Network, a fiction from 1976 that has now become a reality

Rarely do we have the feeling that a film made almost 50 years ago in a previous era, intended to shock the audience, will become alive and a part of our everyday lives today.

This is what happened with Network, a 1976 American color film drama directed by Sidney Lumet. It was one of the first to address the power and manipulations of television through the guise of a fictional television network, UBS, whose leaders do not shy away from the most unscrupulous means to gain viewership, while conveying only an illusion of reality to the viewers instead of the real thing.

According to the story, the viewership of the news program hosted by Howard Beale, the news anchor of the fictional UBS television network, declines. In response, the man with a fragile nervous system announces live on air that he will commit suicide on camera in a week. The announcement generates a huge response. From this point, the story splits into two parts: the extraordinary interest is used to exploit viewership at all costs, and Beale becomes a kind of television messiah.

On the other hand, a huge battle ensues for the ownership of the television network between the older and younger generations of leaders. In the struggle, everyone loses themselves and does anything that no one would expect from their portrayed character.

The news director grants Beale’s wish and allows the elderly man to go on air once more to personally apologize to the viewers for the previous incident. The farewell speech re-incites the UBS management, but they do not stop the live broadcast.

It cannot be ignored that Beale’s viewership begins to rise; viewers want to hear him as the man articulates everything that hundreds of thousands of Americans think in the new show where he can lash out at the flaws of society as a kind of modern prophet.

He receives enormous press coverage, is considered a superstar, and must be kept on air, otherwise the competition will take him over.

Meanwhile, in the internal struggle within the company, everyone who wants to broadcast conservative, traditional news falls victim and is removed from their jobs.

The Centrál Theatre currently has and performs the stage adaptation of the film with great success.

Róbert Alföldi, as Beale, with his suggestive performance style, portrays the burned-out television announcer who has been fighting for viewers for decades in an extremely moving way. He cannot be condemned for seizing the last opportunity to appear in his life, but in reality, his personality does not dissolve, and in his last show, he realizes that the only possible step to break free from the slavery of the media is to exclude the media from the lives of the masses.

The set consists of monumental screens, and the viewer becomes increasingly smaller as the play progresses; the screens almost swallow everyone, and several viewers echo the anchorman’s one-sentence pronouncements back towards the stage.

During the performance, we become media consumers, not voluntarily, but under pressure, and every viewer agrees with the protagonist’s last sentence from the bottom of their heart: “Turn off your television!”

The film and the play very accurately depict the media environment where only viewership counts and all important human values become meaningless. In 1976, we could not have known that in our time, due to the symbiosis of social media and traditional media, unwanted content, hate speech, advertisements, pornography, and our own voice no longer matter, and we are invisible in the externally inhuman crowd.

Only one question remains: if the reality of 50 years ago was conveyed to us then, why couldn’t we avoid the development of today’s media distortions, and what can we do to maintain the integrity of our personality in this noise, so that we can rediscover our useful community and social connections?