Howard Beale, the «mad prophet of the airwaves» of Network, is a veteran news anchorman fired for his falling ratings. The news breaks him: he announces live that he will kill himself on air, and from there he slides into an ecstatic, delirious state from which he hurls furious tirades against the dehumanization of the modern world. His famous cry —«I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!»— electrifies the country. But Beale has not found a new compass: he has lost the one he had. His certainties —his career, his identity, his place in the world— have collapsed all at once, and what remains is a man in free fall, half lucid prophet, half mental castaway. For Durkheim's anomie, Beale embodies its least-discussed face: not that of unleashed desire, but that of vertigo, the helplessness of the individual when the framework that sustained him breaks and nothing anchors him anymore.
// The theoryAnomie as helplessness, not as greed
We tend to associate Durkheim's anomie with unchecked desire —deregulated ambition—. But in Suicide, Durkheim also describes its other face: the helplessness of the individual when the norms and certainties that gave him shape crumble abruptly. The absence of limits does not always unleash a voracious appetite; sometimes it leaves the individual without ground, in a vertigo where nothing has meaning or measure anymore. Beale lives this second anomie. For decades, his identity, his routine and his prestige gave him a firm framework —he knew who he was and what place he occupied—. When that framework collapses from one day to the next, Beale does not turn greedy: he becomes disoriented. His prophetic delirium is the symptom of a man who has lost all normative anchoring and floats without a compass, able to speak penetrating truths precisely because nothing binds him to convention anymore, but also unable to hold himself up. The theory stresses that anomie is not only the excess of the one who wants too much, but also the emptiness of the one left without the framework that made him himself. Beale is anomie turned into a fall: the vertigo of existing when suddenly there is no norm to hold on to.
Lucidity and the abyss are the same thing
What is fascinating about Beale is that his anomie makes him, at once, more clear-sighted and more lost. Having slipped every mooring —the script, propriety, the role of the even-handed anchorman— Beale sees and says things no one with their feet on the ground would dare to voice: he denounces dehumanization, the lie of television, the reduction of the citizen to a consumer. His fury contains a real truth. But that same looseness is his ruin: he speaks not from a new compass, but from the absence of any compass, and so his lucidity is inseparable from his collapse. Here Durkheim illuminates something subtle: anomie can look like liberation —the one who has lost all norms seems free, even prophetic—, but that «freedom» is the castaway's, not the explorer's. Beale did not choose to let go in order to see more clearly; he let go because the ground caved in under his feet, and his clairvoyance is the flash of a mind in free fall, not the serenity of a mind that has won it. The theory teaches us not to confuse the two: the one who speaks truths from the vertigo of the void is not freer, he is more alone —and that solitude, in Beale's case, is the door to his tragedy.
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// The subjectThe prophet that others turn into a product
What makes Beale's case so cruel is what the world does with his anomie. Instead of helping a man who is falling apart, the network —embodied in Diana Christensen— cashes in on his collapse: it turns his delirium into a hit program, «the mad prophet of the airwaves», and exploits him week after week as long as it delivers ratings. Beale, a castaway without a compass, is unable to defend himself; his vertigo, which called for care, is transformed into merchandise. And when his numbers fall, that same logic that raised him orders him eliminated: the network orchestrates his murder live on air. Beale is not a villain —he is the victim of this file, a sick man whom his anomie makes vulnerable and whom others, out of their own ambitious deregulation, devour—. His figure thus illuminates the two faces of anomie set against each other: that of helplessness (Beale) and that of limitless greed (Christensen), and shows which one eats the other. In an anomic world, the one who loses the anchor finds no help, but someone ready to sell his shipwreck.
Howard Beale
// The crackNeither pure prophet, nor mere deluded patient
The crack with Beale is settling for half the truth. One reading enshrines him as a prophet —the man who spoke the truths no one else would— and forgets that he speaks from a mental breakdown that leaves him unable to hold anything up, easy prey for those who exploit him. The opposite reading reduces him to a sick man raving, discarding the real lucidity his tirades contain. Durkheim's anomie helps us hold both: Beale speaks truths and is falling apart, and the two are inseparable because they are born of the same vertigo —the loss of all anchoring—. The honest reading does not choose between venerating him or pitying him with disdain: it recognizes that his clairvoyance and his shipwreck are the same thing seen from its two faces. And it draws the uncomfortable lesson: that a society which applauds the man in free fall as spectacle, instead of lending him a hand, is as anomic as he is —only that its anomie, the anomie of greed, is more functional and therefore more lethal—. Beale needs neither an altar nor a diagnosis that dismisses him: he needs to be read as what he is, the human face of vertigo in a world that no longer knows how to anchor him.
That the last words about Beale in the film are that he was «the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings» is the definitive irony of Network: in an anomic world, not even a man's death escapes the metric. Durkheim would recognize the ending —when limitless greed meets compassless helplessness, the latter always pays the bill.
Vertigo calls for care, not a camera
Howard Beale matters because he shows the face of anomie we tend to forget: not that of the one who wants too much, but that of the one left without ground. In an age of vertiginous change —identities that dissolve, certainties that expire, frameworks of meaning that collapse from one day to the next—, Beale's helplessness is more common than it seems: it is that of anyone whose world caves in and who finds no norm to hold on to. The lesson of Durkheim, and of Network, is twofold. First, that anomic vertigo is neither freedom nor prophecy, even if it sometimes looks like them: it is a shipwreck that calls for care. And second, that a society is measured by what it does with its Beales —whether it lends them a hand or turns their fall into content—. The world chose the latter, and devoured him. To remember Howard Beale is to remember that behind every spectacularized collapse there is a lost human being, and that answering vertigo with a camera, instead of with help, is the coldest form of anomie.
Three key takeaways
- Howard Beale embodies the least-discussed face of Durkheim's anomie: not unleashed desire but vertigo, the helplessness of the individual when the framework of certainties that sustained him (career, identity, place) collapses all at once and nothing anchors him anymore.
- His lucidity and his shipwreck are inseparable: he speaks penetrating truths precisely because he has lost every mooring, but that same looseness is a castaway's, not an explorer's. Anomie can look like liberation, but it is solitude and a fall.
- He is the victim, not the villain: an anomic world does not help the one who loses the anchor, it turns him into spectacle and, when the ratings drop, eliminates him. He matters because vertigo calls for care, not a camera —and a society is measured by what it does with its Beales—.
Sources · further reading
- Durkheim, É. (1897). El suicidio. Alcan.
- Durkheim, É. (1893). La división del trabajo social. Alcan.
- Giddens, A. (1991). Modernidad e identidad del yo. Polity Press.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Howard Beale?
Howard Beale («—») es un villano de Network, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!
¿Por qué Howard Beale (—) se convierte en villano?
Howard Beale and Durkheim's anomie: the anchorman who, when the certainties that held him up collapse all at once, falls into a state without a compass where no norm anchors him. Anomie as vertigo, not as ambition.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Howard Beale?
El caso de Howard Beale se analiza desde la Anomia (Durkheim). Durkheim's anomie describes the vertigo of the individual when the framework of meaning that sustained him collapses all at once. Howard Beale, of Network, lives it live on air: a veteran anchorman who, after losing his job and his certainties, falls into a state where no norm anchors him anymore —at once lucid prophet and man in ruins, exploited by the network as spectacle—. Anomie as a fall, not as ambition.
