Lesser known monologues from "Network"

" Network" (1976)



I wanted to offer a monologue from an old movie, Network.

It is a great deconstruction of the media's reach and its effect on us.

It is one of the greatest/ I recommend it to everyone no matter their age.


This one is probably better known from this movie. The "mad as hell" speech.




Here is another that I feel is worth seeing.
"The World is a business"

The mentality of those who strive for the top in Corporate America was wonderfully characterized in this film. While Peter Finch as Mr. Beale was the whistle blower on the hypocrisy of it all, I found the performances of Faye Dunnaway, the corporate climber who would do anything, say anything and be anything that would push her to the top of her profession.
Her orgasm while having sex and rambling on and on about ratings and share is etched in my memory.

And Robert Duvall as the mid level boss was absolutely my favorite roll of his. There was one scene where Finch had outed the corporate take over of the network and the two of them exploded into verbal rages. Each going on and ranting and ranting and neither paying attention to the other.

To me, the movie is one of the best ever. It calls out not only the tv media, but more, much more, the corporate take over of media and the need to keep the ''bottom line''. Corporate profits.

And even though the movie won best movie, best actor, best actress, best supporting actress and I believe best director the deeper truths portrayed in the movie were missed by most of the population. It was taken as fiction and remembered as such.

Ned Beatty was nominated for supporting actor but lost. His portrayal of the corporate head, as the visualization of the Powers That Be was to me the most chilling thing of all.

Tada, I have to wonder that as this movie has had such an impact on my thinking from the time I saw it in it's first run, and you now holding it also as a monumental example of deconstruction of the corporate malfunction, seem to be at odds on much of the positions we take here on ATS. ???????

Another thought. Beale was a mad man. He believed that he was imbued with a special mission, to save people from the falseness of the media, which was good I think but in the end he was ''mad'' not just mad as in upset, but mad as in full goose bozo.

And yet as he stood before the people day after day, his rating bloomed and the people in the audiences applauded him and cheered him and followed the extreme suggestions he made. They followed and adored his messianic message with little thought of how truly crazy he was.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Tada, I have to wonder that as this movie has had such an impact on my thinking from the time I saw it in it's first run, and you now holding it also as a monumental example of deconstruction of the corporate malfunction, seem to be at odds on much of the positions we take here on ATS. ???????

I think that people agree more often than not. We take one point or a single instance and amplify it to what ever scale is most nearer to our argument. Whether it is pro or anti. We try to find a "safe" way to relate it.

We can have 2 people disagree with Trump for example. One does so because he doesn't like his policies, the other because he doesn't like Trump regardless of his platform. They actually disagree but that is not discovered. They agree superficially so all is well.

You can have 2 people criticize Trump.

One for a particular action, like me with his wall. I don't like the idea of it being more than what was already set in motion decades before this election highlighted it.


The other would criticize the wall and everything else, again, because they don't like Trump. We don't actually agree but if I never said anything about the other issues I agree with Trump on, we would never disagree enough superficially to hash it all out.

When people open up, usually there is a middle ground we hug and are truly aligned with. The problem is most people don't like to go beyond the superficial where they may disagree with their "allies" or agree with their "enemies".

That's why its important to be honest and to value that virtue in others. It allows for a more complex idea to be expanded on and for deeper understanding of influencing nuances to be revealed.

We are all just living the life of a mortal with a limited understanding of the world around us by any measure. What doesnt immediately scare us has to be revealed to us in a very delicate manner so we trust it, and it must be understood before we go very far so people dont react with apprehension to things they fear may hurt them out of "mind killing" confusion.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Great point!

Yes he was the mad man. Then he became the sell out and copy of his chosen enemy.

He was pandering to the less rational side of people with a message of emotional rage and for attention to his message, or to fulfill his chosen mission.

His purpose became his own and not an act of selfless sacrifice.

I have the other side of this in mind though.

Doesnt any progress encompass imbalance towards it? If there is no push to take another step, we would never move from the perfectly good foot of earth we stand on onto the next uncertain one. Every step taken is one of reckless abandon and hopeless faith that the ground will be there to receive you.

Sometimes it is a leap of faith, other times a plain choice of where is best tread.

In the end it could be argued that to fight the forces at play he had to take on a hard line approach. It could be modified to be more rational later on and include more meat to the argument. Maybe the best thing for him to do was to go insane, since it would be insane to argue what he does if the level of programming was as he said it was.

Look to the recent debacle in central Oregon where armed activists took over a nature reserve in a non violent manner. One of their own was murdered by a federal agent who may have brought his own personal bias to the stand off.

The activists method of being vocal might seem insane, if you take over a nature reserve in Oregon with guns to protest the government's theft of land and property...., but ultimately the insanity of the other side (Feds) was showcased by the insanity of their own actions. They did shoot someone without merit as proven in court since then. They tried to lie about it. There may may be corrupt people within their ranks that are motivated by forces outside of the law.

The "insanity" of what they did was needed to get the other side (Feds) to prove that it was equally insane and not "authorized" to do the harm it was /is doing.

a reply to: tadaman

Sometimes it is a leap of faith, other times a plain choice of where is best tread.

Seems this ''where is best to tread'' is a common goal among many of us here, one that seems all to often obscured from sight. So, rather than discussing our combined plight, we end up defending our ideas on where to tread rather than listening to someone else who suggests another approach.

I think much of our plight these days is that we have allowed ourselves to be sound byted. I see that this comes from a number of sources. Off the top there is the ''catch phrase'' syndrome amplified in the movie industry to show us that this Arnie movie or Clint movie offers more of the same ''macho'' lines as were so loved in the previous movie.

The commercial catch phrase to catch the consumers flighty attention and zing in with something, often musically augmented to linger in the mind long enough for us to get to the store. PK Dick was great at making this understandable in a number of his books, and a worthy thread to boot.

Add to those the need to com-modify our news so that summaries can easily be fit in between the much more important message of two morons sitting in their car in front of a hamburger stand counterbalancing each other with increasingly inane banter.

It's replies like these you have taken the time to offer that keep me hanging on here in the onslaught of what seems to be to be spoon fed left/right propaganda sound bites. Thanks.