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AN ANALYSIS
BY:
MIFTAHUSSURUR ABDULLAH
NIM : 321510058
First of all, let us pray and thanks onto our God, Allah SWT who has giving us some
mercys and blessings so i can finish this analysis as good as possible. This analysis is
done in order to pass the final examination of Linguistic in the third semester of English
Education Department at Fakultas Pendidikan Bahasa dan Seni, Institut Keguruan dan
Ilmu Pendidikan (IKIP PGRI) Pontianak.
1. Aria Djalil as a Chairman of Sinka English Training Centre, Institut Keguruan dan
Ilmu Pendidikan, Pontianak.
2. Evi Novitasari, M.Pd as the lecture of Linguistic of English Education
Department, Institut Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, Pontianak.
3. Ryan Cipta Julianda as our supervisor of Sinka English Training Centre, Institut
Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan, pontianak.
Finally i can arranged my analysis, i do hope it can be useful for reader in this
world and here after. I realize that i can not avoid the mistake, so i ask appologize
because has not be perfect, i do hope you can share or advice me in order to this article
can be clear and useful.
Januari, 2017
Singkawang
i
ABSTRACT
In this study, the writer analyzed article under the title A MORPHOLOGICAL
ANALYSIS OF MORPHEME IN THE ARTICLES BY Nicholas Barber ”. In this
analysis, I have tried to analyze the morpgologycal process which includes free and
bound morphemes based on their form, distribution, and function of morphemes occurred
in chapter one of of “THE ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ 40-YEARS-OLD FILM THAT
PREDICTED THE FUTURE”.
ii
Table of Context
Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................ i
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... ii
Chapter 2
Conclussion ................................................................................................................................... 29
Reference ...................................................................................................................................... 30
Appendix A ................................................................................................................................... 31
iii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Morphemes are commonly classified into free morphemes (which can occur as
separate words) and bound morphemes (which can't stand alone as words). Morphemes
can be divided into two general classes. Free morphemes are those which can stand alone
as words of a language, whereas bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes.
Most roots in English are free morphemes (for example, dog, syntax, and to), although
there are a few cases of roots (like -gruntle as in disgruntle) that must be combined with
another bound morpheme in order to surface as an acceptable lexical item.
Free morphemes can be further subdivided into content words and function words.
Content words, as their name suggests, carry most of the content of a sentence. Function
words generally perform some kind of grammatical role, carrying little meaning of their
own. One circumstance in which the distinction between function words and content
words is useful is when one is inclined to keep wordiness to a minimum; for example,
when drafting a telegram, where every word costs money. In such a circumstance, one
tends to leave out most of the function words (like to, that, and, there, some, and but),
concentrating instead on content words to convey the gist of the message. (Steven Weisler
and Slavoljub P. Milekic, Theory of Language. MIT Press, 1999).
1
1.2.The Problems Of Analysis
1. What is Morpheme?
2. How many types of Morpheme?
3. What is the most frequent morpheme in the article?
This theses is expected to give some significance for readers. They are:
1. To add the reader knowledge about word formation about free and bound
morphemes in the article.
2. To be reference for further studies concern morphology.
1.5.Scope of the Analysis
This Analysis is occured on the morpholiical rocess of free and bound
morphemes form, distribution, function and also the number of affixes that occured in
Nicholas Barber’s Article.
2
CHAPTERII
2.1. Review of Related Literature
For supporting this analysis, i asked to the other students for those who has done, and
theses analysis which were done by previous generation. They are :
1. Sri Suryanigsih (2015), her theses entitled A MORPHOLOGYCAL ANALYSIS OF
AFFIXATION IN THE NOVEL “HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S
STONE”.
2. Tri Wahyuningsih( 2008 ), in her thesis entitled, An Analysis Of Slang Used In
Eminem’s Hip-Hop Music. After she had collected the data, she found that The
word formation of slang can be in the form of derivation, compound, clipping or back
formation, acronym, blending, proper name, and imitation. The meaning of slang can
be denotative and connotative.
3. Chandra Fauzi (2015), in his thesis entitled, Morphological Analysis on the Word
Formation in the Selected Eminem’s Rap Songs. In the analysis, after he had
analyzed the data, he found that the forms of slangs in the songs are abbreviation,
facetious, mispronunciations, shortened forms, interjection, figurative expression, and
nick name (calling person). There are some forms that cannot be found in the songs,
they are interjection, and figurative expression form.
