Juxtaposition1 Channel over at Substack

Please subscribe to my new Substack channel (links):
https://juxtaposition1.substack.com/

https://substack.com/home?utm_source=user-menu

The Pop-Up Adverts are a form of censorship here!

"I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!", Howard Beale 1976

Howard Beale is a fictional character from the film Network (1976) and one of the central characters therein. He is played by Peter Finch, who won a posthumous Oscar for the role.

Peter Finch was killed or died in the lobby of the Beverly Hill Hotel on Sunset Boulevard on January 14, 1977, at age 60. Best Actor Oscar awarded March 1977.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Beale_(Network)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Finch

Plot summary
In Network, Beale, the anchorman for the UBS Evening News, struggles to accept the ramifications of the social ailments and depravity existing in the world. His producers exploit him for high ratings and avoid giving him the psychiatric assistance that some, especially news division president and his best friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden), think he needs.

Beale, a long-standing and respected anchorman who began his career at UBS in 1950, saw his ratings begin a slow but steady decline in 1969. In 1970, his wife died and he became lonely, causing him to drink heavily. In September 1975, the UBS network decided to fire him, leading him to engage in binge drinking as he feels there is nothing left for him in the world. Beale's career as "The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves" is sparked by his half-joking offer, after receiving his two weeks' notice, to kill himself on nationwide TV. He subsequently apologizes to his viewers, telling them he "ran out of bullshit." Viewers respond positively and the network producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) wants him to serve as an "angry man" news anchorman. Schumacher feels that Christensen is exploiting his troubled friend, but Beale happily embraces the role of the "angry man". His foul-mouthed tirades feature a dark vision of America as a nation in decline as he speaks about the "depression" (i.e the recession caused by the Arab oil shock of 1973-74), OPEC, rising crime, the collapse of traditional values and other contemporary issues. Beale believes his ranting is guided by a voice in his head, talking of having some mystical connection to some sort of higher supernatural power, but Schumacher believes he is losing his mind. However, encouraged by Christensen, the executives at UBS decide that his unhinged ranting about the state of the world, especially when he repeatedly shouts, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!", will revive ratings at the struggling network. He is given his own show where he can say whatever he likes, and the carnivalesque show becomes the number one show in the United States. Beale shouts about whatever issue of the moment is agitating him until he passes out. At one point, he rants about how television is an "illusion" that peddles fantasies that can never be realized.