The Most Profound Moment in Movie History?

the most popular video I ever did on my channel is titled the most profound moment in gaming history the titular moment was a cutscene at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. a game released back in 2001. out of all the moments from all the games I could have chosen what made this one stand above all others was its prophetic commentary on how the age-old problem of fake news would evolve in the next few decades to be more specific the internet would facilitate the spread of misinformation and disinformation at an incalculable rate the results would

be an infinite number of half-truths and lies to choose from and media personalities to speak them in order to soothe our biases I felt comfortable making this declaration on my channel because video games have only been telling complex stories for 30 odd years with the majority of games either not having a story or at least one Warth and in-depth analysis they're not like books or movies which have been around for exponentially longer and which always have narrative as their Central Focus this is is why I've never made a video titled the most profound moment in

movie history because it would be impossible to make a definitive Declaration of that sort nonetheless people have naturally asked me if I would ever do a video with that title for the past four years and even though I have avoided it I must admit the question has remained at the back of my mind every now and then I would entertain the question in a moment of random inspiration but then the question would disappear into my unconscious almost as soon as it appeared this past week though the question appeared again but with an unexplainable urgency for

some reason I felt I had to answer the question now I quickly quelled this Neurosis when I asked to myself this question was there a movie moment that explored some of the same ideas that Metal Gear Solid 2 did and whose message also remains relevant decades afterward the best answer I could provide was a moment from the 1976 film Network in my mind network is the most scathing critique of mass media ever produced both of the people who produce it and especially of those who consume it both producers and consumers are somehow presented in a

way that is both Darkly satirical but also wholly accurate it's a paradoxical Confluence of Madness and Truth where both are the same yet different at the same time worst of all the director of the film Sydney lumay a veteran of Television said that everything in the film say for one thing that happens at the very end Has Its Reflection in reality and he wasn't just speaking about the way things were in the 1970s he was also speaking about how things are now if Metal Gear Solid 2 was about the curate getting of information to placate

the masses in the internet era network was about the same thing but 25 years prior to that game now the question is what moment in the film exemplifies this theme best well it's a moment much like the one in Metal Gear Solid 2 where the main character comes face to face with the main villain both of whom act as a sort of man behind the curtain archetype pulling everybody's strings in both moments the villain not only provides justification for their Sinister plans but does so in a way that is very difficult to argue against just

as people rely on biased information to maintain emotional stability we unknowingly rely on these villains and their schemes to maintain things as they are because without them things would likely descend into irreparable chaos it's all well and good to say that we could and should do without Masters so we can become stronger individuals but as both a network and Metal Gear Solid 2 show we will quickly drop this and other moral stances when things get too difficult in order to give a clear and thorough analysis of this moment I will review all the events that

took place in the film up until that point needless to say there are spoilers ahead so if you haven't watched the original film and want to do so please pause this video and go watch it it's one of the best films ever made and it is definitely worth your time the movie begins with a man named Howard Beale a TV Anchorman for the fictional UBS Evening News early in the film Howard learns from his friend the president of UBS news division Max Schumacher that he has just two more weeks on the air because of a

decline in ratings this news could not have come at a worse time in Howard's life he lost his wife a few years prior with whom he had no children following her death he then began to drink heavily and isolate himself since Howard figured that the news program was the only thing he had left that was good in his life he no longer had any reason to live so in an act of Madness Howard announced on the air that he was going to self-terminate naturally this moment provoked the executives to stop the broadcast and demand that

Howard's final two weeks be rescinded thankfully for Howard because was his friend he intervened and convinced his bosses to let Howard have one final show so he could give a more dignified farewell a few days before Howard's last show Max found out at an investors conference that his news division would no longer be independent and would have to be accountable to the wishes of the overall Network this is because the news had been operating at an annual loss of 33 million dollars on a roughly 100 million dollar a year budget despite this fiscal reality Max

was enraged and looking for some form of Revenge luckily for him he found that revenge in the form of Howard's final broadcast Howard used his last day on the air as an opportunity to apologize for his act of Madness but when he tried to explain his actions he said it was because he ran out of both any moment like this would immediately cause the operators to cut the feed but because Max felt he was screwed over he let Howard continue to swear on the air moments after the broadcast reporters asked him why he said this