3
2.2.THEORITICAL ANALYSIS
2.2.1. Brief Study of Morphology
A. Morphology
B. Type of Morphemes
According to Prof. Argenis A. Zapata (2007), in his article “The smallest units of
language that have a meaning or a grammatical function and form words or parts of
words are called morphemes
In linguistic terminology the minimal parts of words that we have analyzed above
are called morphemes. Morphemes come in different varieties, depending on whether
they are: free or bound and inflectional or derivational.
B.1. Free morphemes
Free morphemes can stand by themselves (i.e. they are what what we
conventionally call words) and either tell us something about the world (free lexical
morphemes) or play a role in grammar (free grammatical morphemes). Man, pizza, run
and happy are instances of free lexical morphemes, while and, but, the and to are
examples for free grammatical morphemes. It is important to note the difference between
morphemes and phonemes: morphemes are the minimal meaning-bearing elements that a
word consists of and are principally independent from sound. For example, the word
zebra ( ziːbr ) consists of six phones and two syllables, but it contains only a single
morpheme. Ze- and -bra are not independent meaning-bearing components of the word
zebra, making it monomorphemic. (Bra as a free morpheme does in fact mean something
in English, but this meaning is entirely unrelated to the -bra in zebra.)
4
B.2. Bound morphemes
Not all morphemes can be used independently, however. Some need to be bound
to a free morpheme. In English the information “plural number” is attached to a word that
refers to some person, creature, concept or other nameable entity (in other words, to a
noun) when encoded in a morpheme and cannot stand alone. Similarly the morpheme -er,
used to describe “someone who performs a certain activity” (e.g. a dancer, a teacher or a
baker) cannot stand on its own, but needs to be attached to a free morpheme (a verb in
this case). Bound morphemes come in two varieties, derivational and inflectional, the
core difference between the two being that the addition of derivational morphemes creates
new words while the addition of inflectional words merely changes word form.
B.3. Derivational morphemes
The signature quality of derivational morphemes is that they derive new words. In
the following examples, derivational morphemes are added to produce new words which
are derived from the parent word.
happy – happiness – unhappiness
frost – defrost – defroster
examine – examination – reexamination
In all cases the derived word means something different than the parent and the
word class may change with each derivation. As demonstrated in the examples above,
sometimes derivation will not cause the world class to change, but in such a case the
meaning will usually be significantly different from that of the parent word, often
expressing opposition or reversal.
probable – improbable
visible – invisible
tie – untie
create – recreate
Independently of whether or not word class changes and how significantly
meaning is affected, derivation always creates (derives) new words from existing ones,
while inflection is limited to changing word form.
B.4. Inflectional morphemes
Inflection (the process by which inflectional morphemes are attached to words)
allows speakers to morphologically encode grammatical information. That may sound
much more complicated than it really is – recall the example we started out with.
The word girls consists of two morphemes :
5
a. the free lexical morpheme girl that describes a young female human being
b. the bound inflectional morpheme -s that denotes plural number
Examples for the morphological encoding of other grammatical categories are
tense (past tense -ed as in walked), aspect (progressive aspect as in walking), case
(genitive case as in Mike‘s car) and person (third person -s as in Mike drives a Toyota).
You are likely to notice that
a. overall, English grammar has fairly few inflections and
b. some inflectional endings can signify different things and more than one piece of
grammatical information at once.
The first point can easily be demonstrated by comparing English with German,
which makes more use of inflection. Compare the following two pairs of sentences.
Der Mann sah den Hund
Den Hund sah der Mann
vs.
The man saw the dog
The dog saw the man
If you focus on the meaning of the two German sentences you’ll see that it does
not change, even though we’ve changed the word order. The man is still the one who sees
the dog, not the other way around. By contrast, the English expression changes its
meaning from the first to the second sentence.
Why is this the case? In the German example the definite article is inflected for
accusative case (den Hund), telling us who exactly did what to whom. This allows us to
play around with the word order without changing the meaning of the sentence. English
gives us no way of doing the same. We are forced to stick to a fixed word order due to a
lack of case inflection (except for personal pronouns). Languages such as Latin that
indicate a high degree of grammatical information via inflection (so-called synthetic
languages) generally have a freer word order than analytic languages like English which
have only reasonably very few inflections and rely on word order to signal syntactic
relations (another popular example for a strongly analytic language is Chinese).
