Network with all of its themes about media contains a very interesting contradiction central to the plot. It is the fact that Howard Beale’s attempt to break away from TV only drives himself closer to it. It’s a very strange dynamic that persists throughout the film, and we didn’t talk about it much in class, so I just wanted to draw some attention to it.

At the beginning of the movie, Beale goes on TV and calls out the media for its “bullshit.” The result is not that Beale quits TV and urges others to do the same; the result is instead that Beale becomes further enveloped in the world of TV and creates a bigger media monster than the news with his Howard Beale Show that propels as much “bullshit” as his old news job. Beale on the show tells people to turn off their TV and stop paying attention to the media, even though he himself is the media, and he just gets more views from these statements rather than less. We even get visual irony in these scenes because while Beale denounces media, a camera in the frame reminds us that Beale is the media too.

So Network with this interesting contradiction is communicating the inescapability of TV. Anyone who stays on TV is getting good ratings, so even if they have good intentions, they might still be part of the problem. This inescapability is actually a bit similar to some themes we’ll see in Fight Club shortly wherein a revolution to escape a materialistic society just turns into a materialistic society itself.

I think this dynamic in Network really adds a lot to the movie because it makes the audience question a lot about what they think about TV and their own viewing habits. There’s the question of whether the Howard Beale Show has merit. If Beale can get good messages across while still being part of the system he is fighting against, is he still accomplishing his goal? Or is Beale just feeding the monster he is fighting against? Is it possible to fight against a system while being part of it? Or on the other extreme, is it necessary to be a part of a system to fight against it? I think these are all really good questions without clear answers. They are certainly important to consider in order to understand the beast that is media.

Ultimately, Network does have a bit of a defeatist attitude. It does not even attempt to offer any solutions because frankly there probably aren’t any. As Network shows, media just gives audiences what they want, so any change has to originate from the viewers of a show, not the show itself. Many humans just prefer sensational presentation, and we won’t evolve an aversion to it anytime soon, so things will probably stay the way they have been.