Sidney Lumet’s Network: The Grand Inquisitor of the Airwaves
By Steve Wagner
“You’re beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We’re the illusions! So, turn off this goddamn set! Turn it off right now! Turn it off and leave it off. Turn it off right now, right in the middle of this very sentence I’m speaking now!”
— Howard Beale (Peter Finch) to his viewing audience in Network
There is a delectable moment in nearly every James Bond film, usually at the beginning of the third act, when the captive and restrained Bond first meets his nemesis in person. Here, the super-villain—often the supreme ruler of a vast, secret cabal—explains in a markedly tempered tone his malicious designs for power and control, how the world will be forced to submit to his authority, and why Bond must be eliminated for the plan to succeed. Bond doesn’t say much, being that he is in a somewhat compromised position—say, locked in a cage dangling over a shark tank or strapped on a slab with a laser pointed at his testicles. But though the villain is criminally insane and 007 in grave danger, their dialog is nonetheless surprisingly civil. The two men may be the very definition of mortal enemies, but they remain polite gentlemen throughout their conversation.
In the comic-book universe of James Bond and other action-thrillers, this passage functions mostly as a breather for the audience, and though always entertaining, merely sets the stage for the predictable big finish: Bond escapes, destroys the compound, kills the baddie, and makes off with the girl. In more mature and erudite works of drama, this conflict of diametrically opposed philosophies is serious allegorical business with existential implications and potentially dire consequences; not just for the hero, but by extension all humanity and the potential future we wish to create for ourselves.
Known as the “Grand Inquisitor” scene, this narrative trope likely has its earliest expression in classical mythologies (such as the Gospel stories of Jesus taken before Pontius Pilate), but its modern genesis and namesake derives from a nested story within Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s epic novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880), where the agnostic Ivan tells his brother Alexei, an aspiring monk, the harrowing parable of the Grand Inquisitor.
The tale—greatly condensed: In the year 1500, at the height of the Inquisition, Jesus Christ returns to Earth in Saville, Spain. Though he “came softly, unobserved,” the people immediately recognize and “flock about Him.” At that moment, the Grand Inquisitor is passing by the cathedral, and he stops to observe Jesus performing several miracles, including raising a young girl from the dead. The Inquisitor has Jesus arrested and imprisoned, and then visits him in his cell, where he delivers a long soliloquy on the many reasons why Jesus’s return, indeed his very promise of freedom, is antithetical to the mission of the Church. Free will, the Inquisitor argues, causes the people "spiritual agony," and therefore, "man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil." Thus, the Church’s decree is that “it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience.” Jesus remains silent as the Cardinal concludes: “What I say to Thee will come to pass…tomorrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. Tomorrow I shall burn Thee.” Jesus walks to the old man and kisses his “bloodless, aged lips,” whereby the Inquisitor releases his mute prisoner, warning him to never return. Jesus walks away into the darkness and disappears.
And you thought Bond was having a bad day!
The Grand Inquisitor chapter in the Dostoyevsky novel is considered one of literature’s great philosophical discourses, exploring the endlessly enigmatic and deeply problematic push-pull relationship between free will and human nature. As these questions have perplexed human understanding and religious studies for millennia, we may suspect that they are now only explored in the ivory towers of academia or the filigreed sanctums of the clergy. But, in the arts, the narrative is far more ubiquitous than we might have noticed.
Consider the confrontation between Captain Willard and Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse, Now! (1978), where the fine lines between sanity and madness and control and chaos are blurred with horrifying results. Or, Truman and Kristoff’s conversation at the close of The Truman Show (1998), where the choice between the toils of freedom and the comforts of captivity leads to Truman’s self-emancipation from the only world he has ever known. Or, Agent Smith’s interrogation of Morpheus in The Matrix (1999), where the future of visceral human experience is imperiled by illusory computer simulation. Or, perhaps most famously in modern literature, the discussion between John the Savage and “His Fordship” Mustapha Mond in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), where Mond, the “Resident World Controller for Western Europe,” explains his authoritarian philosophy of total social control based on a pre-determined caste system, leading to the Savage’s rejection of the ruler’s beliefs and ultimate choice of suicide over acquiescence.
