"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take
this anymore!"
Howard
Beale’s immortal words from “Network” comprise one of the most memorable lines
in cinema history. And Network is
definitely must-see cinema. It’s about
a veteran anchorman who is so sick of the soulless business known as network
television that he implores everyone in his audience to open their windows and
scream that they are fed up and will no longer play society’s games – which
most of us never win anyway. Moviegoers
may not share the full extent of Beale’s anger, but his message cannot help but
resonate. On Main Street, we viscerally
appreciate how dehumanizing contemporary society can be. And we respect the guy who has the guts to
speak truth to power and proclaim, on behalf of us all, “No Mas.”
Paddy
Cheyefsky received an Academy Award for penning the Network screenplay. He is the only person in history to have won
three solo Oscars in that category. A
Jew from the Bronx, Cheyefsky was born in 1923 – two years after the birth of
my mother, another Bronx Jew. He came
from a lower-middle class background, which means that he grew up much more
affluently than my mother, who comes from arguably the poorest urban
neighborhood in the United States, but I get the impression that Cheyefsky
shared my mother’s propensity for in-your-face politics. Purportedly, he was one of those guys who
never shied away from a political or philosophical argument, and I have no
doubt that many of his positions were anything but moderate. As for his art, critic Tim Teeman describes
it as follows: “Chayefsky’s best-known
characters were ‘thwarted people who feared nothing so much as unfulfillment.’
Their struggle ‘for a minimal amount of autonomy’ mirrored Chayefsky’s refusal
to cede control in his life and work.”
As an artiste interacting with mercenary producers, he was frequently
mad as hell, and as the most decorated screenwriter in the history of film, he
didn’t have to take it from anyone. Most of us don’t have that much power,
however. Sometimes, all we can do to
express our anger is vote.
And
that brings me to Brexit. When I think
about the Brexit vote this morning, I keep thinking of it as the product of Howard Beale – or more
specifically, all of those people in Beale’s audience who are opening their
windows and screaming the thoughts of “thwarted people who [fear] nothing so
much as unfulfillment.” I have no
trouble looking at those people – those characters – and seeing them as
fundamentally sane. After all, when
Thoreau told us that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation; what is
called resignation is confirmed desperation,” wasn’t he really implying that a
primal scream out the window might actually be rather healthy, and strangely
liberating?
As
a fan of Cheyesky and Thoreau, I appreciate the Brexit vote, or at least part
of the impetus behind it. But that is
the perspective of a consumer of literature and film, a fan of writers and
artists who are often critical about the status quo. I’m also exposed to a very different
perspective – that of the Washington Post, New York Times, and such center-left
TV networks as CNN or MSNBC. There, the
mavens don’t tend to come from the Bronx in the 1920s. More typically, they hail from Westchester
County, or the Mainline, or Winnetka, or from my own hometown of Bethesda, MD,
where the median house value is more than $800,000. These people aren’t mad as
hell – except at anyone else who is. As
a general matter, they’re happy with their bankbooks, their careers, and their
prospects for the future. At this
point, I’d guess that if you are an Op-Ed writer for the New York Times, a
frequent guest on a CNN show, or just another 35 year-old lawyer who lives in a
million dollar home in West Bethesda, the world is your oyster.
So, if Cheyefsky was
going to make a movie about Bethesda, MD, how might his characters react to
Brexit? (And I mean how would they react
in the privacy of their own homes, not when they go into polite society and
hide their elitism.) I suspect it would
go something like this:
“So, my friends, how is
your 401(k) doing today? How’s your
stock market portfolio? Personally, I’ve
lost a fair amount of money yesterday and expect to lose even more in the
upcoming weeks, thanks to the Brexit vote.
Oh, that angry mob in England – how dare they do this to my assets? Well, I shouldn’t blame all of England. The Londoners didn’t vote to leave the EU. They’re too well educated and cosmopolitan to
vote against stability and for chaos. Here, a few miles from Washington D.C., we
knew we could count on the Londoners to vote sanely yesterday. It’s just those bigoted, uneducated fools in
the hinterlands. We had hoped they
would put on their thinking caps and do the right thing, but I guess that’s not
what people from the countryside do.
And that makes you wonder about what might happen here, in the mother
ship, in November. Is it possible? Might the Red Americans actually elect ...
him? God help us.”
OK. Cheyefksy probably wouldn’t have his Bethesdian
character invoke “God.” He would surely
know if he were alive today that people hardly ever mention that word here in
Bethesda. But they do talk about
401(k)s, globalization, Red States and Blue States, bigotry, and the stock market. Or about how our society might not be
perfect, but it sure beats most of the alternatives. Or about how the only kind of positive change
that’s possible is incremental change. Or about the fact that if Americans who live outside
of the largest metropolitan areas had their way, we’d see societal changes that
are absolutely horrible – just like what happened yesterday in Britain.
My friends, I’m not
going to tell you that the Brexit vote was fine and dandy. I’m not going to say that it won’t have a
lasting detrimental effect on global economics or even the freedoms and
security that people enjoy. But this
much I can say: yesterday’s electoral
outcome was a shot that had better be heard across the bow and throughout the
ship. Yesterday reveals that there are
two Englands – the London area, and everyplace else – and that the record wealth
that is being enjoyed in London isn’t being spread very widely across that
little island. But need I add that
there are also, as the huckster John Edwards correctly stated, two Americas –
the one that has been getting richer and richer and richer in the past twenty
years, and everyplace else.
The talking heads,
Op-Ed writers, and well-heeled Yuppies certainly have the prerogative to look
at the Brexit or Trump voters and dismiss them as bigoted, uneducated
fools. But I suggest that they look in
the mirror instead. What are they doing
to ensure that the wealth and power in our society is being spread widely and
compassionately? What are they doing to
ensure that the humanism of a Paddy Cheyefksy is seeping beyond the world of
literature and art, and entering as well into public policy.
Here in Bethesda we
love our liberal politics and our liberal politicians. But you will forgive the people in the
hinterland if they look at, say, Bill Clinton, and have trouble relating to a
guy who between 2001 and 2013 parlayed his career in “public service” into a
reported $105 million in speaking fees.
Howard Beale’s audience is constantly making sacrifices – they work hard
day after day, but can’t afford vacations in London. Many can barely afford to take vacations at
all. In fact, it will take them five or
six years of toil to make as much money as Bill or Hillary Clinton could make
in a single hour of pontificating.
I’m not asking for my
fellow Bethesdians to pity the Brexit voter who lives in Leeds, Birmingham or
Manchester – or the Trump voter who lives in Ft. Wayne, Ft. Smith, or Ft.
Hood. What I am saying is that we who
come from affluence and privilege have responsibilities to those who don’t. And if we don’t want to share our wealth or our
power, at least we can grant our fellow-citizens their primal screams.
In short, unless and until
we’re willing to make sacrifices for our fellow human beings, we’ll be in no
position to criticize our political opponents.
In the meantime, we can just
count our money in the privacy of our own McMansions and wait for the next Howard
Beale to wake his audience up and vote our heroes out.
No comments:
Post a Comment