to which he responded every day five days a week for 15 years I've been sitting behind that desk the dispassionate pundit reporting with seemingly Detachment the daily parade of lunacies that constitute the news and just once I wanted to say what I really felt naturally the UBS Executives felt embarrassed and were now gunning for Howard's neck until they realized that Howard stunt made their ratings go off the charts for the first time in a long time a Content director at UBS named Diana Christensen sees this data and convinces the executives to use Howard's anger to

their advantage she cites her audience surveys which suggests it's that kind of anger that Americans want to see to quote her directly Americans are turning solid they've been clobbered by Vietnam Watergate inflation the depression and nothing helps they want somebody to articulate their rage for them to satisfy this demand Diana proposes the creation of quote-unquote angry shows based around counterculture and anti-establishment and ideals and Howard would lead the charge before I continue it must be emphasized that the people at UBS are not keeping Howard and building shows around him because they agree with him they

merely see that people want angry content and they provide that it makes you wonder to what extent the major news networks nowadays are doing the same thing if this was one of those Reflections in reality that Cindy Lou May was referring to but anyways morality plays no role in these decisions after all one of the shows that they create in response to America's desire for angry shows is one called The Mao seitung hour a show that spews communist propaganda it doesn't matter to UBS that Mao was responsible for the greatest number of deaths in the

20th century due to his communist ideology the network deals no moral obligation to prevent these views from being aired to impressionable minds or at least provide counter-arguments all they care about is the fact that people are angry and they want somebody to blame so they are going to use people like Howard to tell people who to blame what UBS didn't account for however is that they might be the people Howard would end up blaming this oversight is understandable at times Howard would say and do things that would make people including the audience watching the movie

question his mental health he would speak openly about how he would hear and see God he would talk about being in a manic state where he felt like he was on the precipice of achieving hinduist Enlightenment other times he would pass out and he would do all of this both on air and off air that said there are times where what Howard is saying is so factual and delivered with such Gusto that you are inclined to believe that he actually is as some of the executives refer to him a modern day prophet in direct communication

with God in this way Howard is a microcosm of the Network's macrocosm they are both like I said earlier on a Confluence of Madness and true Truth where both are the same yet different one cannot account for such an entity and unfortunately that comes back to bite the executives Howard realizes that he like the people of the mousy tongue hour and other pundits is not there to tell people how to think but what to think but he aims to change this at first he doesn't really know what people should do except engage in a collective

warning to the powers that be this takes the form of what is probably the film's most famous moment albeit not the most profound he tells the people who are watching him to open their windows and scream out into the ether that they are quote as mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore which people then begin to do on mass across the country this pleases the executives because it makes for good drama and ratings soon after though when he does realize what people should be doing the powers that be start to

get angry in one monologue he tells people that if he's learned anything in his 15 years in TV it's that nobody producing TV is concerned with telling people the truth instead they are concerned with curing boredom if the people watching were genuinely concerned with truth they would turn off the TV and quote go to God go to their gurus or go to themselves because that's the only place they will find truth now one might have expected this to anger the executives but remember what I said before people don't want to think for themselves they want

other people to tell them how to think if they truly wanted to think they would stop watching Howard's show but it still continues to be popular as long as people keep watching the executives won't protest what does end up angering Howard's boss is is a subsequent speech that he gives about how Saudi Arabia is buying up the company that owns UBS the Communications Corporation of America or CCA Howard tells people to write to their congressmen to stop this buyout from happening which of course angers the UBS and CCA Executives they need that money because they

need to pay back loans they took out in order to stay afloat when their ratings were lower unsure of what to do the UBS Executives call up the CEO of the CCA Arthur Jensen to speak directly to Howard it is when these two Converse that we finally witness what is in my opinion the most profound moment in movie history you have meddled with a primal forces of nature Mr Bill and I won't have it is it clear unfortunately due to YouTube's monetization policies I cannot play the moment in its entirety here but I will link

to the moment in the description box below if you want to watch it before hearing my analysis what Arthur Jensen is trying to explain to Howard is that Concepts like belief ideology and morals have always been Illusions masks to cover a single fundamental truth one that unites people across all nations and races that uniting truth is money as much as we might profess our belief in certain things we will drop those beliefs the instant it threatens our ability to survive mentally and physically which money helps ensure Arthur cites the Soviet Communists as an example they

