What Network got right - and wrong

Believe it or not, till last night had never seen "Network" (1976) - which has been noted in news stories after the recent death of the director, Lumet. Can see now why it was a shocking movie for its time; seeing it 35 years later, it's very strange how in some ways Network is incredibly prescient and in other ways misses the story entirely and also seems amazingly dated. It was probably even dated in its day - Chayevsky's extremely "talky" screenplay seems much more like a theater piece than anything written for the screen (I know older movies were more script-oriented, but this one's extreme - with numerous endless set pieces) and the on-screen relation between Faye Dunaway and Wllm Holden is the most ridiculous ever, less probable the Fay Wray and King Kong. That said, first of all, there are at least two hilarious scenes: the revolutionaries arguing over the contract for their TV show and (spoiler!) the network execs casually plotting the assassination of Beale. Network was way ahead of its time in foreseeing first of all the perversion of TV news into sensationalism and entertainment, second the corporate and conglomerate control over network news and programming, third the onset of reality TV, cheap and alluring. For that, many kudos. Still, what it totally misses are first the way in which we now interact with TV and media (a hint of that in the vox populi feature of its hit program - but they fall back on the cliche of the passive generation raised in front of the TV) and second and most important the politicization of TV news today. Network imagined that TV would numb us with stupidity, which it does, but did not foresee that it would numb us with ideology. It imagined a split between corporate greed and public information - the exec was willing to put anything stupid on TV just for ratings, without seeing the next step: uniting corporate greed and its ideology in the form of Fox News. There's a deep cynicism beneath the supposed values of Network, in that Beale the TV star voices an unfocused rage - against what? why? whom? The only group that seems to have any values, for a while, are the radicals, but of course they sell out and become a comic foil. Lots of provocative things in this movie, still worth seeing, but more as a curiosity today - like reading Brave New World or 1984 to see what they got right, or wrong.