• Intro
• Network – The Creative Team
• Streaming:
  • Mad as Hell
  • Turn Off Your TVs

Intro

I decided to include this feature film into the contents of this course. Thus, watching the movie is mandatory since I will ask questions about it in the final exam.

The storyline is also a great introduction for some of the thesis by our next author: Neil Postman. After reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, you should come back to the movie and try to understand to which extent the fiction addresses Postman’s concerns about the impact of TV on our lives.

Network – The Creative Team

The film network was released in 1976. His director, Sidney Lumet, had had a successful career in Hollywood. Lumet is not a director with a remarkable personality of style, but a solid filmmaker who knows his trade very well and can effectively tell a story. This is a list of my favorite movies by Sidney Lumet:

• Twelve Angry men (1957),
• Serpico (1973),
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975),
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

The scrip was written by Paddy Chayefsky. He is the true intellectual father and author of this story. Chayefsky had been working on Television for several years and knew first hand how the business works – and also the direction TV contents were taking. He was particularly concerned with the impact the TV discourse was having on both the creation and reception of news. This a key element in the movie, and also the most important lesson for the goal of our course: the influence of mass media on our society.

In addition to the originality and depth of the story, we need to point here at the notable cast. The movie brought together a bunch of screen legends such as William Holden, Robert Duvall or Faye Dunaway. Still, the most important performance was the one delivered by Peter Finch.

Finch, a not very well known British actor with a strong theater background, plays the role of Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves. His case has a touch of tragic because he was the first actor who won an academy award in a leading role after his death. He died on a heart attack during the promotional phase of the movie Network. There was some talk at the time about how the intensity he put into his character in the film may have contributed to his death. Peter Finch was 60 years old.

Streaming

The department of communication cannot stream the whole movie due to copyrights issues and uncertainties. Yet, the movie is available in practically all the public libraries in the area. You can also rent the movie in the most common streaming services, such as iTunes or Amazon Prime, for $ 3.99.

I will just stream two key scenes of the movie from YouTube in this online lecture so that you can have a taste of the contents:

Mad as Hell

The Mad as Hell monologue is not only the climatic moment in the picture. It is also one of the cult moments in film history:

Turn Off Your TVs

The second scene, another monologue by Peter Finch, is not that celebrated. Still, for the purpose of this course, its contents are even more interesting. Try to relate the ideas expressed by Howard Beale in this speech to the main thesis Neil Postman States in Amusing ourselves to Death.