Network (1976) Directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky is a sharp, edgy, funny and outrageous satire about the fictional greedy and profit driven UBS television network which cynically exploits its crazy anchor-man. Whatever makes money for the network will be broadcast no matter the cost. Furthermore, whatever the audience wants to watch will also be broadcast. Although Network is a satirical film, it paints an important and serious picture of American culture which will be explored further in this essay.
The key to understanding Network’s interpretation of American culture is a clear understanding of the creative minds behind the film. Director Sidney Lumet, although a competent director, is often referenced as not being
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Lumet is not usually placed in the same auteur ‘movie brat’ category as other New Hollywood directors such as Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas etc. Network’s screen writer Paddy Chayefsky, on the other hand is often cited as the true auteur of the film. For example, author Dave Itzkoff’s recent publication Mad as Hell, which charts the making of Network paints a picture of screen writer Paddy Chayefsky as an aggravated, angry and articulate man who created characters that spoke for everyone. Chayefsky was a novelist and playwright and came from a television background and according to Del Jacobs, wrote about ‘ordinary people in realistic, humble settings.’ Chayefsky saw unsolvable problems within the world and at the root of this problem was television, something that he knew a lot about due to his previous experience working in the field. Chayefsky had turned his back on Television, because of the networks lack of interest in quality programming. Although radical in his views and cynical of the world, it would be wrong to assume that Chayefsky was a radical counterculture and politically minded writer as according to Itzkoff’s account, he wanted no part of these movements. With this in mind, it seems that Chayefsky’s writing style mirrors the uncertainty and anger that a majority of Americans felt in the mid-1970s. The …show more content…
The film presents a negative reflection on youth and somewhat different from previous ‘New Hollywood’ films, where the focus seemed to be on a generational shift in favour of the young. For example, in one of Sidney Lumet’s previous films Dog Day Afternoon (1975) the youthful and liberal protagonists are fighting against the system, represented by an older generation of policemen and FBI agents. Even politically fuelled films such as All the President’s Men (1976) features two young protagonists tackling and defeating the older and corrupt generation of the Nixon administration. Network turns this around and instead of portraying the younger generation as the answer to the world’s problems instead portrays the potential implications the media can have on the youth of America. This is highly evident in the film’s characters, such as Faye Dunaway’s portrayal of the work-obsessed, devious and self-centred Diana Christensen. According to Dianne, all she wants out of life is “… a 30 share and a 20 rating…”. She will do anything to get this rating, such as sleeping with her boss Max Schumacher (William Holden), betraying max to the corporate CEO Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) and exploiting a clearly mentally ill Howard Beale (Peter Finch). Her character seems
The authors both making sweeping statements about the political nature of the United States, but Ames addresses a more concentrated demographic of American society than Hedges. The latter points the finger at the venal egotism of celebrity culture for entrancing the public into complacency, and at America’s political leaders for orchestrating the fact, but he also places substantial blame on the people at-large for allowing themselves to be captivated by the entertainment industry. Ames discusses an issue in which the Millennial generation stands as the focal point, but she speaks directly to the teachers of these adolescents due to their position of influence. Although today’s youth are proven to possess a spark of political energy through their own volition—displayed through their generation-wide interest in dystopian literature—an environment of learning and in-depth analysis provides the best opportunity for the novels’ underlying calls-to-action to strike a chord with their young
This essay will discuss how national attitudes towards the working-class and the impoverished are represented in American Television. The purpose of this paper is to comprehend that television shows are not solely designed to entertain consumers but also contain a hidden agenda whose task is to protect certain ideological perspectives and therefore constant framing strategies take place. The paper will commence the analysis by discussing how males and females are represented in the television show Friday Night Lights, secondly it will look at the
The 1976 film "Network" is an acerbic satire of television's single-minded obsession with mass ratings.One of the film's main characters, Howard Beale, is called the "Mad Prophet of the Airways," and his weekly harangues produce a "ratings motherlode"--yet he constantly admonishes his viewers to "Turn the damn tube off!"During one such rant Beale berates his audience as functional illiterates: "Less than three percent of you even read books!" he shouts messianically--and then promptly collapses from a sort of apoplexic overload.
Imagine, if you will, a time that seemed innocent... almost too innocent. Imagine a nation under whose seemingly conformist and conservative surface dramatic social changes were brewing, changes as obvious as integration and as subtle as fast food. And imagine, if you will, a radical television show that scrutinized, criticized, and most importantly, publicized these changes, making the social turmoil of a nation apparent to its post-world war, self-contented middle-class citizens. But what if this television show was not as it appeared? What if it masqueraded as simple science fiction, and did not reveal its true agenda until viewers took a closer look? Let us examine how such a television program can become a defining force in the culture of a nation, a force that remains just as powerful almost forty-five years after it first appeared. Let us investigate the secrets of... The Twilight Zone.
