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5. The World as a Mirror: Narcissism, “Malaise,” and the Middle-Class Family
- The University of North Carolina Press
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183 In March 1977, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its fiftieth annual awards ceremony, at which the film Network was among the most honored films of 1976. The film told the story of Howard Beale, a veteran news anchorman, who, upon learning that he is going to be fired due to poor ratings, announces on live television that he has decided to kill himself. His executives are at first mortified by what they call the “grotesque incident,” but they soon discover that Beale’s very public meltdown and transformation into a “mad prophet of the airwaves” may in fact amount to a ratings bonanza. The newly hired vice president of programming, Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway, who received an Oscar for the role), first recognizes Beale’s commercial potential. Viewers want shows that articulate “popular rage” and Howard Beale is just the man to do it, Diana explains to her boss. Manically pleading for creative control, ignoring the distinction between dramatic programming and news broadcasting, Diana predicts that she can make a newly refashioned “Beale show” into the highest-rated news program on the air. “tv is show business,” she declares, “and even the tv news has to have a little showmanship.”1 5 Narcissism, “Malaise,” and the Middle-Class Family T h e W o r l d a s a M i r r o r t h e w o r l d a s a m i r r o r 184 Diana Christensen is beautiful, shrewd, and wildly ambitious. She pulls no punches with her underlings and fearlessly pushes her agenda with her superiors. Divorced, childless, and completely consumed by her career, she declares herself “inept at everything” except her work. About to embark on an affair with Max Schumacher, the married, middle-aged, soonto -be-fired head of the network’s news division, Diana exhibits pseudo-selfawareness as she offhandedly relays reports about her inadequacies as a lover. “I can’t tell you how many men have told me what a lousy lay I am,” she tells Max. “I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can’t wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom.” This caveat in no way deters Max, but when the two become romantically involved, her self-assessment is born out. During a weekend getaway, Diana talks incessantly about the network, breathlessly discussing ratings, shares, and programming as she and Max walk along the beach, sit in front of the fire, and have sex. As Network unfolds, viewers are increasingly led to see Diana through the eyes of Max, who, although deeply infatuated, regards her with considerable wariness. Max’s wariness stems not primarily from a gender war, but from a generational chasm. A television pioneer and self-described maverick during the industry’s “great early years,” Max exudes gravitas, while Diana, reared on television, embodies the emotional hollowness and degraded nature of the medium itself. When Max reveals his affair to his shattered wife, she asks him if Diana loves him. He replies: “I’m not sure she’s capable of any real feeling. She’s television generation. She learned life from Bugs Bunny. The only reality she knows comes to her over the tv set.” It is not so much that Diana is psychically numb or emotionally cold; rather, television has rendered her incapable of distinguishing between spectacle and reality, a distinction that Max desperately tries to clarify as their affair unravels. “This is not a script, Diana. There’s some real, actual life going on here. . . . I’m real. You can’t switch to another station,” he explains in a last ditch effort to elicit some emotion from her. When Max prepares to leave Diana and return to his wife, he comes up with the most damning indictment he can muster: You are “television incarnate,” he tells Diana. “Indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. . . . You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays.” More than simple unchecked ambition or careerism, Diana’s fundamental crime is that she flouts distinctions between fiction and nonfiction, between drama and news, between politics and entertainment, and between spectacle and reality. But if she perpetrates epistemological confu- [34.229.50.161] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:11 GMT) t h e w o r l d a s a m i r r o r 185 sions, she...