Cinema has gifted us many thoughtful variations on the Grand Inquisitor theme, but, to my mind, Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) offers what may be the most pertinent and prescient one of all, a clash of world views that could not be more emblematic of our current cultural malaise or the power struggle between competing corporatist and humanist “truths.” While most of us are familiar with its most famous phrase—"I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”—that tag-line take-away only scratches the surface of the film’s righteous anger and clear-eyed vision as it shoots one poison-tipped existential arrow after the next into a myriad of cynical targets.
At the beginning of the film, we meet Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the venerable anchor of the fictitious Union Broadcasting System’s UBS Evening News. After he is informed that he will be replaced in two weeks’ time by the network due to poor ratings, on his next news broadcast, Beale announces he will commit suicide the following week on air. Though he is immediately fired, his declaration causes a spike in ratings, and the network executives decide to keep him on air and exploit the controversy. As a result, the UBS programming director, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), after beginning an affair with news division president Max Schumacher (William Holden), convinces the head of network programming, Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), to slot Beale’s “news” show as entertainment programming. The Howard Beale Show quickly becomes the hottest and most valuable program on television. Schumacher resists this development on ethical grounds and is fired by the network, yet he continues his affair and soon leaves his wife, Louise (Beatrice Straight), to be with Christensen.
Now known as the “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves,” Beale slips deeper into insanity while his broadcasts become increasingly unhinged. Christensen, intoxicated by Beale’s success, quickly develops a prototypal reality-television program called the Mao Tse-Tung Hour, featuring a group of domestic terrorists known as the Ecumenical Liberation Army (ELA). After Beale begins ranting against his own UBS network on air, he is taken to meet with Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the chairman of the Communications Corporation of America, the conglomerate that owns UBS, and therefore, The Howard Beale Show. Jensen walks the befuddled Beale into an enormous, dark, spooky conference room, and proceeds to elucidate his “corporate cosmology.”
And, voila! We have our Grand Inquisitor scene:
“There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immune, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars! Reichsmarks, rubles, yen, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!”
For Jensen, Beale’s atonement will not come in the form of banishment, but in fealty. Beale, the network inquisitor explains, will now become a spokesman for the “truth” of the company philosophy of unbridled, unquestioned corporatism: “The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality—one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.”
This, Beale does, with ill-fated results. His sermons lose their idealism and passion, become depressing for the audience, and the show experiences a sharp drop in ratings. UBS executives panic, but soon devise an ingenious scheme: they decide to assassinate Beale on air and hire the ELA to carry out the deed. It is a success—Beale is eliminated, and the assassination kicks off season two of the Mao Tse-Tung Hour in dramatic “must-see TV” fashion. Cut to commercial as the credits roll…
Would anyone dare to classify Network as a mere satire now, after what we have seen unfold over the last decade, what we have witnessed in the last four years? Even upon its release in 1976, the film had a shocking docudrama quality; now, in 2021, its razor-sharp prophecy effectively levels a jaundiced eye at Nostradamus, and says, “Hold my martini.”
Network is rightly considered one of our great films, firmly ensconced on countless “best of” lists, studied in film classes around the world. The direction by Sidney Lumet is bold and assured; the performances—by Finch, Dunaway, Holden, Duvall, Straight, and Beatty (all nominated, with Finch, Dunaway, and Straight winning Oscars)—comprise one of cinema’s best ensemble casts; and its script, universally considered a masterpiece, deservedly won the gold and nearly every other critical and festival screenplay award for writer Paddy Chayefsky.
I would argue that Network is the most important film of the last fifty years, a vital “required viewing” experience for today’s culture, perhaps even more than it was back in the “Me decade,” when there was still a modicum of exaggeration to it. What was then a potential dystopia set in the somewhat safely detached milieu of media critique has now become a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions presaging the death of objective truth. For us now, sinking in the quicksand of commercial disinfotainment, celebrity worship, and social media that replaces authentic expression with branding technique, the “corporate cosmology” of Arthur Jensen is where our real-life rubber hits the existential road.
There is a line in Network’s Grand Inquisitor scene that remains especially piercing for me personally. After Jensen pontificates to Beale, he informs the frightened, defeated “mad prophet” that Beale will immediately cease his unhinged, populist truth-telling and tow the company line. In a chilling nod to the religiosity underlying our post-modern relationship to media, when Jensen says, “And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel,” a cowed Beale then asks, meekly, “Why me?” Jensen pauses, then replies, “Because you’re on television, dummy.”
