Humans love to be told how to feel. Since the beginning of time, humans have always looked toward figures to stand above them all and lead them through life. From religious idols to the great monarchs of ancient times to the fascist dictators of the 20th century, the people of the world have been followers- whether by their own will or not- and institutions have continuously sought to exploit this. Beginning in the 1950s, the subservience of humanity was amplified on a scale previously unfathomable through the inception of television. In America, there was suddenly a small screen in every citizen’s home that had the power to tell them what to do. The potential scale of fascism was enlarged and simultaneously concentrated down to a tiny system capable of functioning in every place across the country all at the same time. Essentially, as screens grew smaller, their influence grew larger. Over the ensuing decades, this phenomenon has come to be recognized by films on the big screen. The depiction of television in cinema ranges from lighthearted comedies that portray the people who work behind the small screen through situational humor, to searing indictments of the greater systemic forces that manipulate viewers through the ability of television to commodify human emotion. Some of these films provide the light, entertaining escapism that most audiences seek from cinema, and some of them have unfortunately been omens of dark times to come in America.
An early example of the portrayal of the small screen on the big screen is the 1955 movie musical, It’s Always Fair Weather, which pokes fun at how television embraces consumerism to such an extent that it becomes hilarious how unavoidable it is. In the film, there is a variety show in which a cleaning supply company called Klenzrite is incessantly promoted by the host of the show at every chance given. This satirical portrayal of the entertainment industry’s inability to function without promoting commerce every turn of the way communicates a phenomenon that remains true to this day. It’s surprising at first to see traces of the commercial obsession that dominates contemporary society exist in a time that feels so distant, but if one takes a step back to look at the bigger picture, it makes sense that the current intersection of capitalism and entertainment has deep roots in the early days of art forms such as television. It’s Always Fair Weather may be a cynical film in its depiction of the soulless corporations behind television shows, but it also features a musical number in which a man tap dances on roller-skates, so it never gets quite as close to the darkness which films like Network and The King of Comedy fully lean into.
A common theme in many films about television created from the 1950s to the mid-1980s (as well as to this day) is the commodification of people, ideologies, and iconography by capitalist establishments- specifically television corporations. Two films, most notably, seem to have been influential to every film about television that has come out after them regarding this subject matter: Elia Kazan’s 1957 feature, A Face in the Crowd, and Sidney Lumet’s 1976 dark satire, Network. Both these films see a figure's rise to prominence through the frame of the television screen- initially as a breath of fresh air for the American people who are excited to see someone who speaks their mind and refuses to be censored on screen, and eventually as an artificially manufactured mouthpiece for institutions who take advantage of the opportunity to govern the American people under the guise of “authenticity”. In A Face in the Crowd, Lonesome Rhodes first catches the eye of radio listeners with his down-to-earth “all-American” charm- a southern man in jail who just wants to play his guitar and be free so he can lead a simple life. Then, when he begins to make appearances on television shows on which he refuses to read advertisements in the words he is directed to and instead makes brash remarks about the companies, American audiences are drawn further in by his “honesty” and “authenticity”. Soon, both corporations and political figures see the potential to procure the favor of Americans by using Lonesome Rhodes as a puppet.
Rhodes does not only become a mouthpiece, however; he also becomes a victim of his hubris as he grows attached to his celebrity persona and the constant attention he is given. The more popularity he gains, the bolder and more abrasive he grows. He thinks he can say whatever he wants. The way in which Rhodes thrives in the spotlight due to his unwillingness to tone himself down feels all too real in the context of a post-Trump America. Former President Donald Trump practically is Lonesome Rhodes- as was especially evident during the buildup to the 2016 presidential election. In the months leading up to this time, every single day there seemed to be a new story about some vitriolic- and often offensive- thing that Trump said at a rally or in an interview or on his social media accounts. Shockingly though, a large portion of Americans loved this about Trump. They championed that Trump was a brave and honest man who said exactly what he thought and would always “stick it to the man!”. To watch a film like A Face in the Crowd feels like reliving that period all over again- and it’s both shockingly scary and logically predictable how accurate it feels. The film not only reveals the cultural anxieties around television of the period in which it was made but also indications of an inevitable dark path forward in this country.
Paddy Chayefsky’s biting screenplay for Network shares interest in the narrative structure and themes of A Face in the Crowd but takes those things to an even darker and scarier level. Anchorman, Howard Beale- who screams at the top of his lungs on a live TV broadcast to millions of people “I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’” - is literally referred to as a “messiah” for his ability to put into words the frustrations that Americans have been unable to express until this point. The novelty of his attitude immediately wears off however once the television company decides to keep running Howard’s prophetic ramblings as a part of their regular programming. They see that Americans crave social liberation- to feel like they are in control of their own destinies in this oppressive, crime-ridden, lawless world- so they package up the idea of social liberation and sell it back to people as a commodity. There can never be true social liberation within a system; it must operate outside of the confines of the screen. Genuine radical, progressive ideology exists in a jagged, organic form, but the television screen waters down ideas and traps them within the rigid confines of a box that broadcasts them as neat, easily consumable concepts.
