At the end of The Social Network, a new indie flick that no one has ever heard of, I turned to my friend, and out of every intelligent comment I could have made, I said, “There was so much testosterone in the movie that I feel fucked six ways sideways.”
There’s a bad joke the boys in middle school used to tell: “It’s not rape if you’re willing!” The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, brought me back to that “joke,” to the boys who made the joke, and to the girls who laughed because they didn’t know what else to do. Rich white straight men are the subject of the movie, and rich white straight men made it (both The Social Network and the social network). The portrayal of women is inaccurate, insulting, and short-sighted; better put: “intelligent men who change the world wear their blind spots like burkas,” says Julie Greicius, professional hulahooper and Rumpus senior literary editor. Men do cocaine lines off breasts while starting a billion-dollar revolution. In a peripheral shot, girls do bong hits while boys change the entire social structure. The scenes to which I’m referring, and those like them, take up no more than 15 minutes of the movie. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy.
When I asked Stephen Elliott if he loved the movie, he said, “Oh yeah, I loved it.” And I said, “I wanted to have sex with it.” Every man wants to be The Social Network, and every woman wants to be with The Social Network. This is our world. This is our sick, sad world. And I was into it, in a tasteless, shameful, twisted take on “it’s not rape if you’re willing.”
In his essay “The Crack Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “. . . the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” One could, for example, want a penis and want to be so far away from one at the same time. The men behind the movie and the movement: their confidence, their determination, their ego; I was with them. But of course, if The Social Network’s point of view is correct, I can never be with them. I’m someone who dreams as big as Zuckerberg but lacks the penis required for social revolution. Women are there to blow the dick, excite the dick, but not wield the dick.
Sorkin’s writing is quick and sharp and endlessly fascinating. I’ve never tried cocaine, but I’ve never wanted cocaine more or become so convinced someone dropped it into my popcorn. I was thrilled; kids, kids my age changed the world (kids similar to those in the science-fiction book Ender’s Game, which is Zuckerberg’s favorite book as listed on his Facebook profile). Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. As the unstoppable Justin Timberlake playing Napster co-founder Sean Parker says, “We lived on farms. We lived in cities. And now we live on the Internet.” And it’s all thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues/drinking buddies/circle-jerkers.
My friend with whom I saw the movie, journalist and dick-owner Brenden [last name redacted], reminded me that a woman, Erica Albright (pun intended?), bookended the movie; in the first scene she breaks up with him, in the next scene he’s creating what will be Facebook, and in the last scene (spoiler alert) he’s alone and waiting for her to confirm his friendship request. I asked Brenden, “How is this a consolation?” I don’t want to be the girl who prompted the man to start Facebook. I want to be the man who started Facebook. Is it empowering that Zuckerberg’s fictional ex-girlfriend gets the final word at the end of the movie by not giving him the final word? I don’t care. She only has a few words in the movie anyway.
“Good social change is fueled by jealousy,” a man once said to me (Stephen Elliott, an hour ago). Sorkin writes this story: Zuckerberg’s social revolution was fueled by wanting to get (or get back at) the girl. As for the fake girlfriend who drives Zuckerberg, it doesn’t matter if she’s fake because it seems undisputed that the point of forming Facebook was to be popular and get laid–to have what they didn’t have and couldn’t buy. They had to create it. “They”? The men. The move from jealousy to Darwinian-sized social upheaval is all movie magic–in this movie. But here I am, writing this, fueled by jealousy and, maybe, sure, why not, penis envy. Perhaps I’m conflating the fictional Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker’s testosterone with confidence. On why The New Yorker, etc. publishes more men than women, even though statistically more women buy/read books and there are more women in MFA programs than men, Lorrie Moore said, “Men have more courage to send their stories to The New Yorker.” Confidence. Courage. Cock.
