not. 
She is probably best known for her role in Mommie Dearest, but I think that this was a far superior role and it is the only one to win her Oscar gold.
If you’ve never seen Network, you owe it to yourself to add it to your Netflix list at the very least, but I would advise buying the DVD, because once you see it, you will want it. It is a classic. It speaks to our human condition, our desire to be spoon-fed and entertained. How many churches have been ruined because their members attend to be entertained week in and week out? Christians should not be like the people in this film. We should not be like so many are today. We can talk about the internet and video games, but it is that simple box that sits so comfortable in our living rooms that sucks the life out of so many of our families and melts our children’s brains to mush. Listen as Howard Beale tells you about the great evils of television in my favorite scene of the film. Warning: There is some language… watch at your own risk!
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