Paddy Chayefsky’s Prophetic Masterpiece - Network (1976)

On Thursday March 9th, 2017 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar Winning 1976 motion picture Network. Network is a scathing satire on the intellectual and moral corruption of American Television networks, especially their News Departments. Much of the corruption Network presents was just beginning to come about in 1976, but was fully in place by the 1980s according to Dave Itzkoff in his book “Mad as Hell” 2014, and is presently erupting in the Network News Media's efforts to actually support the overthrow of the elected government of the United States of America. The focus of the 1976 film is t.v. Anchorman Howard Beale who is about to be fired for low ratings. Depression and alcohol have driven Beale to madness and he becomes The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves preaching his mantra chant: “I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!” This drives his ratings sky high until the Network entertains a bid from a Saudi Arabian conglomerate. Beale urges his viewers to protest the Arab deal to the White House and is successful in delaying the procedure. The head of the Network's corporation Arthur Jensen confronts Beale and convinces him that the New World Order has made populist democracy obsolete. So Beale goes back on the air trying to sell the Globalist agenda. Telling his followers that democracy is obsolete and that they should accept dehumanization. Of course his ratings drop to the cellar. But Jensen won't let the Network fire him, so the executives convince the radicals of their documentary Mao Tse Tung hour to machine-gun Beale in the studio as he comes on stage for his show. This will up their ratings and pay for Beale's deficit. It's all a business. That's the gist of it but stay with us and we'll dig deeper into this masterpiece of American prophetic cinema.