arts The medium is the message ‘Network’ movie review Adam Tatelman Staff Writer Sidney Lumet’s Network is a rare sort of film with the courage to bite the hand that feeds it. It seems the highest hypocrisy to make a film so critical about the very medium that permits its existence. How could it otherwise spread its message to so many people, if not with the incredible reach of broadcast? This is the paradox at the heart of Network. It doesn’t matter if we know every detail of the corporate interest behind the TV screen. The fact is we will keep watching all the same. The film concerns the newscasters of a low-end TV network called UBS. The Board decides that its news program must be accountable to the network and report the news in whatever biased way the network wishes. The program is downsized, leaving newscaster Howard Beale (Peter Finch) jobless. Depressed, he announces on the air that he will broadcast his own suicide. UBS suddenly receives more public attention than ever before. Production lead Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) sees the potential for viewership in Howard’s mental breakdown. Against great pushback, she casts him in his own news show, shamelessly exploiting his rants against UBS for the network’s own gain. The show is an unprecedented success, partly because it is nothing but entertainment disguised as news. Her genius attracts the attention of division president Max Schumacher (William Holden), and the two end up in a May-December romance that puts Max’s family life in jeopardy. Network deals with the way television shapes culture. As Max himself notes, a generation now exists that has never lived in the time before television. An implicit trust was created between the viewers and the broadcasters that what the viewers are being shown is actually the truth. But viewers do not know the interests behind what they are shown and begin to merge propaganda with reality. Despite the existential monologues and endless technical jargon, the film retains a personal, conversational connection between the characters. Their drama is the driving force behind the developments at UBS network, particularly where Max’s marital infidelities are concerned. The film’s shooting and lighting starts out similarly to typical Hollywood drama, then slowly grows to resemble the visual styles used by television advertisements. This happens gradually, accenting the creeping corruption that claims every character in the film save for Max’s spurned wife. The transformation is so subtle that it’s hard to say where any major change occurred. Before you know it, you're tuning in to listen to Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves. In one of the most impassioned speeches in the film, Howard incites audiences across the nation to get up from their chairs, go to their windows, stick out their heads, and yell: “Tm as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Screenshot from the film And they do, from Atlanta to Baton Rouge to New York City. It’s a beautiful moment of solidarity and clarity of purpose, but it also shows us the powerful hold television has on our lives. We know that, once their little revolution ended, everybody went back to wait for the TV to tell them what to do next. Local band Earthbound brings the beat Progressive rock shakes up Vancouver Cheryl Minns Arts Editor What teenager doesn’t dream of starting a rock band with his friends and going professional? For one group of high school friends, their dreams of stardom have taken them from venues in Victoria to Vancouver as the band Earthbound. In the early ’7os, bassist John Larsen, drummer Bob Caldwell, and guitarist Paul Seale made their debut as a trio on a gymnasium stage during a grad dance at Oak Bay High School in Victoria. “I knew the bass player of the band playing at the grad dance and asked him if the three of us could get up and jam a tune. It was the first time the three of us had played together,” he said. “The crowd reaction was explosive and I believe we realized immediately thereafter that we had an intense synergy.” After graduation, Larsen, Caldwell, Seale, and keyboardist Ed Dolinski formed Earthbound, which was named after a live album recorded by progressive rock band King Crimson. “We played around the different venues and clubs in Victoria. Then we decided in 1975 to move over to Vancouver to continue our professional career because Victoria was fairly limited,” Caldwell said. “We started playing various clubs in Vancouver under Bruce Allen’s agency.” For Earthbound, it’s all about the progressive rock music they play, both original and cover tracks. Although it’s a popular genre of music, it’s uncommon to find progressive rock cover bands in BC, which gives Earthbound an edge. “We're into the technique of different time signatures, virtuosic playing, and really cool arrangements. It’s music for musicians,” Caldwell said. “We do a few tunes of original music, but most of our fans want to hear the progressive stuff.” However, Earthbound has discovered that Vancouver audiences aren’t quite as receptive to progressive rock as their Victoria audiences. “In Victoria clubs, we could get away with playing a bit more of the progressive rock material. But when we got to Vancouver, it didn’t go over so well. They want Top 4o stuff, a lot of ZZ Top, just the current stuff that’s going on,” Caldwell said. Although Earthbound is still in its early days, the band members hope to continue their musical journey for many years to come with larger shows and more original tunes. “In a perfect world, we would like to play big venues and do original prog rock music,” Caldwell said. “We would like to see ourselves continuing the tradition on the big stage.”