might profess hatred of capitalism and a love for Karl Marx but in reality they are like the Americans in that they too quote vote compute price cost probabilities of transactions and Investments this point is emphasized by one of the leads Behind The Mao Zedong hour a woman named Laureen Hobbs she was a self-professed communist when she agreed to do the mousetong hour for UBS doing this however immediately compromised the show and turning her into someone only concerned with money and power this truth extends to almost every other character in the movie none of the executives

at UBS care about morals or ethics all they care about is their own self-preservation even though Howard is right when he says that people should turn off the television and prevent foreign money from influencing our media and government if that means losing their jobs and suffering for an extended period Well they would rather kill Howard before letting something like that happen but the worst part of all is that this doesn't just extend to corporate bigwigs and mass media honchos it's true for all of us this is why in Arthur's mind Saudi money needs to flow

into the United States if it doesn't this could set off a chain reaction that would affect the global market potentially exacerbating the depression that America had been living under during the time this movie came out when this happens the morals people had the privilege of clinging to would fall to the Wayside and everything would fall into chaos and this was all Howard's fault he meddled with the Primal forces of nature and they need to be maintained not for the benefit of people like Arthur mind you but for us Arthur just like the villains from Metal

Gear Solid 2 goes on to explain why the maintenance of this system will will result in an Ideal World eventually the interaction of all these corporations will result in quote one vast ecumenical holding company for whom all will work to serve a common prophet in which all men will hold a share of stock when this happens all of Mankind's Necessities will be provided people will no longer feel anxious or bored and there will no longer be War famine oppression or brutality on the surface such a system will sound great to a lot of people after

all everybody wants security we want to maintain our moral systems without having them challenged so that way we don't have to risk realizing that our morals May in fact be Illusions however Howard realizes that in order to achieve such a system one great sacrifice must be made and that is human entity's sense of individuality following this meeting Howard goes on air and congratulates everybody for successfully rallying against the Saudis for mailing their congressmen but laments that even though it was an immense Act of democracy it was merely a pebble thrown against the steel walls of

global corporatization he does assure everybody that things will be fine vis-a-vis Arthur's promise America will remain the most powerful country on the planet and the Communists are not a threat but with this comes a major loss America is no longer dedicated to the flourishing of individuals it and soon the rest of the world will be dedicated to Turning humans into replaceable pistons in a global corporate machine those who do not comply will either suffer from ostracization and poverty or the powers that be will do whatever is necessary to make you comply or eliminate you entirely

after this speech Arthur's point about the illusion of morality is proven correct the ratings for Howard's show go down drastically because the viewers didn't like what he had to say even though it was true if people really cared about morality and Truth they would rally against Global corporatization in order to preserve their individuality their ability to exist outside of a system instead they found the truth too painful and decided to resort to unconscious security to quote the villains from Metal Gear Solid 2 they simply resorted to looking for another more convenient truth in order to

make themselves feel better leaving behind in an instant the so-called truth they once embraced I ask all of you watching to consider whether Arthur's arguments and by extension those of metal Gear's villains are wrong do people prefer to listen to information that confirms their biases do people generally prefer unconscious security over the strenuous moral and physical effort required to be true free thinking individuals will people drop their moral code if their security is threatened in my opinion the answer is yes both Arthur and his real-life analogs not only provide a powerful justification for their existence

they argue that the majority of people are in favor of keeping things as they are they want the flow of money to continue to have that money influence media and to have that media provide personalities that fuel our anger and tell us how to think and feel but never tell us how to think this was as true back in 1976 as it was in 2001 and as it is in 2023 and that is why Network in my mind probably had the most profound moment in movie history it spoke the truth about the way the media

business operated why the viewing public are largely responsible and why it would continue well into the 21st century and beyond maybe to the point that Arthur Jensen's dream would be realized like with my video on Metal Gear Solid 2. I do not wish to leave things on a dour note it's important to remember that even though Arthur might have a point he is still human like the rest of us imperfect and capable of miscalculation while he wishes to turn the world into a corporate machine full of unconscious cogs a single person with a strong enough

will could effectively Advocate the opposite and help bur the world where individuals could flourish Justice Howard wanted the only question that remains is whether or not you can be that kind of individual foreign [Music] foreign