Women In Politics Week: Indifferent To Suffering, Insensitive To Joy: ‘Network’s’ Dangerous Career Woman
By Myrna Waldron
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| Network DVD Art |
For a while, I think people got the impression that I don’t like films if they’re not explicitly feminist. The reality is, most films are not feminist, but it doesn’t necessarily diminish their respective quality – Back to the Future, Casablanca and The Third Man are amongst my favourite films of all time, but I could not describe them as remotely feminist. Amongst that list of favourite films is the 1976 black comedy/satire Network, which is a scarily prescient skewering of the television industry. It won four Academy Awards, three for acting – Best Actress Faye Dunaway, Best Actor Peter Finch (which was awarded posthumously) and Best Supporting Actress Beatrice Straight. The fourth award was for its screenplay penned by Paddy Chayefsky.
The film’s “heroine,” Diana Christensen, played by Faye Dunaway, is very much a product of the 70s. She has directly benefitted from the second wave feminism movement, breaking the glass ceiling and becoming the sole female television executive at UBS, the fictional network depicted in this film. But…she is not a feminist character. Yes, she is strongly written, sexually confident, and an obvious success in her field, but she is also obsessive, emotionless, cynical and dangerous. In short, a ball-breaking career woman. She has achieved much based on the sheer power of her ambitions, but it is clear that her single-minded ambitions are meant to contrast negatively to the more idealistic and grounded outlooks of the male “heroes,” Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and Max Schumacher (William Holden).
Diana is the Vice President of UBS’s programming division, but eventually worms her way into taking Max Schumacher’s job, which was to be in charge of the news division. The news division gets lousy ratings and haemorrhages money, so they make the decision to fire their news anchor, Howard Beale. This instead causes Beale’s mind to snap, and he begins ranting about planning to commit suicide on air (which was based on a real-life event) and how he has “run out of bullshit.” The ratings spike, prompting the obsessive Diana to seize on the newscast and turn it into a combination variety show and talk show. The integrity of the news and the political system that it influences mean nothing to Diana – she is singularly obsessed with getting ratings and making money for UBS.
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| Diana Christensen |
In her work to get better ratings for the network, she offers a deal to Laureen Hobbs, a leader of the Communist Party, to get video footage of a radical leftist terrorist group known as the Ecumenical Liberation Army (a parody of the terrorist group which kidnapped Patty Hearst). Both women are deeply cynical and sarcastic, and introduce themselves to each other as what they are stereotyped to be: “Hi, I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.” “I’m Laureen Hobbs, a bad-ass commie nigger.” (Hobbs is African-American) “Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.” Diana does not care at all about the political ramifications of allowing the Communist Party an entire hour of weekly propaganda, or of glorifying the violent tactics of domestic terrorists. She even openly encourages Hobbs to put whatever content she likes in the show just so she can get the terrorists’ crime footage. Meanwhile, she has added several other kitschy segments to The Howard Beale Show, including a psychic who predicts the week’s news every Friday.
This same psychic tells Diana that she will be having an emotional affair with a craggy middle-aged gentleman. She interprets this man to be Max Schumacher, with whom she starts an affair. She knows that he has been married for 25 years and has children, and doesn’t care at all, she, in fact, was the one who initially approached him. Her cynicism and selfishness extend to her personal life as well. The affair abruptly ends when she steals Schumacher’s job and exploits the mentally ill Beale for ratings. They reconnect after an executive’s funeral – her attraction to Schumacher being the only thing besides television that she shows remote joy in (Schumacher is emotionally obsessed and infatuated with Diana). But even that joy is short lived, for she continually blathers about her job even while having sex. To go along with how she has elbowed herself in to a social caste normally populated by men, she even describes herself as being sexually masculine: “I can’t tell you how many man have told me what a lousy lay I am. I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can’t wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom. I seem to be inept at everything except my work.”
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| Howard Beale’s Rant |
Diana’s tenure as the producer of The Howard Beale show has significant political ramifications. Beale’s famous rant, in which he encourages his audience to scream, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” fosters an atmosphere of discontent with the status quo and outrage that their individualism is insidiously being taken away from them. It becomes a catchphrase, and Beale begins making daily rants, and eventually even believes himself as a kind of political prophet with the unique ability to communicate via the television. The angrier the audience gets, the more the ratings increase, and the more Diana likes it. The show eventually becomes the #1 most watched program in America, and Diana unabashedly takes all the credit for its success.
