Network (1976) Howard Beale: 'We're In A Lot Of Trouble!'

Source:Real Life Journal

This is one of the best scenes from one of my favorite movies Network from 1976. Because it perfectly explained the economic and cultural situation’s of America in the mid-1970s. That was going though a bad recession with high unemployment. People’s pay going down with only the wealthy doing well and seeing their income climbing. With corporations getting bigger and fewer as well ,with Howard Beale played by Peter Finch essentially saying enough!

But at the same time what Howard Beale is doing in this scene, is giving Americans a constructive lecture about American society. Saying that too much of their realty comes from the tube. Meaning the TV obviously, not YouTube and that not enough Americans were getting real information about life and not doing a good enough job of educating themselves. Not reading enough and doing enough constructive activities. That Americans reality was too much based on what they saw on TV. 

Howard Beale telling the country that too much of our realty came from TV, especially Hollywood. That the top cop or hero (name the show) always gets the bad guy even if things look horrible at the time, because they still have the rest of the hour to save the day. That no one dies or loses their job, even in a bad recession that the country was going through in 1974-75 and this movie came out just after that, but no one loses their job or dies in the hit TV show family. 

He was telling Americans to get up and wake up and take responsibility over their lot in life, because no one was going to do that for them. That TV is exactly that and real life is what they live everyday and if they want to succeed in life, they need to make that happen for themselves. That Americans even Americans who are successful do lose their job. That people even in successful families get and die from cancer and that the hero in life is not always able to save the day. That life is much more real and complicated than that.