I don’t need a dick to make it in this world, but that’s the story this movie sells and that’s why I bought the ticket. (It’s also the story of my life in the publishing world; memoir forthcoming from No Such Press, 20TK.) While I want little to do with their cocks, I do covet and need the Zuckerberg/Parker confidence and courage. What men! What brave and ambitious and cock-sure men! I won’t have sex with you, but please let me conspire with you. (Goddamn it, Justin Timberlake, I would totally have sex with you and you know it.)
When I wrote to The Rumpus advice columnist, Dear Sugar, about not being able to achieve the revolution-ensuing success I expect of myself, Sugar said, “The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at 26, when really it takes most writers so much longer to get there. . . . You loathe yourself, and yet you’re consumed by the grandiose ideas you have about your own importance. You’re up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.” But! These men were boys (still are)! They were successful at 23, and why? Because they were consumed by the grandiose ideas they had about their own importance. They’re too high up, but it works for them because they’re not simultaneously down too low. They don’t loathe themselves; instead they conveniently loathe “that bitch” who broke Mark’s never fully-formed heart or that “groupie”-turned-girlfriend setting the CFO’s bed on fire.
(NB: My license plate since I’ve been 16 says “CFO,” bitches.)
The movie portrays a sexist world. This does not make the movie sexist; it merely holds up a fun house mirror to its audience. We live in a network of men getting what they want at the expense of women. They are doing what I’ve always wanted to do myself, and they are screwing me while doing it. If you see this movie and you don’t admire them, you’d be wrong not to.
They’re sexist but sexy. Tracy Clark-Flory, a writer at Salon.com (and my current Facebook wife), told me over g-chat, “Those frat boys, Zuckerberg, all of them, I want their power, and I want to fuck their power.” For her, this is “an embarrassing and intellectually indefensible fantasy about fucking to conquer,” which taps into the female chauvinist pigs argument: embody the object and the objectifier. For me, fucking is more than “sex” or “exchange of fluids”; it’s creating something out of nothing. For me, it’s about getting what I want, wanting to be so close to the center of an idea, wanting it all at once and now and so badly, that the only way to get there is to fuck like there’s no tomorrow, fuck until I’ve changed what tomorrow means, fuck until it is, in fact, tomorrow.
54 responses
Everything I felt about this film and couldn’t find a way to say. Amazing. Thanks.
I haven’t seen this movie, but I have lived in this world: awesome review.
This reminds me of the Camille Paglia of Sexual Personae, and not in a good way. I suppose this is probably a send-up as you’re calling the men cock-sure and I guess that’s amusing.
Good energy though. Great energy, really. The kind of piece I come to the Rumpus for because they let people write fuck (a lot) and get energetic. I almost want to see this movie just to be able to argue about it. Contagious energy. I guess that’s the point of a review, right?
Fantastic review, and a lot of fun to read. Though I don’t see how you can really blame the movie for portraying men as being the ones to create it, when it’s based on the actual men who did.
Don’t feel so bad. How many twentysomethings end up changing the world and having a movie made about them? The only problem is, as the culture (justifiably) deifies those who achieve at such a young age, those in their 20s who aren’t as successful as they wish (or at least as successful as Zuckerberg) find themselves already dealing with a deep-seated envy more common to the middle-aged — a feeling twentysomethings will have to carry for only another, oh, 60 years or so. This is the downside of being so preciously precocious and self-aware: youth dies at a younger age than in previous generations. Fun!
I love this, Elissa. The honesty. I’ve read a few feminist-slanting reviews of TSN, but none that admit to lusting after the kind of cock-sureness they also loathe. None that take into consideration the internal sexism that prevents a lot of women from parading their ideas and their writing, submitting to magazines, and ultimately being successful. Or that acknowledge a film that portrays sexists is not inherently sexist.
You’ve clarified a lot of my own feelings about the film by putting them into words. I was rooting for every asshole move that Zuckerberg made, despite myself. Which made me feel a little dirty. Hence, the fucking.
“We live in a network of men getting what they want at the expense of women. They are doing what I’ve always wanted to do myself, and they are screwing me while doing it. If you see this movie and you don’t admire them, you’d be wrong not to.”