6
2.2.2. The Morphological Process
A. Free Morpheme
According to George Yule (2006), that is morphemes that can stand by themselves as
single words, for example, open and tour.What we have described as free morphemes fall
into two categories.
1. Lexical morphemes
Lexical morphemes are that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that we think
of as the words that carry the “content” of the messages we convey. And some examples
are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, and break.
2. Functional morphemes
Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. This set consists
largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions,
articles and pronouns. Examples are and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the,
that, it, them.
B. Bound Morphemes
Bound morphemes is morphemes that can not stand alone.and it divided into two
types:
1. Devirational Morphemes
We change the grammatical category or the meaning of the word.Examples are re-
,de-,un,-ness,-ly etc.
2. Inflectional morpheme
We don’t change the meaning or grammatical category of the word with these.We
use them to mark plurality, tense, agreement, case and etc.
7
CHAPTER III
There are many lexical used in the article of The ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ 40-YEARS-
OLD FILM THAT PREDICTED THE FUTURE”. There are some of the lexical words
found :
NO LEXICAL
8 79 Motion Noun
8
16 87 Notice
9
38 Dog Noun 109 Result
10
60 Honest Adj 131 Time
11
He's always meddling in (= trying to influence) other people's
affairs.
What I do in my spare time is my affair (= only involves me) .
e. Afternoon (noun) : the period which starts at about twelve o'clock or after the meal
in the middle of the day and ends at about six o'clock or when the sun goes down.
It was a sunny afternoon.
She works three afternoons a week at the library.
It was on a Saturday afternoon.
f. Ahead (adv) : in front
The road ahead is very busy.
g. Airwave (noun) : the radio waves used for broadcasting radio and
television programmes, or more generally, radio or television
broadcasting time
The new series of Batman will be on the airwaves at 6 pm every
Tuesday.
h. Announce (verb) : To state or make known, especially publicly
They announced the death of their mother in the local paper.
She announced the winner of the competition to an excited audience.
i. Ask(verb) : to put a question to someone, or to request an answer from someone
She asked me a question.
Can I ask a favour of you?
12
l. Best (adj) : of the highest quality, or being the most suitable, pleasing or effective
type of thing or person
This is the best meal I've ever had.
He's one of our best students.
Are you sure this is the best way of doing it?
m. Bile (noun) : a bitter yellow liquid produced by the liver which helps to
digest fat
Meat-eaters must produce extensive bile acids in their intestines to
properly digest the meat that they eat.
n. Black (adj) : being the darkest colour there is, like the colour of coal or of a very dark
night
black shoes
o. Brain (noun) : the organ inside the head that controls thought, memory,
feelings and activity
Doctors tried desperately to reduce the swelling in her brain.
The accident left him with permanent brain damage .
p. Breakdown (noun) : a failure to work or be successful
I had a breakdown (= my car stopped working) in the middle of
the road.
Both sides blamed each other for the breakdown of talks.
q. Busy (adj) : If you are busy, you are working hard, or giving your attention
to a particular thing
Mum was busy in the kitchen.
The kids are busy with their homework.
r. Little (adjective) : small in size or amount
It came in a little box.
a little dog/nose/room
A little old man came into the shop.
He gave a little smile.
13
s. Look (verb) : to direct your eyes in order to see
Look! There's grandma.
They looked at the picture and laughed.
Look at all this rubbish on the floor.
She looked up from her book and smiled at me.
t. Mad (adj) : OFFENSIVE mentally ill, or unable to behave in a reasonable way; insane
I think I must be going mad.
Do I look like some mad old woman in this hat?
u. Man (noun) : an adult male human being
a young/tall man
men and women
the man in the green jacket
v. Media (noun) : newspapers, magazines, radio and television considered
as a group
the local/national media
media attention/coverage/hype/reports
The issue has been much discussed in the media.
w. Mind (Noun) : the part of a person that makes it possible for a person to think, feel
emotions and understand things.
Her mind was full of what had happened the night before, and she just wasn't
concentrating.
Of course I'm telling the truth - you've got such a suspicious mind!
x. Moral (adj) : relating to the standards of good or bad behaviour, fairness, honesty, etc.
which each person believes in, rather than to laws
It's her moral obligation to tell the police what she knows.
