"you have meddled with the primal forces of nature"

December 15, 2023 3:23 PM

Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen giving a speech to Howard Beale in the movie 'Network'. (slyt)
posted by clavdivs (26 comments total)

That has aged well

Here's another: Precious bodily fluids
posted by chavenet at 3:39 PM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

Network is next to They Live and Videodrome on my "movies that tried to warn us" shelf.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 4:05 PM on December 15, 2023 [18 favorites]

Is it just me, or is the "shekels" at the end of the list of currencies a bit of gratuitous "Jewish bankers control the world" antisemitism?
posted by clawsoon at 4:13 PM on December 15, 2023

Paddy Chayefsky doesn't strike me as somebody who'd traffic in antisemitism.
posted by theory at 4:45 PM on December 15, 2023 [11 favorites]

Network is definitely a product of the 1970s, when people were reeling from the corruption of Nixon, Vietnam, broken nuclear power plants, energy crises, civil rights assassinations.

For something like that film to be made today, you'd need to put Ned Beatty into a fluorescent onesie and give him a cool villain name, like Max Kapital or Dr. Objectivist, before you could let him monologue about how corporations are effectively superintelligent living organisms and that we must protect their ability to rule over humans, at all costs, even if it means climate catastrophes, food insecurity, mass inequality etc.

Except that this would be letting the film crew say the quiet parts out loud and be bad PR for corps investing in said blockbuster movie, so it would never get made. The day of film being a means for directors to explore ideas perhaps ended when Cimino bankrupted UA.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:49 PM on December 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

Some reading material for where we ended up, maybe.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:50 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm still as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore.

I want you all to open your windows, lean out, and type that.
posted by not_on_display at 6:05 PM on December 15, 2023 [20 favorites]

For about a decade in the 1970s, the old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired and the boomers moved in with their new ideals. Mainstream movies would regularly buck the status quo. Network is a prime example.
posted by zardoz at 7:01 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also, I love this scene and it blew my mind when I first saw the movie. I had only ever seen Ned Beatty as Otis in Superman and, being young, thought that he could only play comical goofball parts. He was an excellent actor.

I will be using the phrase "You will atone!" with the wife when she is in the wrong.
posted by zardoz at 7:04 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

For something like that film to be made today, you'd need to put Ned Beatty

I'd cast Paul Giamatti as Jensen.
Interesting. I read friendly fascism years ago.
Oh, look, a pheasant.
"The moral status claimed by these politically motivated newsreaders during the COVID-19 confinement — they aim to influence public opinion under the guise of presenting “smart” news — pinpoints the tragedy that has befallen contemporary journalism, and it prompts a surprising film-culture realization: that there will never be a remake of Network."

it's like a film review by Lyndon LaRouche.
posted by clavdivs at 7:10 PM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

The learned elders of zion retirement party.
posted by hortense at 7:20 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Communist party ain’t gonna see a dime on this until we hit syndication
posted by thecaddy at 7:25 PM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have always liked this line:

The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!

for I believe to understand economics you have to "follow the money", to use another 70s Reference.

Obama left office with the US NIIP at $8T, now we're at $18T diving toward $20T:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ

When this movie was shot in the mid-70s foreigners owned 5% of US stocks, now it's up to 40% apparently:

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-owns-us-stock-foreigners-and-rich-americans

Krugman doesn't seem to worry about the USA's dismal NIIP but looking at the wikipedia NIIP link's table sorted by % GDP it does seem the 'good' places to live enjoy positive NIIPs. The US, being the special global reserve currency has enjoyed / suffered under the Triffin Dilemma.

I suspect macroeconomics is simply a system too complex to understand with human science, kinda like biochemistry I guess.
posted by torokunai at 10:46 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember being on the verge of being a teenager when this came out and being fascinated by the few clips I saw at the time in a way I did not understand.
Now I do.
And I am also still slightly appalled that this film, and Taxi Driver, lost to Rocky for the best picture at the 49th Oscars but over time I have come to understand that that is how Oscar rolls.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 12:17 AM on December 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I had only ever seen Ned Beatty as Otis in Superman and, being young, thought that he could only play comical goofball parts. He was an excellent actor.