I don’t think it’s at the expense of women, I think it’s merely portraying the cruel way that an overly intelligent yet socially awkward (to put it mildly?) 19 year old might think of women. I don’t think it would be hard to survey a few men and find out that a lot of decisions they’ve made in life have come after feeling slighted by someone they were or wanted to be in a relationship with, but I think you might find just as many women willing to admit to the same thing. None of them men trample over the women in their lives to get to the top, they trample over each other and don’t spend any time learning how to be people, just how to get where they want to be. We feel a rush when we watch it, but isn’t it a morality tale? Shouldn’t it leave a bad taste in your mouth? And if so, haven’t the creators done their job?
Also, us young creative types who want to hold onto our souls probably shouldn’t be looking to fuck or emulate much of anything corporate or greedy or powerful. That kind of success isn’t our goal, is it? Don’t we need to let ourselves be torn all the way apart and then be constantly putting ourselves back together again? Shouldn’t we open ourselves up to failure and then thrust our light out from there, casting it from the darkest spots to everywhere that floats above?
(I hope that sounds respectful. I really enjoy your columns.)
I don’t understand why you “want to be the man who started facebook.” Tech entrepreneurs are successful because they like to slip and slide on the jizzy battlefield and they know how to talk to machines. You can be the woman who started facebook if you’re interested in playing an imploding game on infinite loop. Or you could go have lunch with a real live fleshfriend and listen to her and encourage her and foster strong ties for sustainable change. I disagree that “good social change is fueled by jealousy.” Dick-wielding is fueled by jealousy. Enough of that. At the risk of reiterating an unstable gender dichotomy, get your panties out of their current bunch, say no to the blow, and wield your womb, your heart. There’s plenty of revolutionary power there.
Beautifully done (and I don’t just say that because you quoted me). It’s pieces like this that make me proud to be your Facebook wife.
Remember, the movie isn’t the reality. You want to fuck movie stars and the image they make. If you knew Zuckerberg when he was some nerd at Harvard, guaranteed you wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Sure, that’s exactly your point. But having worked with people who have done almost exactly this kind of thing and seen this kind of success, I doubt the buzz would be quite as intense as you get from the concentration of Fincher and Trent Renzor and a kickass DP.
I concur with David and Heather’s points above, whole heartedly. While I admire that you are willing to admit you find a certain level of arrogance attractive (many women like it but won’t admit it), I find nothing attractive about a bunch of guys showing each other their dicks and making boatloads of cash. My survival job is in finance. I see that shit every day, men who have been “captains of industry” and innovators in their field and have more money than I’ll ever understand. And you know what? I have no admiration for it. It’s all vain, shallow, empty victory. The dick can never be big enough, you know? It’s fruitless and empty. The souls of once decent men are what paves Wall Street (and most of Manhattan, at this point).
It’s also very easy to be brave when society expects it from you. When women are brave, they’re harpies and sluts and they hate men and they are entitled and they are defying their biological function. When men are brave? Heroes. Geniuses.
I do agree that there is a problem with internalized misogyny among women. I wish there were easier answers for these questions. But penis envy? Nah. I like my pussy just fine, and I wish every woman did.
As a dude, I probably shouldn’t even dip a noodly toe into this discussion, but what the hell: I think I would feel a little alienated from this flick, myself (haven’t seen it… creeping into crappy assumption territory). You could say all the beautiful men get what-they-want-when-they-want-it because of society’s silver-plattered, just-add-water success for the penis (and complimentary sack, lest we forget), but quite honestly, any dude or dudette trying to vanquish this level of accomplishment is headed for a manic-depressive next few years until they either have a crippling breakdown or land on an antidepressant to help settle.
In other words, I obtaining any kind of this success, man or woman, would be a bit of a letdown. Once we get to the top of them mountain, we realize the pictures of the summit in the brochure have been photoshopped extensively.
