Network

In my graduate class on Monday, I showed the cartoon at left while talking about the molecular basis of prion disease. I asked the students whether they had heard of the phrase "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Most had. When I asked whether they knew where it came from, I was met with silence. Well, I explained the plot of the film Network, from which the phrase comes. Here is an excerpt from the film (the phrase is actually "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore," but even in the film it starts to mutate). How sweet that a meme from a film about the mass media has entered into the mass consciousness even though the original source has faded into media arcana. It's a sentiment that is as germane today as it was when the film was released in 1976.