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Network (1976 film) = Finished
🕑 Added 2018-12-21 10:00:16 +0000 UTCCompulsion is an odd thing to judge in a movie. The very nature of the medium says that you're along for the ride, right? You probably want to see what happens next. That might be cool. Stuff happening. You know.
Stuff.
Network pulls off an interesting trick, though. We start out somewhat sympathetic to the plight of Howard Beale, a disgraced anchor who announces that he will kill himself on live television. The man is clearly unwell. Thing is--he gets ratings. His rantings about the state of the world capture the attention of that world, even when he tells it that their very enthrallment is a symptom of a mutual, corroding disease. The evolution of his own corruption, from simple rantings, to visions from God, and ultimately taking orders from a corporate messiah, reflect the reality of what is clearly a dystopian state. This is not a pleasant situation, and the executives driving it are not pleasant people either.
Yet...you desperately want to see where it goes next.
How it escalates, Beale transforming from madman to a TV-sanctioned prophet that preaches against himself.
You want to see Howard Beale steadily, unrelentingly destroy his very being for our pleasure.
The great big PLOT TWIST of Network is that we already live in a dystopia. A dystopia that uses our own negative fixations, and pursuit of the sensational, to drive metric growth above all other considerations.
Morality falls before The Network. Quality pales before The Network. The Network is all, and in all, and by the very end when Howard Beale finds himself killed by an assassin's bullet, you're just as attached to the screen as the filmed audience.
Network is the ultimate mirror. A dystopian reflection of the exact effect it induces, writ large across the entire media landscape as a warning we have just shown we will inevitably ignore.
The Network is all - because we can't stop watching.