I will be using the phrase "You will atone!" with the wife when she is in the wrong.

You might want to check out Ned Beatty’s debut if you haven’t already; very different from either of the characters you mention, and kind of a risky choice for an unknown actor.

Also, let us know what your wife thinks of that plan.
posted by TedW at 3:23 AM on December 16, 2023

Also, let us know what your wife thinks of that plan.

Yeah, I kinda think that there'll be some atonin' but not by the wife.
posted by Chitownfats at 6:42 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd cast Paul Giamatti as Jensen.
HOWAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHD!
posted by zaixfeep at 7:03 AM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mod note: comment removed. Please avoid being snarky with fellow members when they’re asking serious questions.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:07 AM on December 16, 2023

Is it just me, or is the "shekels" at the end of the list of currencies a bit of gratuitous "Jewish bankers control the world" antisemitism?

What I remember about the 1970's is that there were a LOT of Jewish writers out there and their cultural influence was really strong. Jewish comedians and authors had been a huge influence on the literary scene in the 1960's and going into the 1970's and as a result popular culture was full of Yiddish words and expressions and non-Jewish people picked them up and used them regularly.

Off hand I can remember using: Oy vey!, glitch, shmooze, klutz, Schlemiel, chutzpah, kibbitz, shlep, nosh, spiel, and schmuck. I didn't use any of the common words that mean body parts, and didn't encounter them until the late seventies, but I DID use the word shekels.

The use of the word shekels in this context may have been related to a particular sort of cynicism I associated with pessimistic, intelligent, left-leaning Jews - If you said something like, "It will need a lot of shekels..." what you were implying is that it will need a lot of money because the system is either corrupt or stacked against you. I'm not Jewish, so the judgement has to be made by the Jewish community, but I will say that I believe using these expressions, whether you were Jewish or not, indicated that you had the smarts and you had the gift of gab.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:04 AM on December 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

For something like that film to be made today, you'd need to put Ned Beatty into a fluorescent onesie

On my recent rewatching of Hudson Hawk (1991 so maybe out of scope for this thread generally) I was stunned at how much Darwin Mayflower seems like a barely-veiled Musk or Zuckerberg. Everything old is new again, I guess.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 9:31 AM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I fucking love this speech and would memorize it for use in auditions if it weren't like five minutes long.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:49 PM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

For about a decade in the 1970s, the old Hollywood moguls had died off or retired and the boomers moved in with their new ideals. Mainstream movies would regularly buck the status quo.

posted by zardoz

Fairly eponhysterical!
posted by doctornemo at 2:46 PM on December 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Such a great scene from a great film.
So many fine details, like Beale nervously making prophet noises at passers-by on the way up, or Jensen's sudden tonal shifts.
posted by doctornemo at 2:53 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Beatty's Timbre in the first two Iines fascinates, they are high pitched almost to the point of the voice crack. It's as if a statement from elsewhere being conveyed to Howard, a proclamation rather then a true transgression. Perhaps Beatty played the speech with just the right amount of clarity, post-darwin jargon lesson on way world work. The precision "ebb and flow"/ "tidal gravity" hand and arm gesticulation all the while the greenish blue lamps narrow towards Jensen as Jensen is there not to admonish or really even educate Howard but to convince him to continue in a circle of inanity draped throughout the satire.


like an amalgamation of The China Syndrome and Nashville.
posted by clavdivs at 2:56 PM on December 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

DON'T FUCK WITH MY DISTRIBUTION COSTS (another great scene ... CW: Maoist revolutionaries, domestic terrorist revolutionaries, entertainment lawyers, guns, farm house)
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:47 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Saw this film in the wake of my first trip overseas, to Europe in the Winter and Spring of 1977. Having discarded broadcast TV long ago, Howard Beale's speech was mostly preaching to the choir; but as I'd just had first-hand experiences with the Wechsel-Cambio-Exchange at every frontier, I found this bit about International Exchange Rates to be quite profound, the real core truth of the film. Who sets them, and don't they truly manipulate the levers of world power?
posted by Rash at 7:57 PM on December 19, 2023 [1 favorite]