Wow. typofest up there. I was finishing that up after being 11 minutes off the clock at work.
Can someone help me get a Face Book website page? I went to the web site but I need a password to get in. Thanks!
I don’t think you should have penis envy because you have the biggest dick I’ve ever seen. Fun, bold, honest review!
@Brado – Seconded.
hell yes, miss bassist. by far the best review of this movie. more than a review of course, but wow. “intelligent men who change the world wear their blind spots like burkas,†i hope this will be read and appreciated by a mass audience.
FUCKING brilliant. Laughing out loud at my desk. I love you – and this little slice of hilarity-meets-truth – A LOT.
I totally disagree. We are all entitled to our opinions, but women need to stop bitching and start acting. I saw the movie, and thought it was interesting and well done. Women CAN be that stupid, women CAN lend themselves to such behavior… and the thoughts/actions of the men of this movie are very men those of college men that age. Doesn’t mean this behavior is to be tolerated or “good,” but it’s just reality. I just hate when women bitch and complain about unfairness, and rather invest 1% of that energy into doing whatever it is they want to do and not always label their work/statements as “made/said by a woman, so look at me, I can do it too–” well obviously we can, women are just as capable as men, and when we continue to complain about unfairness, we don’t progress, we just stay stagnant in piles of complaints
I’m not a fan of either Fincher or Sorkin, but I do believe that they knowingly made a film about assholes so beware the man who doesn’t see that.
I like what Josie said and would like to give her an e-high five.
Such an interesting review! Yeah I was annoyed by men doing lines on the young chicks’ smooth taut bodies (I wager that’s Sorkin’s life). I agree w/ Michael: “Fincher and Sorkin made a film knowingly about assholes” but Citizen Kane was an asshole. We get to pretend assholes are lonely. Truth is, everyone is. I liked the movie — I was amped by Zuckerberg’s obsessiveness. Maybe that’s a script device, though I doubt it. If you are reading these comments, Elissa, may I say (“I” being old-school feminist and also so incredibly immature no one’s sure what to do with me), keep at it but also listen to Sugar. And there’s some justice in the world. The healthy blonde Ayrans only got Xmillion dollars by way of settlement whereas skinny little Z has xxxxxxXXXXsuperscript10 million dollars.
First off, I love @heather and @david’s comments.
Moving on: These dudes were successful at 23. And there were how many of them? Versus how many other people exist on the planet? Age and experience has taught me one thing: what’s the rush? Moreover: you want what Zuckerberg-in-Social Network has, really? Loneliness, a never-ending sense of non-accomplishment? Money’s great, but a sense of self and worth doesn’t come easy. He’ll find it, maybe, but that much money when that young? Eek. I wish him luck.
I’m not sure I buy you comparing writing (which everyone literate person can do on some level) to creating a once-in-a-lifetime internet project that requires a very specific skill set. Again, how many writers will last forever, versus how many book exist?
And I don’t agree with you that the CFO “loathed” the “groupie”! He didn’t loathe anyone — he was the sympathetic center of the film, getting battered and tossed around by friends, women, and otherwise. That girl acted insanely, and was broken up with. Fair enough!
Finally: I disagree about you saying these people succeeded “at the expense of women” — women fueled Zuckerberg’s efforts, fine. Napster guy was a total dickrod (these people do exist). But they weren’t using women to create their success. Women’s interest was a product of their success. Is that the man’s fault? Or the woman’s? (Which, I think might be what you mean with all the power/fucking/fuck power/power fuck stuff.)
I think the movie was far more a sad commentary on life at Harvard than life in general. Yes, a truly pathetic man (the fictional Zuckerberg) made a social network because his girlfriend dumped him, but his motivation was clear: he wanted to impress the people in the Finals Clubs so that they would respect and admire him, or at least ask him to join up. Ultimately, he didn’t have to join up, because he created a far more exclusive club–a place that mirrored the sexism and exclusion of Harvard’s clubs. Does that reflect poorly on the rest of the people in the world who don’t go to Harvard? Perhaps, since we’ve all joined (or perhaps not, because we’ve diluted the exclusionary nature of said social network). But what was shown on screen was almost exclusively The World As Harvard, and frankly, that is not MY world, and never will be. Good thing, too, as I’m much happier without a bunch of sexist nerds running rampant.
