Network
Film Synopsis
An incisive view through an iconic period piece of a time when newly empowered values and people were dismantling a system seeking to preserve itself, and deception started to scale. An interesting companion piece to Don't Look Up.
climate lens
System change, generational conflict, public good vs.private gain, personal loyalty in a sea of self interest…sound familiar? Just as Jimmy Carter was becoming President Network saw our world coming. This film is a time capsule we can crack open to explore the social influences that make climate change such a difficult challenge.
Climate Discussion & Reflection Prompts
Diana is probably the youngest central character. What does her character illustrate regarding generational shifts?
Is Diana honest?
What motivates her?
How would she tell the climate change story?
Given her job in programming and how strongly the audience responds, are her extreme ideas validated? What should be off-limits for climate story-telling?
Max doesn’t argue when Diana calls bullshit on his idealization of the newsroom, even though he has already pushed back at encroachments upon the quality and autonomy of the news division.
Does Max agree with her?
Would the news division fail if Max were to succeed in protecting it as it is?
In terms of climate coverage, who does Diana make you think of? Who does Max make you think of?
Consider Max’s scene with his wife and then his relationship with Diana as a climate analogy:
He acknowledges it’s utterly wrong (for him, for her, for his family), but he does it anyway.
He expresses regret for it in the moment and for the entire time.
He calls out Diana for her emotional pathology even as he says he loves her.
He returns to his wife and family with only a vague hope for something like healing.
How do those three characters and their relationships compare to your/our climate reality?
“We’re in the boredom-killing business.” Are we more afraid of boredom than climate change?
Consider the “you have meddled with the primal forces of nature” scene and the ability of Arthur Jensen to ally the reach of the UBS corporation to a global power and profit structure providing order and security to the entire world (from his point of view). Who is Arthur Jensen in a current climate context?
Eventually a group of executives sit in a room and decide to kill a man (Howard Beale) on live television. For ratings. They don’t pull the trigger, but they facilitate the entire thing and they profit from it. And everyone witnesses it. How far away is that casual violence from what companies currently do to obtain, produce, or control energy?
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” is profoundly affecting when no one is yelling it out their windows and then suddenly people do. In a world where people yell essentially the same thing all day every day (and it ironically fuels the largest advertisers in the world), what does it take to achieve attention in a meaningful way? What would be the current equivalent of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”? Is anyone taking those actions today, in context of climate change? If so, who? Is anyone still yelling out windows? If so, who?