There are few films as prophetic as Sidney Lumet’s Network. This 1976 classic foretells the corruption of the once honorable newsroom for ratings and the ever-escalating sensationalism necessary for television to maintain its allure and power over the populace. That we now live in the internet age does not undercut the film’s significance, far from it. The quest for content and the battle for American’s ever-shortening attention spans makes its message more important than ever. But nothing in this academy award-winning satire works without one of the most interesting characters ever depicted on screen, the subject of this month’s Character Study, Diana Christensen.
Network is a satire focusing on a triumvirate of characters. Howard Beale, a legendary news anchor in the midst of a mental breakdown; Max Schumacher, his best friend and managing director; and most importantly for our purposes Diana Christensen, an up and coming programming executive at the network. Howard thinks god is speaking to him and wants to share his message of righteous anger with the American people. Max knows his friend has lost it and wants to keep him off the airwaves. And then we have Diana, who sees a rating goldmine in Howard and wants to exploit his madness for eyeballs and dollar signs.
When we first meet Diana, she is sitting in a room full of male executives, she is surrounded but set apart. This indicates two things: that she is in a position of power at the network and that her position of power is an abnormality in the way things are usually done. At the conclusion of the meeting, she calls multiple of her subordinates into her office to give them instructions on a new series about domestic terrorists she wishes to produce. Her underlings have not read her memo on the subject and offer resistance to the idea, challenging her authority in indirect ways. Diana maintains her calm and keeps her focus and is, in fact, all the more intimidating for the matter of fact way in which she threatens to “sack the fucking lot” of them if they do not become more responsive to her wishes. Diana has one goal: ratings. She cares not for personal relationships or ethical quandaries. Those are tertiary concerns. The largest question we are left with after this introduction is whether Diana became this callous as a result of her job environment or if she got this job because of her callousness.
Diana’s big break comes when Beale threatens to commit suicide live on air. Most everyone at the network is appalled and worried for Beale’s sanity as well as the integrity of their newsroom. But Diana sees opportunity. Pointing out that Beale’s descent into madness is a ratings bonanza she fights to keep him on-air and eventually takes control of the network’s news programming making it just another bloc of programing to be hyped and sensationalized. She does this by getting Max fired, even as she propositions him to begin an affair. Here Diana shows her tunnel-vision ambition in three ways. She sees the public as nothing more than ratings shares to be one with no thought to her role as a steward of the airwaves; she cares nothing for Howard as a human being but views him as nothing more than the centerpiece for a new piece of programming (in fact at no point in the film do Diana and Howard interact, ever); and she sacrifices a potential romance and her personal happiness by getting Max fired.
Though of course her heartless undercutting of Max only delays their eventual involvement. When their affair does begin in earnest it is truly something to behold. Max is the older man and married one, yet he is the one treated as if he were a mistress. Diana is married to her work; Max is just her side piece. She’ll never give up her career for him. In fact, in the scene showing their romantic weekend getaway we see that Diana never stops talking about work. From dinner to their walk on the beach to before, during and after sex she keeps talking about ratings even saving her most rose-tinted projections for her climax. After months of this Max’s infatuation ends and his goal of trying to build something more than a fling hits a dead end. What’s interesting is that Diana is the first to end things though Max does not object. His attempts to dig out some hidden depths in Diana, frighten her. So she acts first, maintaining her illusion of power by rejecting the one truly human connection in her life. This is more than just a rejection of a man however, it is a rejection of empathy, kindness, and vulnerability. She refuses to be a human being and instead chooses to be a creature of ambition. The scene is beautifully acted and truly tragic to watch.
With Max out of her life and Howard Beale’s ratings beginning to tank, Diana must make a choice. She is forbidden from pulling Howard off the air by her corporate overlords but knows that she will lose everything if she does not find some way to remove him. So cooly, calmly with the same tone she used at the beginning of the film when threatened to “sack the fucking lot” of them, she states in a room full of executives “Let’s kill the son of a bitch”. Diana’s transformation into a villain is complete. She is now willing to commit murder, order an assassination, over ratings. For her career.
It would be easy to dismiss Diana as a caricature of a career-oriented independent woman. And she is to a certain extent. But even through her exaggerated flaws; her intelligence and vulnerability shine through. That’s the true tragedy of Network. Diana never really stands a chance. She is forced to be results-oriented because in a male-dominated profession she doesn’t get enough respect to play the ethics card. She can only survive and advance with indisputable successes. She is never appreciated as a person. Not even by Max who sees her as an infatuation and a symbol of youth, a vessel through which he can reflect upon his own life and middle-age mortality. In the end, she never really stood a chance. Network is one of the great works of American cinema and Diana Christensen is one of the most compelling characters ever to grace our screens. A worthy addition to our Character Study pantheon.