It is not part of a novelist's job to make a moral judgment .
y. Motion (noun) : the act or process of moving, or a particular action or
movement
The violent motion of the ship upset his stomach.
He rocked the cradle with a gentle backwards and forwards
motion.
14
z. Nation (noun) : a country, especially when thought of as a large group of
people living in one area with their own government, language, traditions,
etc
All the nations of the world will be represented at the conference.
The Germans, as a nation, are often thought to be well organized.
B. Functional Morphemes
NO FUNCTIONAL
1 Pre.A 15 Pronoun
A Her
2 Prep 16 Pronun
After In
3 Prep 17 Conj
Amongw Or
4 Prep.A 18 Prep
An Of
5 Conj 19 Prep
And On
6 Prep 20 Pronoun
As She
7 Prep 21 Conj
At Than
8 Prep 22 Conj
Before That
9 Prep 23 Prep.A
Between The
10 Conj 24 Pronoun
But They
11 Prep 25 Prep
By This
12 Prep 26 Prep
For To
13 Prep 27 Pronoun
From Who
14 Pronoun 28 Prep
He With
This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns. There are many Functional used in this
article of ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ 40-YEARS-OLD FILM THAT PREDICTED THE
FUTURE”. These are some of the lexical words found:
16
Is it Tuesday or Wednesday today?
You can pay now or when you come back to pick up the paint.
h. In ( preposition ) : inside or towards the inside of a container, place or area, or
surrounded or closed off by something
Example:
Put the milk back in the fridge when you've finished with it.
Is Mark still in bed?
I got stuck in a traffic jam for half an hour.
17
m. From ( preposition ) :sed to show the place where someone or something starts
Example:
What time does the flight from Amsterdam arrive?
The wind is coming from the north.
She sent me a postcard from Majorca.
n. For (preposition) :. intended to be given to
Example:There's a phone message for you.
I'd better buy something for the new baby.
There's a prize for the fastest three runners in each category.
o. He ( pronoun ) : used to refer to a man, boy or male animal that has already been
mentioned
Example:
Don't ask Andrew, he won't know.
There's no need to be frightened - he's a very friendly dog
p. She ( pronoun ) :used to refer to a woman, girl or female animal that has already been
mentioned
Example:
I asked my mother if she'd lend me some money, but she said no
r. They ( pronoun ): used as the subject of a verb to refer to people, animals or things
already mentioned or, more generally, to a group of people not clearly described
Example:
I've known the Browns for a long time. They're very pleasant
people. Where are my glasses? They were on the table just now.
18
s. It ( pronoun) : (as subject or object) the thing, animal or situation which has already
been mentioned
Example:
"Where's my pen? It was on my desk a minute ago." "You left it by the phone."
f. Before (preposition) : at or during a time earlier than (the thing mentioned)
You should always wash your hands before meals.
Before leav ing he said goodbye to each of them.
She's always up before dawn.
g. After (preposition) : following in time, place or order
Shall we go for a walk after breakfast?
Some people believe in life after death .
Her name came after mine on the list.
h. Between (preposition) : in or into the space which separates two places, people or
objects
The town lies halfway between Rome and Florence.
Standing between the two adults was a small child.
i. Among (preposition) : in the middle of or surrounded by other things
I saw a few familiar faces among the crowd.
Rescue teams searched among the wreckage for survivors.
j. An (determiner) : used instead of 'a' when the following word begins with a vowel
sound.
an easy question
an interesting story
an orange an honour
k. As (Preposition) : used to describe the purpose or quality of someone or something
She works as a waitress.
It could be used as evidence against him.
The news came as quite a shock to us.
I meant it as a joke.
l. Than (preposition) : used to join two parts of a comparison
My son is a lot taller than my daughter.
You always walk faster than I do!
19
You're earlier than usual.
m. Who (pronoun) : used especially in questions as the subject or object of a verb, when
asking which person or people, or when asking what someone's name is
Who did this?
Who's she?
Who are all those people?
n. This (determiner) : used for a person, object, idea, etc. to show which one is referred
to
Can you sign this form here for me?
These books are too heavy for me to carry.
o. That(determiner) : used to refer to a person, object, idea, etc. which is separated from
the speaker by space or time
I've never liked that cousin of hers.
Who's that? Is that the girl you told me about?
How much are those shoes?
