How Things Work: A Brief History of Reality
SPECIAL EDITION: “NETWORK & The Powers That Be" – Part Two: “Sermon #1”
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“You've got to say: ‘I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more. I'm a human being ***dammit. My life has value.’”
– Howard Beale (Network)
PREFACE
Welcome Everybody!
In the “first sermon” Beale “preaches” about the madness of the moment. He proclaims that our individual worlds are getting smaller; the fear of our own reality forcing us into the sanctuary of our living rooms and televisions. Begging to just be “left alone” by the ever-increasing wretchedness of our world. Television had become the instrument of our escape from reality, much like social media has today.
“Ironically, the more it takes from us, the more we need it.”
The warning is that media, television in particular, has become a tool designed to take away our individuality, or “steal our souls,” leaving us alone, afraid, and confused about our lives and the world. Ironically, the more it takes from us, the more we need it. Beale evangelizes a gospel requiring that we take back our individuality, or soul, and reinstate our “natural power” as individuals. Together, as individuals uniting behind a common cause, we can change things.
The essential message of the first sermon is that the time is now!
CONSIDERATION #83 – NETWORK & The Powers That Be: “Sermon One”
In this scene, Beale takes on the “wild” persona of John the Baptist from the New Testament, declaring the hypocrisy of television and its manipulation of “true” realty. In a fire and brimstone sermon Beale declares the “truth” about television and its impact on his followers. Stepping over the empirical corporate line, he “commands” his followers to turn off their television sets and retake their lives back!
This worries the local brass, but the “powers that be” seem relatively unconcerned. Because, despite Beale’s ranting and raving, they know that ultimately, in reality, they are still the ones controlling things. And ratings for the show are through the roof!
“Beale attempts to forcefully and aggressively ‘wake people up’ to the ‘truth’ about what is happening in their reality.”
Ironically, much of what Beale was ranting about in 1976 seems amazingly reminiscent of the social, political, and economic issues we are facing today. In this “first sermon,” Beale attempts to forcefully and aggressively “wake people up” to the “truth” about what is happening in their reality. The essence of which is that we have lost our “souls” and our “individuality” to “the tube.” Or, more accurately, given up our souls and individuality to the tube. In this immaculate oration Beale declares that they must be taken back; immediately.
“The first step to a moral reality begins with individuals choosing ‘not to accept’ the ‘evil’ in their world.”
In this famous scene, Howard Beale, the “Mad Prophet of the Airways,” extols the glory of becoming “fed up” with the world and demanding a better reality through direct empirical action; even if you are not quite “certain” what that means. Change comes through “individuals” with enough “faith” to “take action” about injustice. The first step to a moral reality begins with individuals choosing “not to accept” the “evil” in their world. They must actively, and loudly, fight back! Starting with a firm declaration of refusing to accept it any longer. According to “the prophet” it was time to take immediate righteous action!
“…suddenly, the obsessed face of Howard Beale, gaunt, haggard, red-eyed with unworldly fervor, hair streaked and plastered on his brow, manifestly mad, fills the MONITOR SCREEN.
HOWARD (ON MONITOR)
‘I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
…we sit and watch our tee-vees while some local newscaster tells us today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything's going crazy.
So we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my tee-vee and my hair-dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything, just leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad –
I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street. All I know is first you got to get mad.
You've got to say: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more. I'm a human being, ***dammit. My life has value."
Howard Beale: Network 1976 – Paddy Chayefsky (Text emphasis and highlights are mine)
At this point, Beale becomes infused with the power of action. Change occurs “in the present,” and television has stolen that transcendental moment of possibility from from human beings. Freedom, without choice, is an illusion; like television itself. Virtually all potential “present moments of possibility” were simply filled with mindless entertainment. Beale does more than simply expound the truth of this reality, he demands action; immediate action. Now!
“‘So I want you to get up now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the window. Right now. I want you to go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!
Things have got to change. But you can't change them unless you're mad. You have to get mad. Go to the window –’
THUNDER CRASHES somewhere off and LIGHTNING shatters the dank darkness. In the sudden HUSH following the thunder, a thin voice down the block can be heard shouting:
MAX'S P.O.V. (From his Manhattan apartment)
He sees occasional windows open, and, just across from his apartment house, a man opens the front door of a brownstone and shouts–
“I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!”
OTHER SHOUTS are heard. From his twenty-third floor vantage point, MAX sees the erratic landscape of Manhattan buildings for some blocks, and, silhouetted HEADS in window after window, here, there, and then seemingly everywhere, SHOUTING out into the slashing black RAIN of the streets --
VOICES
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!
A terrifying enormous CLAP of natural THUNDER, followed by a frantic brilliant FULGURATION of LIGHTNING…
NARRATOR
By mid-October, the Howard Beale show had settled in at a 42 share, more than equaling all the other network news shows combined –
Howard Beale: Network 1976 – Paddy Chayefsky (Text emphasis and highlights are mine)
POSTSCRIPT
In the first sermon, Beale empowers his followers to combat the “powers that be” in the world. The greatest power being the media, or television. However, the real “powers that be” are not concerned with Beale’s power over the “individual” because ultimately “they” control Beale. However, they do not control “the prophet.” As “a prophet,” Beale does something not not anticipated or even considered possible; he resurrects the soul of the individual.
Next week “the prophet” harnesses the power of his individual followers to successfully stop the advancement of the “soul-stealing” entity known as the “Network.” And more importantly, the power behind it…
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Book IV – The Cosmic Symphony – Overtones of String Theory
The Essential Physics & Metaphysics of Sound, Music, and String Theory
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