WHO IS HOWARD BEALE?

I recently watched the movie Network again, and something occurred to me.

Bill O Reilly is Howard Beale.

In th:e movie, Faye Dunaway, playing the TV programmer hammering in on the zeitgeist of the time, says: "The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they've turned off, shot up, and they've f****d themselves limp, and nothing helps." So, this concept analysis report concludes, "The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them." I've been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network."

And, of course, the person who fulfills this role for the UBS network is a certifiably insane person. Someone who has himself grown sullen, narcissistic, and unable to actually control any part of his life, the least of which his emotions. But he tells some essential truths.

So the network programs Howard Beale's insanity and it draws a large audience.

Of course, because it's a movie, Howard Beale is destroyed by television making the point that television is the ultimate destructive force in our society.

Today, we have FOX News whose success can certainly be attributed to a certain popular rage...that of people's inability to control their economic position, their place in the world, their freedom from fears. It's the same fear articulated in Network, but back then the rage was quote, "counter-culture" and "anti-establishment"...terms that no longer have any cachet.
Anyway, look at FOX News' biggest star: He's a man who articulates that rage with a primal force. Now Bill O'Reilly's insanity is a bit more manageable than Howard Beale's. And, unlike Beale, O'Reilly is at least partly in on the ruse. O'Reilly also is able to communicate some essential truths, though he's not as good a writer as Paddy Chayefsky. Still, I have to figure that the Bill O'Reilly we see on the TV is a programmed version of Bill O'Reilly off the air. And that, my friends, points to a very rich, very paranoid, man full of misplaced resentments and narcissistic to a fault.

Either that or he's completely in on the joke, and it's all just a role he plays. But that doesn't sound right in this case. He's not that good an actor.

One thing that people seem to forget about FOX News is that it's not so much a political force as it is a media company. It certainly helps that the leaders of the corporation believe the politics it espouses, but I think that's partly a happy coincidence. FOX is just looking for an audience that will devote time to watching its programs (and the more devoted the audience, the better) and therefore buy the products it advertises.

But anyway, make Network your next Netflix selection; watch the scenes of Howard Beale going off, and then watch an episode of O'Reilly. You'll certainly see similarities.