Oh Cinema: Films for the Trump Years, Part 20: The Social Network

I have long argued that The Social Network, one of the greatest films of the 2010's, is at its core a spiritual successor to Amadeus, one of the best movies of the 1980's. Both movies are "about" real people and events; in one case, Wolfgang Mozart and his relationship to a fellow musician, Antonio Salieri; in the other, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker, and the launching of Facebook specifically and the modern social media phenomen more generally. And in both cases, there is more than ample evidence to argue that both films are more fiction than fact, with their narratives and even the personalities of the characters as depicted bearing either little or zero resemblance to reality.

In the end, though, the discourse surrounding what is true or not true in either is immaterial. The narrative inaccuracies of the movies are real, but far less important than why those inaccuracies exist in the first place. Both movies use these people with famous names merely as jumping-off points to tell far deeper, more complicated, and ultimately, more real stories about human nature and how our greatest passions so easily couple themselves to our worst instincts, like jealousy, pride, and the desire for revenge. In the case of The Social Network, this goes even deeper in showing how profoundly these universal and timeless fallacies of the human spirit have defined our current digitial age. The foundational stones of the current cyberwars against human rights, democracy, and even truth itself that are increasingly consuming cultures and societies around the world were first laid in the early days of social media, and will forever be the central legacy of Mark Zuckerberg and his contemporaries, no matter how hard they try to deny it.

The tone for both the movie itself and its wealth of insight into our current digital sickness are set right from the start, in one of the all-time great opening scenes in film history. In every aspect of his performance, from his mannerisms and tone of voice to the rapid-fire way he shifts focus between and even within sentences, Jesse Eisenberg grips us right from his first line with what remains his best performance to date. Nitpicking in the worst way, refusing to engage seriously with any one topic, endlessly distracted, seemingly incapable of responding to anything with genuine, human emotion, focused on the exultation of himself to the exclusion of all else; Eisenberg isn't playing Zuckerberg so much as an internet comment thread that somehow obtained sentience.

Sorkin has always been known for sharply witty, back-and-forth dialogue, but he outdoes himself here with line after line that sets up the arc of the film's main character in ways that pay off beautifully by the end. And it all reflects the crux of what drives not just the movie, but so much of the worst that internet culture has brought out in us; an immature man-child feels wronged, and reacts out of basic instinct, resulting in a cascading series of hurt and damage that soon snowballs beyond anybody's ability to control or turn back.

As masterful as Eisenberg is, though, the scene does not work without Rooney Mara balancing out the walking 4Chan page in front of her with the film's most sympathetic and human character. For someone who, after this, only speaks in one other scene and is briefly glimpsed in just two others, Mara defines the contour and shape of the film just as much as Eisenberg. While the rest of the movie could be summed up with "dopey frat boys too smart for their own good try to get rich and one-up each other doing it," Mara gets two absolutely essential moments to speak with the dry, sober clarity of someone able to see beyond the petty childishness that drives so much of our online and civic culture in the age of social media. The movie famously begins with her saying the line "You're an asshole," and ends with someone else telling Zuckerberg, "You're not an asshole. You're just trying so hard to be." But if you've been paying attention to all that happens in between, by that point you'll realize that there is no sunlight to be found between those two things. Mara has Eisenberg pegged precisely from the start, and every hectic minute that follows only confirms her words.

She is the film's voice repeating that famous maxim that the anonymity offered by the internet allowed its worst corners to function as windows into the darkest, angriest parts of the human soul, where the quiet parts are not said out loud so much as they are shouted from atop the highest mountains. Sadly, what the past four years have shown us is how easily, given the right nudges, so many people won't even bother with the anonymous part; a depressing segment of the human race is willing to let any and all darkness in their hearts out into the sun if those in power send out the signal that it's ok to do so.

What internet culture is particularly shaped by goes far beyond generic human capacity for cruelty, though, since this is a world shaped specifically and overwhelmingly by men. Appropriately, The Social Network has all flavors of toxic masculinity dripping out the edges of every shot. Arnie Hammer perfectly embodies the classic jock in his dual portrayal of the Winklevoss twins, so accustomed to a life of every privilege imaginable that they never once thought to ask their girlfriends (who don't appear on-screen) if they were offended by the FaceMash scandal that the movie opens up with. Their plan for a glorified Harvard dating site might sound more refined than Zuckerberg's FaceMash idea, but only on a purely surface level; the attitude of general sexual objectification towards women driving both ideas is exactly the same.

One particular scene stands out to me in this regard. After hooking up with two ladies in a bar, Zuckerberg and Saverin return to their dorm to plan an expansion of Facebook's operations into more universities across the country. Zuckerberg, about as animate and passionate as he ever appears in the whole movie, hands out a bunch of goals with specific tasks for all the guys there. One of the women raises her hand and, voice filled with team spirit, asks what she and her friend can do. "Nothing," is Zuckerberg's response. It is a moment so on-the-nose that I have a hard time Fincher actually intended it as gender commentary, simply because it strikes me as far too direct for him.

The film even manages to have a character there to portray how snake-eats-tail and self-destructive these types of behaviors are. I am speaking, of course, of Justin Timberlake's endlessly entertaining and memorable performance as Sean Parker. Like Eisenberg, this is less of a take on a real person and more an embodiment of a character archetype, the Mephistopheles to Zuckerberg's socially-stunted Faust. They obviously couldn't have known this at the time, but his last, wild speech at the party (fueld in equal doses by cocaine and ego) essentially predicts the later rise of live-streaming, further reducing the lag time between something in the world happening and it making the internet rounds down to absolute zero. It is the epitome of the high-strung, move-fast-and-break-things mentality of Silicon Valley; nothing can be appreciated or enjoyed for more than a moment before every thought is directed to what comes next. Keep growing, keep expanding, keep breaking things, even though the list of things in our world left unbroken is vanishingly small.

Another scene with Timberlake's Parker that has only grown scarier in hindsight; in a part of the restaurant scene where Parker and Zuckerberg first meet, Timberlake describes in whispered tones how Zuckerberg will always have enemies of some sort, sniffing around for dirty laundry to be aired, and if all else fails, "they" will just make stuff up. Again, obviously Sorkin and Fincher did not have some mystical forknowledge of deep fakes, or of the rise of wholly invented, paranoid, reactionary conspiracy theories like Qanon. Obama Birtherism was still in comparative infancy at the time of the film's production, and for years afterward most of us remained content to assume it was a lone, fringe, freak idea that would soon fade. And despite this, the scene manages to feel like it could have been written out, word-for-word, just last week.

For me, The Social Network encapsulates so much of what helped give birth to the modern reactionary movement, of which Trump is merely one, particularly repugnant symptom. The fight against these dark tendencies within ourselves is the battle of a lifetime and it will not be over anytime soon. This one era of darkness is, mercifully, about to come to a close, but the next is always waiting, just around the corner, if we do not remain active and vigilant.

The Trump years are over, and so Films for the Trump Years has come to its end as well. But the fight goes on.

Death to Fascism. Life to Not-Fascism.

-Noah Franc

Previously on Films for the Trump Years:

Part 1- Selma

Part 2- Good Night, and Good Luck

Part 3- 13th

Part 4- Get Out

Part 5- Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral

Part 6- The Big Short

Part 7- Human Flow

Part 8- Moonlight/Winter's Bone