Most of your videos aren't showing up for me, for some reason. But yeah.. Network is pretty much the greatest movie ever made and should be required viewing in any college course relating to media or journalism or ANYTHING really. - Jesse Nevel

Ok, maybe you see where I am going with this page.

Remember... Television as we know it began as a tool for advertisers to sell their selected products. The shows were filler between the commercials. TV was created as a sales tool, to sell soap. The logical progression is to make everything on the tube as entertainment to keep the "asses in the seats," to use an old vaudeville expression. It is the amount of eyeballs on any given screen at any given time. Once we are aware of the basic tenet of Television, the evolution of the media as we know it has some clarity.

I don't want to rally against the evils of the tube, those I will leave to others. I want to promote an awareness of what we are exposed to in our culture. It is the same awareness that I want to foster in gun control, green products and sustain-ability in general. The only true success in the individual level starts from a basic awareness of our place in the structure of humanity. We are not sole islands in a sea of nothingness, but are like cans in the pyramid in the endcap display in a supermarket. Take the bottom can away, and the whole display suffers. We are fooled in thinking that our own selfish motives are what matters in life, that the individual is king in a universe ruled by little tiny bits separate from each other. That is why we are hunkering down and arming ourselves after the election, or watching MSNBC as it feeds us our nightly screeds. We think that the individual is the only thing that matters. It is not a specific individual, but the algorithm of the collective. All of us working together, in collaboration with nature and all the other little bits of existence.

When "Network" was released in 1977, it was seen as black comedy. It rested on the notion that television news had more value than to simply inform the audience. We could not realize at the time how accurate the ideas would be in predicting the direction of television news. The importance of entertainment in the presentation of current affairs has made a hybrid of things we have traditionally regarded as sacred, the presentation of the news of the day. We have allowed, by the rise in its popularity, the onset of "infotainment." By packaging news in a pleasing manner, we have implicitly given our consent to the manipulation of the truth to allow entertainment value to trump essential information.

As for the first clip, the term "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore" has entered into the national consciousness. It has become an anthem for the frustation of the modern man. We have always been resistant to change, and have struggled to maintain against change. This type

comment: Paddy Chayefsky is God. - Jesse Nevel

He was a visionary, for sure.  He had an understanding of the emerging technology of the time, network television, from the viewpoint of someone who was involved in its infancy.  His understanding of reliance on entertainment for the masses, especially entertainment that is based in reality (such as news), and his ability to visualize the arc that particular form of media was to eventually become, is the true genius.  He saw where infotainment was going, and was able to build a comedy around that premise.  But one has to ask, as in any prognostication; is it truly a vision of the future, or did the success of his story give permission for the evolution to take place? Was it the chicken or the egg? Did he invent the "Pandora's Box" of the ungodly weave of news and entertainment or did he just plant the idea in the common consciousness.  Did he predict it as possible, even inevitable? It is, has I had written earlier after I had seen an offensive sign along 1st Ave. North, and as it is with the odds of a terrorist attack in America, the mere discussion of the subject's existence gives it a better chance of realization?  Is there a likelihood of an event occurring due to our own awareness, since we have a hand in its creation?  Since we know something is possible, and we are part of its development, it does not seem to be out of place by saying it could eventually happen.  Events are more palatable when we see them coming, no matter how outrageous they may be.  It is no surprise to us the direction of network news, we had been warned.

Mankind is best when it has the opportunity to say "I told you so."  It is a pleasure that is so unique to the human mind.

Are we ready to understand the need to rally against the hyper pressures of society around us? It is important to develop an awareness of what is really going on when we watch television, or involve ourselves in the constant barrage of media. Our attention is devoured and our brains do little work to assess the images when we watch television.  It is the ultimate cool media!  We expend little effort in disseminating the media.  The internet is just as guilty as any other form of entertainment of the denigration of the human mind. We let things such as Google and You Tube do the thinking for us. Our brains accept the information provided by the sources, with little reflection, or search for a deeper meaning. These things are ENTERTAINMENT!   Wikipedia is just another form of thought which relies on the subjectivity of the human mind, please do not let this pass for the truth!  Network is a parable of how easy it is to allow executives with a profit motive to control what we accept as the truth. Ratings, or "asses in the seats" or the number of eyeballs on the screen, become important, not necessarily content.  As long as it is in a pleasing form, we can digest it and take it as gospel.  This is the danger of anything accepted as the way of man, from religion to our more recent human advances, such as science!

This sort of mindless chatter is passed as discourse.  Please understand that mindfulness is the key to our existence.  An awareness of our lives, and where we are at any given moment.  We must remember that the future is a phantom, and the past is history.

If I must select an evaluative argument for a work with which I am familiar.  I chose "Network" because it has a quality that has kept the subject timely, with even a predictive quality.  It is an outrage of an idea, that a newscaster  (Howard Beale) can go "mad" (something that may or may not be true) and start speaking a common truth about the medium of television.  He may be mad, or he just might love being at the top of the ratings and milking it for all it's worth.  His tirades makes him instantaneously popular, with ratings that are the Holy Grail of network television. He is loved by all, especially by the executives. When I first saw the film. I thought I understood the direction the story would take me.  As a child of the television age, I could understand the possibility of manipulation of the images on the screen.  The most interesting aspect of the film was how Beale, when shown the "true" nature of world economics, as in the clip above, would immediately lose his popularity as a result.  That leads to the final punchline of the story, how - spoiler alert - his eventual murder was the only logical outcome for the situation.  The true beauty of the story is that the conclusion of the death of Beale was accepted as necessary, for both the characters on the screen and in the audience.  We are drawn into the most outrageous acts in a deliberate pace.   The viewer understands the motives of every character, and even though it leads to an abominable act, it seems natural in its progression.   To be drawn in a story like that is what makes a movie great.

Roshi7