Network… 1976

MEDI 311 – FILM ABOUT MEDIA

Trevor Olafson

 FILM DIARY #9 – Network

 ”We lie like hell – we’ll tell you any shit you want to hear! We’re all you know!”

Howard Beale (Network)

The thing that struck me as I watched Network, was that each character in the film played a part that was not only required of the story line, but they each represented a facet of the television/corporate structure – or those who are enraptured or disenchanted with it. As we see in the film for example , Diana is more than a network producer – she embodies the dispassionate television executive that is only able to think in terms of ratings and profit, these being derived proportionally from content more often than not exploiting the misfortunes of others (if it bleeds it leads). After the initial set up in which Max Shumacher has told Howard that ‘he’ is being cancelled, we are taken to a production meeting set the next day – for that nights’ news. The stories are being timed and slotted for the show, they consist of terrorist threats, oil embargoes, sports scores, and ‘kitty rescued from tree’ viewing fodder.

Things don’t go as planned however, the producer in the control room is distracted by an assistant and does not notice the deviation in Howard’s segment that night – however we hear the first of what will become a complete manifesto, confession, condemnation and shockingly, at the end – submission, supplication to, and finally blood sacrifice by ruthless power in control, or in the words of Arthur Jensen, “the primal forces of nature”.

 It is very easy to forget that the film is structured as a satirical comedy, other than the narration at the start and end that plays against the split screen of different TV stations, I think the film could have worked just as well as a straight drama. The reason? I am quite sure that the portrayal of the vulture-like television/corporate executives and producers is not far off the mark, the assassination of Howard was coldly decided in an ‘emergency meeting’, this has surely been done in reality the same way in boardrooms across the land.

 Howard’s first ‘rant’ and subsequent backlash from his implying that he will ‘blow his brains out’ on next weeks show, gaining a ‘fifty share at least’ – darkly foreshadows the message being delivered by this film, we live with manufactured fear and societal breakdown (to allow control), and I believe the producer who missed it (allowing it to go to air) during this first of the five ‘Howard’ diatribes – is symbolic of those of us who hear, but don’t listen – in this case comprehending that something was actually ‘out of order’, only after having to be convinced by others that it happened.

 While watching, it is important to note the ‘five rants’ prior to meeting with Aurthur Jensen, and then how strangely Howard was affected by his ‘sales pitch’. This is I feel one of the most powerful scenes – Howard has what is to him a pseudo religious epiphany, seeing the face of ‘God’ in Jensen. This is the turning point of the film, Howard is no longer telling people that they matter, instead he now preaches a new kind of societal apathy – telling them to basically expect the worse and they won’t be disappointed, a complete turn around from his previous platform. Howard was kept on the air in this new ‘format’ until his death despite poor ratings – by the powers represented in Arthur Jensen. Interesting, because in this case profit was not a factor in the corporate formula, it was replaced with a message which I would read as – “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here”.

There is a man… a certain man

MEDI 311 – FILM ABOUT MEDIA

Trevor Olafson

FILM DIARY #10 – Citizen Kane

 Given the task to analyze how Orson Welles constructed Citizen Kane, both technically and thematically as a statement on power, corruption and loss is not an easy one – but we will explore it here, however briefly.

First I must confess, this was the first time I had seen this film in its’ entirety – my knowledge had consisted up to this point of twenty or so minute snippets caught at two in the morning (waking up to the late show, falling asleep again) – or references made to the film in the Simpson’s for example, sad but true. So, with that out of the way let’s talk about Citizen Kane.

 Brilliantly shot and edited, Welles used every method available at the time to construct this classic. The film opens with a posthumous newsreel about the fictitious Charles Kane, it effectively sets up what will become the story line as told by the people in his life through flashbacks – appropriately triggered when being interviewed by a tenacious reporter who is tasked to find ‘Rosebud’ (Kane’s last words) dead or alive, it is material the producers of the newsreel want to add to it before release. It is through this mechanism of an investigative reporter that Welles’ takes us into the life of Charles Kane and the people affected by it.

 A major part of the effectiveness of this film are the fantastic sets, and the intricately woven soundtrack, both music and background sounds are used to set each scene and the mood in it. Transitions between the story as the reporter searches for ‘Rosebud’ begin with the introduction into the life of Charles Kane as told in a memoir written by Walter Thatcher, the man who is the catalyst for change in boy Kane. Being read by the reporter ‘Thompson’, the scene itself begins with the manuscript having to be pulled from a secured vault, and as with each successive flashback it begins with a narration which dissolves into the point in time being referenced.

Kane’s story of loss is recurrent from the start, and as we jump from the period in time when young Charles is taken to Chicago by banker Walter Thatcher from the family homestead, to the end when he dies alone in the unfinished and by then derelict monument Xanadu – never finding fulfillment through the accumulation of objects and people as objects. I feel Welles makes this statement beginning with a literal and allegorical parental rejection – the parents being a representation of western society, which through its’ very nature has created generations of people cut-off yet seeking to attain a kind of ‘parental approval’ from the same power on the other hand that works within to keep us cut-off from our rightful inheritance.

By the end of Kane we become privy to the secret of ‘Rosebud’ – the sled represents the loss of innocence, and that it really was ‘just a simple thing’. The implied irony of the fiery destruction of ‘Rosebud’ is that we are living in a system that institutionalizes from birth, separates us from our joy, and grooms us to play our role as decided by our handlers.