Network shows that in 40 years, we have not evolved much

I feel Coke!

 I  n 1976, Network was released with the premise: "Prepare yourself for a perfectly outrageous motion picture."

As a fan of "All in the Family", I grew up watching television in the seventies, when sitting down in front of a heavy glass screen that emitted sights and sounds that we counted on to entertain us was considered almost like an epic event.

We were led by "prime-time" television and, for the most part, our days were scheduled around it.

I remember running home so I would not miss Six Million Dollar Man just as vividly as my dad camping out in front of our "big-screen" watching Archie (Carroll O'Connor) insult Meathead (Rob Reiner) like it was his birthright.

What was considered outrageous forty years ago, both thankfully and unfortunately, can now be considered as normal.

Take Network's main female character Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), the head of the United Broadcasting System's (UBS) programming department, and have her collide with the station's news division president Max Schumaker (William Holden) and one would think that in their romance set in the 70's, Max would have been the leader.

Not so! It can be argued that in Network, watching a female character played by the sexy Dunaway screw over—both physically and mentally—a supposedly powerful executive played by a big-time actor like Holden, was considered outrageous at the time. 

Now strong and manipulative female characters are commonplace in many of today's TV shows and blockbuster movies. 

Sigourney Weaver was transformed into Rambo in James Cameron's Aliens, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame plays a sexy detective and a manipulator of men in the Netflix show The Fall, and most recently, Charlize Theron is the powerful, ass-kicking hero in Mad Max: Fury Road where Max is more or less just a sidekick. Thankfully, that has happened.

In the words of Ellen Ripley—the hero in the now-20-year-old film Aliens—"Fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage" is thought of as a normal thing today.

Ripley blasted out this famous line after discovering her human boss is perhaps more of a slimebucket than the horrific creatures she is battling.

We say it every day in the workplace, particularly in the corporate world.

"Competition," some call it; "The price of doing business" others will say. Still, hardly anyone is thrown in prison for committing this accepted sin.

After being asked by her boss what to do with Howard Beale (Network's incredibly articulate, influential yet deranged UBS anchor man who get used, abused, and misused all in the name of money), Faye Dunaway coldly says "I don't see how we have any options, Frank—let's kill the son-of-a-bitch."

This, after his ratings drop.

As for us, the TV-, Netflix-watching, YouTube-guzzling, Internet voyeurs of today? We're worse than we were 40 years ago.

As was the case in Network, we are still ruled and influenced by the media and we want them to push acceptable limits until they explode.

We want blood, violence, sex, drama, action but, we want it now now now!!!

The problem is, that we CAN now get it NOW NOW NOW! We don't care how we get it, we don't care who is exploited, which geniuses take the fall, which smooth and wise-talkers go down, or who gets killed.

As long as characters like Network's Howard Beale can be seen on whatever handheld abomination we are fond of, even when we are driving, even when we are at the dinner table, even when we are making love, we are satisfied.

Perhaps one day, if the zombies take over (we just love our zombies! The more guts spilled on TV, the better) and we are forced to go back into the days when phones and voyeurism did not go hand in hand, we will understand the meaning of what is considered "outrageous" again.