do you think Beale is right? have we run out of bullshit?
How do you think 1976 network news and television culture plays against where we have arrived and where we may be going. How was it prescient?
In light of the guest filmmakers' presentation of What a Way to Go,
what do you think is still worth saying in film.
4 comments:
In Lumet's Network (1976), a news anchor known as Beale has a breakdown after his family is killed and starts ranting about what he believes is the truth. He thinks that our country has run out of bullshit, especially in the media. I personally agree with most of what Beale said on his show in the film.
Television had definitely desensitized me during my childhood. It wasn't until I came to college that I started noticing the negative effects. I had a skewed perception of how I should interact with friends, superiors, and professors. A lot of sitcoms give you the idea of how life works, but that paradigm is not necessarily a true portrayal.
News also desensitized me. If a newscaster says that global warming is imminent and that people are getting murdered on the street, I fear going out side and feel melancholy. The media keeps us away from nature and on our couches staring at the television.
I still think there is a lot to be said about film. If explored artistically and if it promotes good morals it is worth it. Documentaries are great too because they document important current events and promote a cause, which is what we need to see more of in our culture.
What stuck me most about this movie is the amount of "real" or frank talk that went on. The way they described how the system works and peoples' suseptibility to just be completley in it and blinded by what it is really doing was amazing they had such an understanding of the forces in 1976. I did not really think the whole corporation thing was such a gravity defying force then, but I guess a lot of people understood about it (at least those who made this film). I love how all the dialogue was so precise and descriptive, rather negative, but very enlightening. This movie rang bells that wow this really is going on and people are very impressionable. This is even more so then then it is now. The last thing I would like to comment on is the scene of Beil in the office and the CEO has a conference with him. It reminded me that that mentality however true it maybe is not healthy. That is the mentality the movie we saw Monday night was hinting at and that is why I think it reminded the class of it.
In Lumet's film Network, we see the story of a television network that is about to undergo a vast number of changes. This movie kinda freaked me out quite a bit for a couple of reasons. The first of which is because this film was made in 1976, and it is almost a flawless prediction of what happens to the news and television just 30-35 years down the road. That, if nothing else about this film, completely blows my mind. The fact that even then, we knew what was going to happen, but did nothing to stop it's eventual outcome.
Television, prior to my coming up to school, completely really kind of owned me. When I was home after school, I would just plop down on the couch, turn on my laptop, and do my homework whilst watching simultaneously. This is scary to me not only because of the level of shit that is being put on the air, but also because for whatever reason, I felt the necessity to have both of those machines going at once. T.V. had rotted my brain, and I felt that I just needed to be constantly entertained by whatever was in front of me. Thank god college changed that, I barely watch television if at all anymore.
I agree with a lot of what Beale said. I believe television and the overwhelming amount of technology and media presented to the public over the last half century has dulled people's senses. It distracts us from what is really important. However, with the increasing amount of digital media, it's becoming ingrained in our culture and day-to-day way of doing things. People don't talk, they type. They don't read, they watch. They don't create, they exploit. It does all seem like bullshit.
I've been desensitized from movies for a long time, ever since I saw Gladiator at the age of 10 or 11. It's scary to see in the film that, to simply get the ratings up, Diane Christensen was willing to have on of her coworkers murdered...on live television. That's just sick. It serves to say something about us as television viewers, though. We are Diane: television incarnate, as Max says. Movies and shows have become so over the top with violence and sexual themes that there's no real way to separate ourselves from what we watch. References are made daily to things like Family Guy or other popular programs. We rely on people on screens to tell us what is happening, and take it as truth. It seems we have actually become television.
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