Prelude
“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression.
Everybody's out of work, or scared of losing their job.
The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street. There's nobody anywhere seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat.
We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us, “Today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes …”. As if that's the way it's supposed to be!
We know things are bad, worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy.
So we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller.
And all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.’
Well I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!
I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.
You’ve got to say, “I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has value!”
So. I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell: “I’m as mad as hell! And I’m not going to take this anymore!””
Howard Beale, Network, MGM, 1976
Free? Or just dumb?
The “Mad as Hell” scene from Network is one of the better known, and certainly frequently referenced, in Hollywood’s history.
Watching and reading it again, close to half a century after the movie’s release in 1976, it’s natural to wonder what’s changed since. While the actors - and the costumes too - may have aged or died, its themes and its messages are as sharp as they ever were, perhaps more so today, when the USA - and to some degree, the rest of the world’s politics is run on Twitter, and citizens are driven backwards and forwards in a Skinnerian dream of perfect control.
But it’s a beautiful script, and one of four deserved Oscars won by Network in 1977 went to its brilliant, infamously cranky writer, Paddy Chayefsky.
I’ve always loved the exhilarating climax of the scene: thousands of US citizens, all over the nation, throwing their windows open and shouting their rage and frustration to the world; dropping all decorum, all shame, all politeness and reserve.
Protesting about whatever, to whoever. Kicking up a fuss.
And yet. Digging deeper into Network’s history, and in particular Mr Chayefsky’s own fractious relationship with the television industry, I’ve come to realise that while the apparently joyous “Mad as Hell” scene may dramatise a startlingly empowered - almost unleashed - national TV audience, the movie is not about the power of media to bring humans together to protest.
On the contrary. It’s about how television - and now all forms of media - can get a lot of people to do pretty much anything it - or more precisely - the people that manage and pay for it - wants them to do.
Network - and there are plenty more savagely funny and poignant set pieces that follow “Mad as Hell” throughout the movie - is not a celebration of anything. It’s a dark warning, or rather perhaps, yet another reminder, that whoever controls the media controls the message and the masses.
Have we learned nothing at all since 1976? What could be possibly clearer than the brutal truth that we need to carefully watch and protect against the effects of the media - any media - on how we think and how we act. The media can drive us mad. And they do. And it seems to be getting a lot worse.
I was seventeen when Network was released. I’ve lived through the so-called Golden Age of network television, the emergence of quality TV in the 80s, the punk rock explosion and the indie labels that broke open the majors, the earliest days of interactive media, the internet and the Web. I’ve spent a lot of the past 25 years or so writing about digital media and marketing, and advised quite a few of the world’s largest businesses and brands about what it means for them and their customers.
We’ve all witnessed - knowing what was happening, but somehow numb to its implications - a conclusive shrinkage in the business of news. In an ironic echo of the original punk eruption, anyone can get up on stage today, and shout their own truth to an audience desperate for distraction.
Fake news is big business. The current president of the USA routinely dismisses the work of real reporters, published by newspapers with, for the most part, integrity and a commitment to real news, as fake. And his millions of followers, mostly, suck it up and beg for more.
It’s hard to deny that we now live in a post-truth age. It’s also hard to know what to do about it. We feel overwhelmed, powerless, voiceless. And we feel, if we’re honest, ashamed.
This is exactly where "they" want us. So I’d like to explore with you how to not go insane. How not to lose our principles, our integrity and our sense of self.
One thing is clear. Whatever we choose to do about it, however we choose to channel our anger, if we’re not “as mad as hell”, we’re missing the point. If you agree with me, here’s a big question. What exactly - for me, for you, for us - could “not taking it anymore” actually mean?
The savage satire of Network has come to pass. If the medium is the message, the message has become nonsensical.
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