By Justin Little |
Contributor
The Department of Communication at Augusta University held a screening of the 1976 film “Network” this past Friday in the TVC lab as a part of the week-long event Future of the First Amendment. The Oscar-winning film, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky, was screened and immediately followed by a discussion held by Associate Professor Matthew Buzzell.
“This film isn’t necessarily about the First Amendment,” Buzzell said, “but it is about our stewardship and our care of the platforms that intersect with the First Amendment.”
The film “Network” follows a fictitious television network as they exploit a mentally deranged man for the sake of viewership. Toward the end of the film once this deranged man stops pulling in the ratings he once did, this network decides to publicly execute him on television.
The discussion specifically shifted towards the idea of how we can relate the film to modern times, and how much we have changed as a society since this film was made in 1976.
“I read these comments on Facebook saying ‘we should execute this guy’ or ‘we should go out and string up this guy’ and it has me asking how long until we have public executions on television?” Buzzell said.
This discussion was also partly mediated by the head of the Communication department David Bulla, who also had thoughts on the film.
“I think that Chayefsky and Lumet were trying to get us to think about this stuff, and I think that Americans back then didn’t want to think about it,” Bulla said.
Throughout the discussion there were numerous connections drawn between the events of the film and real-life events, making it extremely difficult to avoid thinking about what Chayefsky and Lumet were trying to say in their film.
The purpose of this screening and this past week of events as a part of the Future of the First Amendment Symposium were to try and get us to think about our basic freedoms that we might take for granted. Future of the First Amendment week was put together by the Department of Communication at Augusta University.
For more information, contact Justin Little at julittle@augusta.edu