On Running Out of Bullshit

"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 fucked themselves limp. And nothing helps. Evil still triumphs over all, Christ is a dope-dealing pimp, even sin turned out to be impotent. The whole world seems to be going nuts and flipping off into space like an abandoned balloon. 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.”

       -Paddy Chayefsky (Delivered Splendidly by Fay Dunaway playing the part of a high powered TV producer in the movie *Network* in 1975)

Creepily prophetic, eh? 

Oh, and the title of this post was a reference to Peter Finch's big kiss off speech in the same film.

Network is one of those movies I can watch over and over. 

By the way, for me, the list of films I can watch repeatedly is pretty short: Galaxy Quest, Groundhog Day, and I Heart Huckabees are on the list for being the best philosophical movies I have ever seen. (Peter Greenway is an amateur and The Matrix [bitch, please..] the Matrix is a one dimensional Cartesian fever dream, but there are no insights to be had there.) 

There are a few seasonal movies I can watch over and over, but only on a seasonal basis: *Bad Santa* comes to mind, it doesn't seem like a very likely script for Terry Zwigoff, but he just nails it.

I am always surprised to note that every time I see *The Princess Bride* it still works. Wim Wender's *Wings of Desire* remains gut wrenchingly beautiful though I am less interested in the winsome rhetoric of the film now-a-days. *Swimming to Cambodia* (Amitaba Buddha rest Spaulding Gray's soul in the Pure Land) never fails to mesmerize me.

*Network* however, is hands down the most weirdly prophetic movie ever, but what I like about it is that the rhetoric of pure honesty in the face of bullshit was not presented simply as the path of virtue in opposition to the cynical sensationalism cited above. That sort of dichotomy would make for an ordinary story, but what is interesting in Network is that neither the sincere nor the cynical is at the heart of the film. You're left with the strange feeling that there is no side to take. Virtuous radicalism and utopian hopefulness is seen to be simply the flip side of decadent sensationalism and corruption; too much of either leads to disaster. So what are we to do? The fact that no real answer comes is the most memorable thing about the film; it almost requires a reconstruction of one's categories to respond to it. 

Anyhow, Here are some pictures:

I recently emptied the memory on my cell phone on which were hundreds of pictures I don't even remember taking, but I'm glad I did. As you know, I love signs, and this one above is an all time great in my opinion; right up there with the signs in the middle of the remote Malpais of New Mexico that remind us, "HIGH WINDS MAY EXIST."

And what is meant by "virtually" everything? Are we meant to believe that there are some meaningless things in the exhibit? What might those be?

And in the inadvertently sorta on target file is this:

Wikipidia:  Privet was originally the name for the European semi-evergreen shrub Ligustrum vulgare, and later also for the more reliably evergreen Ligustrum ovalifolium (Japanese privet), used extensively for privacy hedging (hence "privet", private).  Also sounds like the name of a character in Black Adder. (um, I added the Black Adder bit)

Close, very close, but please don't confuse the boning knife for the... you know...

Comments

[richbachelor]

The other funny thing about Network is that everything they were throwing out as satire has become true, and then some. Especially as regards the corporatization of media. You can sit there and watch it going, "yup, that happened...That too..."

[Sir Foxbat]

I have always maintained that "Network" was robbed in 76.

I mean, c'mon? "Rocky?"

tom