3.2. BOUND MORPHEMES
NO DERIVATIONAL
1 ambiti-ous 23 own-er
2 argue-ment 24 particular-ly
3 beauti-ful 25 perfect-ly
4 briliant-ly 26
5 care-er 27 podcast-er
6 corporat-ion 28 post-er
7 cragg-y 29 predict-ion
8 deep-ly 30 produce-r
9 diabolic-al 31 quest-ion
10 en-courages 32 re-act-ion
11 Ex-act-ly 33 real-ity
12 fiction-al 34 re-brands
13 foot-age 35 Repeated-ly
20
14 found-er 36 re-watch
15 funni-er 37 searing-ly
16 high-er 38 sharp-er
17 immut-able 39 special-ist
18 inexorab-ly 40 spring-er
19 Ir-responsibil-ity 41 view-er
20 late-r 42 vote-r
21 outrage-ous 43 wild-est
22 ambiti-ous 44 write-r
life, especially if you continue to get better jobs and earn more money
He's hoping for a career in the police force/ as a police officer.
F. Corporation (noun) : a large company or group of companies that is
21
I'm deeply grateful to you.
He found her comments deeply irritating/offensive.
We don't want to get too deeply involved with these people.
I. Diabolical (adj) : bad or shocking
a fictional story
fictional characters
M. Footage (noun) : (a piece of) film especially one showing an event
an immutable law
Some people regard grammar as an immutable set of rules.
R. Inexorably (adj) : continuing without any possibility of being stopped
These events led inexorably to war.
22
S. Irresponsibility (Adj) : impossible to correct or return to a previously existing
situation or condition
It was an act of gross irresponsibility to leave someone who wasn't properly
trained in charge of the machine.
T. Later (adv) : at a time in the future or after the time you have mentioned
23
3.2.b. Inflectional Mophemes
NO INFLECTIONAL
1 admit-s 40 Opens
2 Airwaves 41 Oscars
3 announce-s 42 people-s
4 appall-ed 43 plummet-ing
5 articulat-ing 44 podcaster-s
6 articulat-ing 45 polician-s
7 audienc-es 46 posthum-ous
8 award-ed 47 producers
9 backtrack-s 48 programme's
10 Believed 49 puff-ing
11 buzz-ing 50 quote-s
12 chatt-ing 51 Ranked
13 come-s 52 rat-ings
14 Conceits 53 rat-ings
15 corporation-s 54 rebrand-s
16 create-d 55 Releas-ed
17 create-s 56 rewatch-ing
18 critic's 57 Ripping
19 culture's 58 runn-ing
20 Directed 59 shack-ing
21 encourage-s 60 shock-ing
22 exploit-ed 61 sophisticat-ed
23 fever-ed 62 stand-s
24 Films 63 station-'s
25 fulminate-s 64 subject-ed
26 Guilds 65 tempt-ing
27 gush-ing 66 term-s
28 imagine-d 67 think-s
29 imagin-ing 68 thrill-ed
30 Institute's 69 time-s
31 intoduc-ing 70 today-'s
32 invent-s 71 viewer-s
33 law-s 72 voter-s
34 miss-ing 73 warn-ed
24
35 mutter-ed 74 weeks'
36 natgion-s 75 what-'s
37 network's 76 winn-ing
38 night-'s 77 year-s
39 Nominated
25
Carlos was awarded first prize in the essay competition.
The jury awarded libel damages of £100 000.
H. Believed (verb) : to think that something is true, correct or real
26
The Bible says that God created the world.
He created a wonderful meal from very few ingredients.
It's important to create a good impression when you meet a new
client.
O. Creates (verb): to show that you are angry
If she sees you with an ice cream she'll only start creating.
P. Directed (verb) : To be in charge of a film or play and tell the actors how to play
their parts.
'Jaws' was directed by Steven Spielberg.
Criticism was directed against/at the manufacturers of the product.
Q. Encourages (verb) : to make someone more likely to do something, or to make
something more likely to happen
The council encourages the development of the property for both employment
and recreation.
R. Exploited (verb) : to use something for advantage
We need to make sure that we exploited our resources as fully as possible.
Laws exist to stop companies exploited their employees.
S. Fevered (adj) : unnaturally excited or active
The film is clearly the product of a fevered imagination .
The nurse wiped my fevered brow.
