(Spoilery) Thoughts on The Social Network
I have a bit of a weakness for films and documentaries about corporate mendacity, but, like a true Sorkin fangirl, would pretty much go and see anything he writes. The Social Network, then, hit at least two of my buttons.
Given that so much of the exposition happens around a sequence of boardroom tables, during a succession of depositions, and that most of the characters are desperately unlikeable, it was one of the most engaging films I've seen this year.
I did find it strangely un-Sorkin-like in tone, and the righteousness of The West Wing, and (to a greater extent) Studio 60, is largely missing. What Sorkin does write beautifully, though, is relationships between men, and the central love/friendship triangle is exquisitely rendered. You can almost taste the bile rising in his throat when Eduardo Saverin realises that he has been comprehensively fucked over by Mark Zuckerberg, in favour of Justin Timberlake's truly hideous Sean Parker.
There has been much commentary around the fact that facts and individuals have been blurred and elided in the script, and there are certainly other views of the central characters than Sorkin's. Parker, particularly, is portrayed as a pretentious, malicious playboy, whose chief value to Zuckerberg is his rolodex and ability to spout business truisms. A recent Vanity Fair piece has him as a renaissance man, whose genius and insight transcend disciplines. The truth, probably, is somewhere in the middle.
The film's opening sequences feature Zuckerberg insulting his girlfriend's school (Boston University); blogging about her stupidity, her ethnicity, and her breast size; blogging about creating a website to compare female undergraduates with farm animals; and then creating a website to allow male Harvard students to compare the relative attractiveness of female undergraduates. This latter sequence is intercut with scenes of the 'Fuck Bus' (bringing attractive female undergrads from other schools) arriving for a final club party, and then women kissing each other, and dancing in their underwear for the benefit of the privileged male club members.
Sorkin acknowledges the misogyny contained within the film.
More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80's. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)
And this very disturbing attitude toward women isn't just confined to the guys who can't get dates.
It isn't. Sean Parker, who brings a (literally nameless) Victoria's Secret model with him to a meeting in a club with Zuckerberg, has a fondness for teenage interns, and for bringing teenage girls back to Zuckerberg's house to take drugs and 'party'. There are no young women working for the exciting technology start-up, except for the interns Parker has sex with, but plenty to stand around in their underwear whooping and hollering while attractive young men write code. Even Eduardo Saverin, the nicest man in the film, is given a bunny-boiling girlfriend. Saverin is clearly intended to be a good guy, but the best he does is asking Sean Parker how old the stoned girls on their sofa are.
The only substantial female character is the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg in the opening moment of the film, and it is clear that Zuckerberg is motivated by winning her back to expand Facebook beyond Harvard and into Boston U and other schools. The final scene, where Zuckerberg is told that he 'isn't an asshole' by an attractive woman on his legal team, and tries to friend his ex-girlfriend on Facebook, and then mashes F5 over and over again, is kind of heartbreaking, but it's also deeply stalkerish.
The fact that Sorkin acknowledges that the film blurs reportage with fiction, though, makes the fact that the misogyny of its central characters goes unchallenged, more unpalatable. In the middle of a film that generated its dramatic tension from the reading and misreading of relationships, there was space to talk about women. That no one made the choice to do so is a disappointment.
Given that so much of the exposition happens around a sequence of boardroom tables, during a succession of depositions, and that most of the characters are desperately unlikeable, it was one of the most engaging films I've seen this year.
I did find it strangely un-Sorkin-like in tone, and the righteousness of The West Wing, and (to a greater extent) Studio 60, is largely missing. What Sorkin does write beautifully, though, is relationships between men, and the central love/friendship triangle is exquisitely rendered. You can almost taste the bile rising in his throat when Eduardo Saverin realises that he has been comprehensively fucked over by Mark Zuckerberg, in favour of Justin Timberlake's truly hideous Sean Parker.
There has been much commentary around the fact that facts and individuals have been blurred and elided in the script, and there are certainly other views of the central characters than Sorkin's. Parker, particularly, is portrayed as a pretentious, malicious playboy, whose chief value to Zuckerberg is his rolodex and ability to spout business truisms. A recent Vanity Fair piece has him as a renaissance man, whose genius and insight transcend disciplines. The truth, probably, is somewhere in the middle.
The film's opening sequences feature Zuckerberg insulting his girlfriend's school (Boston University); blogging about her stupidity, her ethnicity, and her breast size; blogging about creating a website to compare female undergraduates with farm animals; and then creating a website to allow male Harvard students to compare the relative attractiveness of female undergraduates. This latter sequence is intercut with scenes of the 'Fuck Bus' (bringing attractive female undergrads from other schools) arriving for a final club party, and then women kissing each other, and dancing in their underwear for the benefit of the privileged male club members.
Sorkin acknowledges the misogyny contained within the film.
More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80's. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)
And this very disturbing attitude toward women isn't just confined to the guys who can't get dates.
It isn't. Sean Parker, who brings a (literally nameless) Victoria's Secret model with him to a meeting in a club with Zuckerberg, has a fondness for teenage interns, and for bringing teenage girls back to Zuckerberg's house to take drugs and 'party'. There are no young women working for the exciting technology start-up, except for the interns Parker has sex with, but plenty to stand around in their underwear whooping and hollering while attractive young men write code. Even Eduardo Saverin, the nicest man in the film, is given a bunny-boiling girlfriend. Saverin is clearly intended to be a good guy, but the best he does is asking Sean Parker how old the stoned girls on their sofa are.
The only substantial female character is the girlfriend that dumps Zuckerberg in the opening moment of the film, and it is clear that Zuckerberg is motivated by winning her back to expand Facebook beyond Harvard and into Boston U and other schools. The final scene, where Zuckerberg is told that he 'isn't an asshole' by an attractive woman on his legal team, and tries to friend his ex-girlfriend on Facebook, and then mashes F5 over and over again, is kind of heartbreaking, but it's also deeply stalkerish.
The fact that Sorkin acknowledges that the film blurs reportage with fiction, though, makes the fact that the misogyny of its central characters goes unchallenged, more unpalatable. In the middle of a film that generated its dramatic tension from the reading and misreading of relationships, there was space to talk about women. That no one made the choice to do so is a disappointment.