Faye Dunaway’s character in Network, Diana Christensen takes an interest in domestic terrorist groups and radical political activists, and she hopes to make a television segment about them using guerilla-style footage captured by the groups themselves committing violent acts of protest. However, these two things- authentic footage of social transgressions recorded by those committing the transgressions, and the framing of a network-financed for-profit production- cannot coexist. These acts become nothing more than a performance for the screen, and “radical” protest immediately ceases to be radical. The acts are severed from the genuine outrage from which they were born and are funneled back into the trending attitudes of passive viewers who want to consume media that makes them feel empowered while lying back on their couches all day. In the end, when Howard Beale’s outrage becomes too difficult to control, the network executives decide to simply have him assassinated- assassinated for the very reason which they took interest in him in the first place: his unwavering honesty and anger. Except once this anger no longer benefits the corporation’s monetary aspirations, they don’t want it. Corporations co-opt ideologies, base their entire brands off them, and strip them of all their worth, just to toss them away once they are no longer useful to them. Network has its finger on a pulse in American culture that beats loud through the veins of all cinema examining television that has come out since 1976.
Three years after the release of Network, there is Hal Ashby’s film, Being There- which takes a similar idea of a person’s transformation into a celebrity and the absurd reactions to that person, but this time exaggerates the farce to such great heights that the celebrity transcends human form to become a divine embodiment of the medium of television itself. Because Chance has done nothing but watch TV his whole life, his ignorance of the world around him makes him a perfect candidate for the screen to absorb him and use him to spread propaganda. The celebrity is a blank canvas onto which the TV can project, so Chance can be used to broadcast any political message desired. And since Chance is built out of television- every broadcast he has watched in his life piled up to fill the shell of a man that he is- he functions in the real world as a screen illuminating the hidden impulses of humanity, both their darkest desires and their best qualities. In the glow of the screen, people reveal their true selves to him.
Television in Being There isn’t depicted as an evil force quite as much as it is in films such as A Face in the Crowd and Network, but it is depicted as dangerous in its power to shape peoples’ entire perceptions of the world. One example of this that sticks out in particular is the scene where Chance watches a cartoon in the car which depicts black people as offensive caricatures, reminiscent of old minstrel shows. Chance’s only reference for black people is based on the inherently racist white gaze that dominates television- as well as his relationship with his maid, Louise, who brought him his meals every day when he lived in a house. Later, there is a scene in which Louise sees him on TV speaking nonsense and says, surrounded by other black people, “All you’ve gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want.”. This speaks to an issue that is still relevant today: that black people must work twice as hard In America to get anywhere. The satire of Being There clearly highlights how a white man can walk around spouting completely meaningless gibberish- and if he says them to the right people, will make it all the way to the top of the country, meanwhile, a black person could say the same things and continue to be paid no attention. The television screen and the people chosen to be celebrities within that screen reinforce a culture of ignorance toward life outside of one's own bubble and perpetuate the unjust hierarchies of power that the United States was founded on.
Less cynical a view of television’s promotion of celebrity, but just as insightful is Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie. The 1982 film shifts the focus from the portrayal of news broadcasts and variety shows featuring real people- which was seen in all the previous films discussed- to comment on the personas of characters in soap operas and the cultural impact that these fictional beings have on Americans. When Michael Dorsey takes on the persona of Dorothy Michaels, he inspires women across the nation with his character’s assertive refusal to be talked down to by men. He doesn’t intend to spread this message, yet his choices take on lives of their own on the screen, detached from who he is at his core. When Michael must shoot a scene in which he is kissed by his costar, John Van Horn, he whacks John on the head with a stack of papers out of instinct. This action, which only occurs because Michael is afraid to kiss another man, is perceived by television viewers as a woman’s bold assertion of power over a man- finally, a female character who stands up for herself and doesn’t exist solely as a sexual/romantic object! The network receives hundreds of letters from women expressing their love for Michael’s character every week, but this hope that he gives people is a false hope. Tootsie is a farce, yes, but it also suggests the likely true idea that much of the impact television has on audiences is based on lies.
A different perspective of an outsider looking in on the world of television, naive to the facade of the screen, is presented with hilarious cynicism in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983). The protagonist, Rupert Pupkin, is obsessed with late-night show host, Jerry Langford and the culture of fame and adoration that Jerry basks in- the TV glow that he basks in. To Rupert, Jerry is more of a character in a narrative than a real person, and Jerry’s rise to fame seems to be a promise to Rupert that he too can reach such great heights in the public perception if he just writes himself into that narrative. He wants to pass through the alluring glow of this impenetrable screen in hopes of fulfilling all his strongest desires, but it’s not so easy, so he tries to take shortcuts to insert himself in his perfect dream world which Jerry already occupies. When he kidnaps Jerry and forces himself onto the stage of his show- onto the other side of the screen- his horrible, violent actions are flattened into a narrative within that screen which audiences will be drawn to just as he was drawn to his idealized image of Jerry’s life. To outside spectators, his kidnapping and threatening to murder Jerry is just another story for their entertainment. The depiction of the fame and praise Rupert receives after being released from prison is a sharp commentary on how shallow the way audiences engage with media is. The people who indulge in the outlandish story of Rupert’s rise to fame are victims of the culture of unhealthy obsession insighted by television just as much as Rupert himself is.