Lewis, J. (2008). American Film: A History. New York, NY. W.W. Norton and Co. Inc. (p. 405,406,502).
Jeffrey D. Sachs’s essay “ A Nation of Vidiot” focuses on his views about the American relationship with televisions. In his essay explaining why people should avoid watching TV too much. And the author also gives readers a reason to believe in the articles that he wrote. He explained the problem to television advertising used to sell the product and the country's politics. There are fine examples why developing countries the consequences that have ever television were created. And he has to convince his readers when he criticized some of the problems seen too much television can cause people watch television as reduced memory, and body weakness. However, for the children, the TV screens the main tool of the children. The authors also offer TV how difficult and dangerous for television viewers. Overall it’s a pretty interesting read, but one thing is sure: the essay is a
In The Pathos of Failure, Thomas Elsaesser explains the emergence of a new ideology within American filmmaking, which reflects a “fading confidence in being able to tell a story” (280) and the dissolution of psychologically relatable, goal-oriented characters. He elaborates that these unmotivated characters impede the “the affirmative-consequential model of narrative [which] is gradually being replaced by another, whose precise shape is yet to crystallize” (281). Christian Keathley outlined this shape in more detail in Trapped in the Affection Image, where he argued that shifting cultural attitudes resulted in skepticism of the usefulness of action (Keathley). In Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, this crisis of action is a key element of the main characters’ failure, because it stifles the execution of classical narrative and stylistic genre conventions.
Tuchman, Gaye. The TV Establishment: Programming for Power and Profit. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., l971.
The media has been a part of the daily life of the American people for the longest time, because of this fact, the media influences the decisions and views of how people should live. One big part of the media that tends to start to develop a sense of how the day-to-day American should live is Disney. Since kids are the main source of Disney’s billion dollar industry children have become an important dimension of the social theory (Giroux 1999: 65). “Within this context, television emerges as a consumer-oriented medium that reflects advertisers’ desire to reach a young, upscale, and primarily White audience” (Goodale1999; Henderson and Baldasty 2003: 100). As a result other races and ethnic groups other than white Americans are often put aside when it comes to the social media view of how Americans should live.
The many evils that exist within television’s culture were not foreseen back when televisions were first put onto the market. Yet, Postman discovers this very unforgiveable that the world did not prepare itself to deal with the ways that television inherently changes our ways of communication. For example, people who lived during the year 1905, could not really predict that the invention of a car would not make it seem like only a luxurious invention, but also that the invention of the car would strongly affect the way we make decisions.
In the text, “The American Cultural Configuration” the authors express the desire of anthropologists to study their own culture despite the difficulty that one faces attempting to subjectively analyze their own society. Holmes and Holmes (2002), use the adage “not being able to see the forest through the trees” (p. 5) to refer to how hard it is for someone to study something they have largely taken for granted. The Holmes' article focuses predominately on paradoxes within our own culture, many of which we don't notice. In a paradox, two contradicting statements can appear to be true at the same time. This essay looks at two paradoxes commonly found in everyday life: the individual versus the family and religion.
John Frow, in his criticism of White Noise, rightfully focuses on television as the defining medium of the Simulacra in DeLillo's America. Television, of course, by definition is a copy; it is a broadcast of something that has been filmed; it is viewed in millions of homes worldwide, each television flickering the same image into the sub-conscious eye. Frow presents a close reading of a speech Murray gives to his students:
In this paper I will offer a structural analysis of the films of Simpson and Bruckheimer. In addition to their spectacle and typically well-crafted action sequences, Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures seem to possess an unconscious understanding of the zeitgeist and other cultural trends. It is this almost innate ability to select scripts that tap into some traditional American values (patriotism, individualism, and the obsession with the “new”) that helps to make their movies blockbusters.
Have you ever wondered if America is going in the right political direction? The articles “American Psychosis,” by Chris Hedges, and “Engaging Apolitical Adolescents,” by Melissa Ames , have contrasting views and opinions about how pop culture is expressed through young adults political views and interest. In Hedges article, he explains why he thinks that reality TV shows among others are destroying this country. Hedges uses very harsh and critical phrasing in his article to evoke a deep emotional response to the reader. Ames, on the other hand, reference s the rise of dystopian novels after nine eleven the “total vote has increased consistently throughout the past four presidential elections” (Ames 4). She shows how young readers are becoming
Sewel, Philip W. “From Discourse to Discord: Quality and Dramedy at the End of the Classic Network System” Television and New Media 11.4 (2010): 235-59. Web. 18 January. 2014.