I used to be on television, the co-host and executive producer of a weekly film show that aired Sunday evenings on the ABC flagship station KGO-7 in San Francisco. In the spring of 1998, I had the opportunity to interview Michael Moore, who was promoting his second documentary, The Big One, an expose of the economic abandonment of American workers through corporate downsizing. At the time of the interview, Moore was mostly distinguished by his stunning debut, Roger and Me—his next film, the black comedy Canadian Bacon, had been a huge box office disappointment. He was not yet swimming in overtly partisan political waters (that would come with his next film, Bowling for Columbine, in 2002) and at this point was still mostly an equal-opportunity scold. But he was clearly a voice to be reckoned with, and we were thrilled to have him on our show. You just knew with Michael Moore you were going to get something juicy and controversial—and did we ever.
Because of time and schedule constraints, the interview was held in the lobby of the Alhambra Theater, a classic movie house in San Francisco where Moore would be delivering a lecture to a crowd of approximately 500 excited fans. We were set up in a charming side-nook, and the lobby was packed. Though I had interviewed people in studios, on locations, at junkets, and in hotel suites, a “public” interview was a rarity, and this one had the vibe of a rock star on the rise. Dozens of people crowded around us, and throughout much of the twenty minutes or so that we talked, there were hundreds of people chanting “Michael! Michael! Michael!” on the other side of the wall in the theater.
The interview was spirited, and Moore was predictably both entertaining and on message. At one point, he was expounding on companies that were expanding into every conceivable commercial and industrial niche, to the point where they have immense control over nearly every aspect of our lives. He used Disney as an example, and said, to paraphrase, “They own the car that brought me here. They own this theater. They own the popcorn. They own the station that airs your show, and they will probably keep you from airing what I am saying right now.” I assured him that because I controlled the content of the show, his words would not be edited, that they would indeed air. When I said this, the crowd erupted in applause, and Michael leaned over and gave me a bear hug, before exiting into the theater to a roaring reception.
A few days later, I was in the editing booth at KGO screening the portion of the interview that would air on our show the following Sunday. One of the KGO programing executives stepped into the booth to “assess” the proceedings, and we watched as Moore went on his mini rant about Disney. The programming executive interjected, again to paraphrase, “You do know that Disney owns Cap Cities, which owns ABC, which owns KGO?” I responded something along the lines of, “Yeah, but Michael Moore is the most important documentarian in the world, and this is what he has to say. We have an obligation to our viewers to let him speak.” To which the programming executive replied, “Uh huh,” before walking out of the booth.
Welcome, folks, to my personal Grand Inquisitor moment. Because, in the real world, we are not subject to thoughtful discourses of philosophy from our Grand Inquisitors. These confrontations take place, not over the course of many pages in a novel or an entertaining scene in a film, but in those moments when we must choose between autonomy and control, and they are often characterized, not by tempered dialog, but by the distinct lack of any dialog. My collision with network control wasn’t a dramatic quarrel, but a mostly quiet, short exchange that merely drew an unmistakable line in the sand: I had demonstrated indifference to the corporation and was therefore on the wrong side of the economic imperative of the network. I won’t claim that the “Michael Moore event” was the sole reason my show was cancelled a few weeks later—there had been many instances where my control over the show’s content made the KGO power structure bristle—but it certainly symbolizes the reasons why they decided to cease doing business with me.
The Grand Inquisitor moments in our lives are not usually characterized by obvious disagreements that announce themselves as times of great reckoning, but in the subtle moments that occur over and over again in our day-to-day lives, where the values we embrace define who we really are. My decade-long flirtation with television, where I tried to create an independent show that could shine light on the issues of our time through the lens of thoughtful cinema, while also partnering with a powerful network and enjoying the fruits of its massive viewing audience, was in a sense doomed from the start. The inevitable showdown was always going to happen, and I think most of the executives I was doing business with knew this; they were just waiting to see if I could make them some money before the hammer was dropped and I was informed who was really in control. I think back on all the times when I was pitching the need for authentic, truthful dialog on commercial television, and the station manager, programming director, distributor, or sponsor would stare back at me in silence, with a look that said, “I wish I could replace this naive idealist with a comedian or a chick with big tits.”