Even in a film as heartwarming and easily digestible as James L. Brooks’s 1987 feature, Broadcast News, there is the still implication that the screen cannot be trusted and that the stories within the screen are manufactured to manipulate people. When Tom’s interview with a date rape survivor is aired on the news, his female coworkers are touched by the woman’s story and Tom’s tearful display of empathy for her. Later, it is revealed that these tears that Tom shed were not a natural reaction to the story that happened to be caught on camera, but were conjured up after the fact to edit in for the sake of boosting his image as a virtuous supporter of women. His intentions may have been good, but his casual deception demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate the form of television to one’s advantage.
Jane exhibits awareness of this early in the film when she and her crew follow a group of guerilla soldiers in the Central American jungle. As a soldier sits rubbing his foot and prepares to put a new pair of boots on, a cameraman presses in with his camera and tells the soldier to put the boot on; Jane immediately rushes over and says “We are not here to stage the news. Wait and see what he does.”. She proceeds to tell the soldier that he can do whatever he wants, but after a while the soldier just puts the boot on anyways as he planned to. This awareness of the dangers of manipulating action for the screen is a valuable trait to possess, but Jane’s very presence around this group of soldiers is inherently manipulative. A camera is not capable of objectivity. The second something is recorded, the reality of the situation ceases to exist, and it is narrativized for consumption. Jane and her peers have much more honorable intentions than the people who work in television in a film like Network, yet they fall into the same trappings of packaging up real-life experiences as “stories” that are stripped of their authenticity and funneled back into a system interested in profits and commerce.
The progression of the depiction of television in cinema from 1955 to 1987 is subtle. It’s Always Fair Weather and Broadcast News may seem to be outliers among this list of films that forewarn audiences about the dangers of television’s manipulative power, but they both play into the same themes of the other five films in a way that’s not too different from them when one looks at the bigger picture. All these films acknowledge that the television screen is a facade- a rectangular boundary between reality and fantasy that distills stories to their most basic elements. Every face and every word spoken on a TV screen is a flattened, more symbolic version of an idea that goes much deeper than the surface of the screen allows.
Maybe part of the frequently negative portrayal of television in cinema- specifically in the period referenced- is rooted in the film industry’s disdain toward the increasing attention being given to this new medium of storytelling. No, it is not likely that every writer and director of the films discussed wrote these films simply out of spite (especially Broadcast News), but it should be noted that the portrayal of television in these films communicates certain anxieties that filmmakers were likely feeling at the time while working on them. Beneath the surface of each film can be seen a fear for the place that the state of art and its consumption is heading. There is a worry that if there is a TV in the home of every person in the country, the small screen will eclipse the big screen, and that with this will come the decline of media literacy and the rise of a culture of mind-numbing apathy to the real world.
In these films, the screen cannibalizes itself, taking all the anxieties surrounding the potential cultural influence of the small screen, and feeding them back into the fabric of the big screen with such demanding urgency that it concaves into itself, and the anxieties are vomited out like a radio signal broadcasting a warning of unavoidable destruction which originates from the tissue of the big screen itself. Eventually, there is no separation between a big and a small screen. Cinema, previously a medium only accessible through outings to a theatre, can now be watched on the small screen- the place that was feared for so many years by the creators of such films as A Face in the Crowd, Network, Being There, and The King of Comedy- with the inception of the VHS tape in the late 1970s. Cinema is absorbed by the television, and the distinction between the two mediums grows blurrier. Ironically, a person can now watch Network on their television and think to themselves how ridiculous the film’s illustration of TV is while critiquing it safely from a distance. The presence of the film’s dark, satirical message looms over viewers who sit on their couches blissfully unaware, mesmerized by the glow of the screen.
Cinema has always had a sharp eye for bringing light to the issues in culture that often appear invisible to most people in daily life. It is a medium which can identify subtle changes in human behavior and the phenomena surrounding it, so it is no surprise that films from as early as 1955 have been able to diagnose the influence of the television screen on humanity and create such brilliant stories out of it. From workplace romantic comedies to political farces to disturbing satires, and more, these films about television made from the 1950s to the late 1980s provide insightful looks into a world that is destined to be changed forever by a medium that is as dangerous as it is entertaining. Whether the medium is portrayed as a tool for the commodification of ideologies, a promoter of blind celebrity worship, a method of deception, or a unifying force, each film is remarkably prescient in its own way, but time will tell if their prophetic messages continue to remain true to a country that can’t seem to take its eyes off the glowing screen.