T. Films (verb ) : to record moving pictures with a camera, usually to make a
a tempting offer
That pie looks very tempting.
[ + to infinitive ] It's tempting to blame television for the increase
in crime.
V. Gushing (adj) : expressing a positive feeling, especially praise, in such a
27
[ + object + to infinitive ] We were warned not to eat the fish which
might give us a slight stomach upset.
[ + object + ( that ) ] Have you warned them (that) there will be an
extra person for dinner?
28
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSSION
Based on the analysis of THE ARTICLE The ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ 40-YEARS-OLD FILM THAT
PREDICTED THE FUTURE”, I would like to explain some conclusion as follows:
29
REFERENCE
30
APPENDIX A.
By Nicholas Barber
30 November 2016
When Network was released in November 40 years ago, the poster warned audiences
to prepare themselves “for a perfectly outrageous motion picture”. The film was written by
Paddy Chayevsky (Marty, The Hospital) and directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day
Afternoon), both of whom made their names in television in the 1950s, and both of whom
believed that the industry, and the world, had been in decline ever since.
Network was their furious howl of protest. It was a triumphant black comedy,
winning four Oscars, being nominated for two more, and going on to be held in ever
higher acclaim. In 2006, the Writers Guilds of America chose Chayevksy’s screenplay as
one of the 10 best in cinema history. Last year, BBC Culture’s critics’ poll of the 100 best
American films ranked Network at 73.“The scary thing is that even Network’s wildest
flights of fancy no longer seem outrageous at all”
31
airwaves”, and encourages him to spout whatever bile comes gushing from his fevered
brain.
Max Schumacher (William Holden), the craggy president of the station’s news
division, is appalled that Howard’s nervous breakdown is being exploited for the sake of
ratings. But an ambitious producer, Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway), creates a glitzy
new format for him - half current-affairs strand, half variety show - complete with Sybil
the Soothsayer, who predicts the next night’s news, and a gossip specialist called Miss
Mata Hari. Her argument is that while Howard may not be particularly coherent, or
particularly sane, he is “articulating the popular rage”. His catchphrase now stands as
number 19 in the American Film Institute’s list of best movie quotes: “I’m mad as hell,
and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
‘Like prophecy’
The film was prescient in other areas, too. After Howard goes on air to insist that
American businesses should be owned by Americans, he is summoned to a boardroom by
the owner of UBS, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), and subjected to a fire-and-brimstone
sermon on global capitalism. “You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and
peoples,” fulminates Jensen. “There are no nations. There are no peoples ... There is only
IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the
nations of the world today. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined
by the immutable by-laws of business.” Perfectly outrageous? Over the top? On the
contrary. In 2016, Beatty’s economic analysis doesn’t prompt any reaction more extreme
than a nod and a muttered, “Sad, but true.”
32
But the most prophetic part of Network has little to do with Howard. Running
alongside his story, there is a sharper, funnier subplot concerning Diana’s other
brainwave: The Mao Tse-Tung Hour. Her idea is a weekly drama series about a real
revolutionary group, the Ecumenical Liberation Army, which incorporates footage of
genuine crimes committed by the ELA itself. In short: Diana invents modern reality
television.
Diana has her idea when she sees some black-and-white footage of an ELA bank
robbery - footage that was shot by the robbers themselves. At first, she is amazed. “You
mean, they actually shot this film while they were ripping off the bank,” she marvels.
Nowadays, though... well, which terrorist cell bothers to commit any crime without
filming it? Which television station or social media outlet would hesitate to show such
amateur footage? And the crazy notion that shots of a violent crime scene could be
spliced into a weekly television docudrama? It didn’t stop American Crime Story: The
People v OJ Simpson winning four Emmy Awards. Network repeatedly tells us that
Diana is a diabolical femme fatale and a soulless, ambition-crazed moral vacuum.
Actually, she is just ahead of her time.
Indeed, if several of the characters and concepts in Network have made the
journey from ‘outrageous’ to ‘ordinary’ over the past 40 years, Diana has gone further:
she now looks a lot like the film’s heroine. It’s true that she is happy to profit from
Howard’s instability and, when his ratings founder again, she has no qualms about
arranging his assassination. But, well, nobody’s perfect.
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a relief when she gets to share a scene with her fiery contact at the ELA, a Communist
guerilla named Laureen Hobbs (Marlene Warfield).
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