Understand that I don’t consider myself a victim. I made the personal choice to enter the labyrinth of television, and we all know it can be a jungle out there. And I was certainly trying to make a buck. I saw a commercial media niche that wasn’t serviced fully and reasoned that if we created a show filled with movie clips and movie stars, we would attract sponsors, stations distributors, and networks. So, don’t cry for me, Argentina. While the outcome for me wasn’t in the form of financial remuneration, much less media autonomy, the lessons learned there have informed my choices since, and I am grateful that I survived it all with some semblance of self-respect, a small ray of insight into the nature of my Grand Inquisitors, and a reminder that I can quite easily become one myself. I was often more than willing to adjust my progressive principles if it would increase our ratings…especially when those ratings began to slide.
In the Network narrative, the character of Diana Christensen, with her icy, relentless lust for ratings, represents the hollowness of a person who has substituted public attention for love and human connection. Note, she is not presented as overtly tragic—she’s basically the “winner” in the film, the one who gets what she wants and accomplishes her goals. But Network allows one of the “losers,” Max Schumacher, to express his truth to Diana and thus provide the film’s crucial message. After losing the news division, then his job, and then his wife for the illusion Diana embodies, Max finds his humanity and his balls and stands up to his Grand Inquisitor: “If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed… You are television incarnate, Diana, indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death, are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not while I can feel pleasure, and pain, and love.”
It is difficult to watch Network now, or write about it, or, I would guess, even read this essay without being aware of a certain elephant in the room. I have resisted writing about Trump for over four years, not because I wasn’t inspired to do so, or thought I had nothing to say, but because I have never felt that writing about politics is where my better angels take flight. But, if ever I am tasked with weighing in on him, it is in a discussion of Network.
When I look at Trump, what I see, first and foremost, is a profoundly unhappy person. Characterizing him as somehow super-human, a savior for the Right, a devil for the Left, an avatar of freedom or fascism depending on one’s perspective, both denies his humanity and distorts our understanding of the culture he most represents: one in which our acute existential sadness is deflected by endless attempts to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be respected, to be elevated. Trump’s addiction to attention, and his personal failings and epic fall from our nation’s highest office—that I would argue are a direct result of this illness—should cause every one of us to question our own desire to placate similar needs. While it is true that he has invited our scorn, brought about his own demise, and that his banishment is at the very least an act of collective self-preservation, we deny Trump’s shadow reflection of the American cult of celebrity at our peril.
It may be cliché at this point to say that Trump is a creature of television. I would go further and say that, like Diana Christensen in Network, he is the absolute embodiment of it. Because television, of course, simply desires to be seen. That is its prime directive, as endowed by its creator—one Philo Farnsworth. Yes, it was imagined to be a benign tool of communication, but in its essence, in its quiddity, it exists as an object of attention. Our values are superimposed on it, and it has always been our choice whether it was utilized for public good or nefarious intent. We’ve long known that it is addictive, but now we must admit that its attraction has seduced us at a deeper and more deceptive level; it has convinced us that we would also be fulfilled by the rapt attention of a viewing audience.
If Network is a parabolic warning of the illicit affair between news and entertainment programming (embodied by Max and Diana), and of the illness of attention addiction, then Trump is a real-life manifestation of the film, embodying every wretched aspect of every pitiful character. He is the inhuman corporatist philosophy of Arthur Jensen; the mid-life moral crisis of Max Schumacher; the self-centered indifference to consequence of Diana Christensen; and, yes, the deluded, messianic complex writ large of Howard Beale. The “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” thing didn’t work out so well for Howard, and it didn’t work out so well for Donald. To be honest, it didn’t work out so well for me, either, when I was in the attention-getting business of television.
The question before us is: Will we as individuals succumb to the illusion of fame and addiction to attention, now that we have the ability to broadcast our every thought, opinion, impulse? While Network clarifies the global, not-so-secret cabal of media corporatism that seeks to capture and control our thoughts, actions, values, and time—now superseding even religion in the 21st century for the title of Grandest Inquisitor—it also points to a far more insidious fact we must face in the age of information and social media: We’re ALL television content now.
What will you do, what will you say, what will you illuminate now that you are finally the host of your own television show? What is your show about? Does it exist to express truth and inspire your viewers, or is it simply a vehicle to appease unrequited needs—for attention, for self-glorification, for ratings you believe will make you feel better about yourself? Every time we ask ourselves these questions, we are having a dialog with the Grand Inquisitor that lurks within us. How we respond to him will determine not just the content of our “shows,” but whether we are peddling fake news, and even more tragically, fake lives.