UBS is owned by a media conglomerate called the CCA (Communications Company of America), and the corporate influence of the conglomerate gradually takes over how the network is run. Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), Diana & Max’s direct supervisor, eventually becomes CEO after the original CEO dies of a heart condition. This marks the end of UBS’s journalistic credibility, for Hackett is a blatant corporate shill. Unfortunately for Beale, he makes an enemy of the CCA when he learns that the conglomerate is to be bought out by Saudi Arabians, and thus goes on a rant about how much of American property and commerce is owned by the Saudis. He demands that his audience send telegrams to the White House demanding that they put a stop to Saudi money taking over American culture. UBS is not a wealthy network, and absolutely depends on this merger to survive. The CEO of CCA, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) demands to see Beale, and goes on a thunderous rant about how there is no such thing as nations or individuals – that money is the only thing that matters, the only reality in the modern world.
He scares Howard Beale into promoting his own viewpoints, which are directly opposite to the previous subjects of Beale’s rants. The ratings begin to fall because the audience resents being told that they are only cogs in a great moneymaking machine, not the worthy individuals Beale originally told them they were. Laureen Hobbs, by this point, has been sucked in too by the temptations of the corporate system, and becomes so obsessed with earning enough money to continue her show she has, instead of being a Communist, become a classical Capitalist. Furious at how Howard Beale’s flagging ratings are damaging her show, she rants to Diana that Beale should be fired. Diana has already been planning to end Beale’s show.
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| Diana celebrating The Howard Beale Show’s success |
Meanwhile, Diana’s cynicism and lack of emotional depth have taken a toll on her relationship with Max Schumacher. She defines their relationship, yet again, in relation to television: “It’s time to reevaluate our relationship, Max. I don’t like the way this script of ours is turning out. It’s turning into a seedy little drama. Middle-aged man leaves wife and family for young heartless woman, goes to pot.” Instead, Max turns the tables on her. Noting that she, unlike him, has grown up only knowing the artificiality of television, he realizes that she is completely unable to form or articulate genuine emotion. That television has destroyed her, destroyed Laureen Hobbs, and will destroy him too if he continues to have a relationship with her. He tells her that she is “…Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” The man who left his wife of 25 years is apparently morally above a young woman who, by his own admission, is not to blame for the artificiality of her emotions. Instead, Diana’s single-minded ambition damns her.
Losing Max seems to spark a final unforgivable act of cynicism – Diana completely disregards the right to human life and orders Howard Beale’s assassination. Since Beale is now espousing the moral and political beliefs of Mr. Jensen, Jensen wants the show to continue, but the UBS executives are unable to ignore or forgive Beale’s flagging ratings. Instead of risking the wrath of CCA by firing Beale or allowing him to retire, they hire the Ecumenical Liberation Army to shoot him to death onscreen. Money is the only reality. The cynical, emotionless career woman says, “I don’t see that we have any options. Let’s kill the son of a bitch.” They can then dredge up one last ratings spike out of Beale. The footage of Beale being shot to death is broadcast over and over, next to other newscasts and commercials – in the end, even the murder of a mentally ill man is as meaningless as everything else when it comes to television.
Diana Christensen is a tremendously complicated character. It is hard to hate her, but the audience is meant to be repelled by the sheer scope of her ambition and obsession. It is quite revealing that Laureen Hobbs, the other major female character in the story, becomes just as cynical and hypocritical as Diana and abandons everything else for the sake of the mighty rating. Is it true that the generations that have grown up only knowing a world with television have become emotionally stunted? Does Chayefsky think all ambitious career women are as single-minded and emotionally/sexually stunted as Diana, or is she just a mere satirical exaggeration? What is apparent is how eerily this movie predicted the future – a fourth major television network that abandons all pretence of delivering objective news, instead relying on stunt footage, pundits, propaganda, cheap ratings ploys and answers to a dangerously powerful media conglomerate? Sounds familiar. Diana is not remotely a feminist character, but her creation has definitely been influenced by the second wave feminist movement. One thing, however, is clear from Network’s script: Beware the ambitious career woman.
Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.
(1976): prophetic satire