Novum Veritas Week 2: The World of Network

To be honest, there are many people who use more screens than I do--and I use a lot of screens. I watch a lot of weird TV shows, scope out the latest and weirdest movies online, text and FaceTime my friends through my phone and laptop, and use my laptop for studying, homework, and general errands needs. The pandemic has put a lot of people in the same situation:screen time has inevitably increased, for better or worse, willingly or not.

For a lot of us, what seems to be the healthiest and most natural option has been living more and more of our lives through our screens. We're spending more time on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and Disney Plus than ever before, and everyone is noticing. This is probably why these companies' stock prices have risen considerably during the pandemic. But that's beside the point.

As human beings, our desires are often deeply rooted in our influences. Influences that, more often than not, are dominated by the media. Our news networks, our films, our magazines, our tv shows, our books, and all the other things we consume as part of our culture. They can bring us joy, bring us pain — or perhaps they can bring us laughter or sadness and everything in between. Yet the most important thing the media can give us is hope: hope that things can and will change. But what happens when this hope is seized by the hands of corporate overlords, chopped into nice bite-sized chunks called news segments, and stuck between cereal commercials and pro-war propaganda?

You get Fox News! In all seriousness though, the movie Network(1976) is set in an environment in which the words of a zealous and well-intentioned news anchor are copied, simplified, mass-produced, and mass disseminated to television audiences. After beginning as a genuine call-to-action against corporate power and the subservience of human needs to capitalist interests, these words devolve into a hackneyed, simplified cash grab.

For starters, Network gives the premise of a show host threatening to off himself boosts rating tremendously. But his suicidal tirades give more and more way to corporate meddling, all hoping to feast on the zeitgeist captured by his anger

The movie develops measures to the point of becoming almost heavy-handed at times. For instance, near the beginning of the film, a Marxist representative is brought in by the film producers and refuses, out of fear of constructive messaging being lost in a deluge of violent and gratuitous imagery, making it altogether difficult to learn from or even take seriously. By the time the film approaches the ending, the representative is now speaking in terms of commodity, she's talking like a network executive, she's talking about share of profit and various costs with the show, She has forgotten about the message.

Meanwhile, throughout the film, interpersonal relationships and the lives of people alike are crushed underfoot in pursuit of the dollar and in the search for more profits and more viewership. The message became something people could shout. Something like “WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE” because it’s something a crowd could yell into the screen and feel good about it without it actually doing anything. Meanwhile some suit would chew his cougar and watch the ratings go up.

This isn’t to say that the media including activists or portraying them isn’t beneficial at all, but it is to say one must be mindful to not lose sight of the message of the change that the world still needs out there. Words and imagery are impactful, yet they don’t belong just behind a screen. One can’t allow what’s happening on a screen to trick one into thinking that it’s truly going on outside, as this enables distractions.

Independent of what happens on television, real change is transpiring outside. It is on the streets and in the halls of Congress. It is in police precincts, and it is in the poorest parts of the country such as the water plants of Flint, Michigan. Change means getting out of our seats and ensuring that the people in power are being held accountable. It means protests and voting reform so that everyone can have their voices heard through casting a vote. It means bills like the For The People Act but also guaranteeing that every single estate respects human rights, especially in Supreme Court cases like Roe V. Wade.

Fighting for real change is never going to be as glamorous or fun as it is in the movies or on TV. Sometimes it means looking bad in the media or fighting for a specific issue to be heard over many years. This is the exact reason why it matters so much, as the only way for things to get better is through these efforts. Maybe once the fight is over, we can make a new movie about it, similar to Selma or Hidden Figures. Much like in Hidden Figures, the hardest part is not filming the moon landing, it’s getting there first.

Jay Pade is the Culture and Entertainment editor for NGP. Currently he can't find himself able to put down Naked Lunch, a satirical novel about the truth behind the various taboos created by the fearful and hypocritical bourgeois americana zeitgeist.