I clicked on the link here because my RSS reader has an alluring title, “What’s it mean to be a feminist?” However, I’ve gotta say this review and its many inspired comments do not seem to qualify as a discussion on feminism. Rather, the review and most of the reflections sound like the impassioned but immature opines of young adults, wrestling more with issues like cultural norms of success and ego/narcissism than of feminism per se. There is nothing wrong with this at all; just wanted to opine that the header seems inaccurate to me.
This made me think of the recent book “The Cookbook Collector,” where one of the characters is a naive-but-pretty grad student in Berkeley who is collected by a kind-of-creepy older-retired-Microsoft millionaire, and her sister is a CFO of a Silicon Valley company unwilling to commit to either her techie fiance or the hard-core amorality that he represents. Her morality, and how gets compromised by her love of a guy, in fact, is at the crux of the book. Interesting reading!
My experience of techie life is that if you want to succeed, the less interest or empathy you have in other people, the better. I liked my time at some tech companies, because I really think most geeks are fascinating and good people. But if you want to be at the top of any company, there are moral and ethical sacrifices – and I was never willing to make them. The farther up you went in management, the less likable. Some of my friends actually had PSTD from meetings with BillandSteve.
I don’t know. I love this review–the passion of it and the balls, if you’ll forgive me, it takes to admit to jealousy and striving and longing and desire of the repugnant in as bare a fashion as you’ve done here. But I have a weird feeling I would see this film and feel sorry for the guys (even or especially when they are literally snorting coke off tits) or find them sort of ridiculous. Now I have to see the movie to find out if this is true, or if they actually seem desirable and enviable to me. I mean, starting a revolution is excellent. But is Facebook really a “revolution” or is it just a pastime that made its creators rich? I’m not against FB; I like it; I’m on it. It is, without a doubt, a cultural phenomenon, and a changer of popular culture. But does that make it a revolution? I mean, maybe really at the end of the day, part of the dialogue here has to do with how fucking earth-shattering it is to have created Facebook. JK Rowling is filthy rich too, but Harry Potter’s not a revolution. The FB boys didn’t “invent the internet.” (Uh, wasn’t that Al Gore?) If FB didn’t exist, we’d all still be here on the Rumpus dishing about some film. I think the paradigm of what consitutes “revolution” rings less true to me than your commentary on gender (which rings, if not 100% true, than as 100% genuine, heartfelt, true in a subjective way.) Anyway, you’ve convinced me to see the film. If I get a hard-on (with my nonexistent cock) and have anything resembling even a vague desire to fuck Justin Timberlake, I promise to immediately come back on the comments board and eat my words. Though I’m still not sure I’d think FB was really a revolution. I think that’s just a funny thing each generation tends to think about its own fads. By the way, Elissa, I totally love your work. And you definitely wrote like a Motherfucker here.
Elissa, This is such a well done piece. I find myself having these feelings about films or business or whatever from time to time. But, I really enjoyed The Social Network.
I think many of the women in the movie are portrayed as groupies b/c that’s the kind of women that they chose to surround themselves with. And that just points to a defect in the character of the men. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s late here…
You said:
“I don’t want to be the girl who prompted the man to start Facebook. I want to be the man who started Facebook.”
But as Eliot said above, a man started Facebook. In my opinion, there’s absolutely no reason why a woman couldn’t execute an idea like that.
So I guess this is more about the desire for a woman to be profiled in this manner. And yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have a movie with a scene where a young female businesswoman snorts coke off some hot himbo’s chest? I think I would have to scream a “hell yeah” in a theatre if I ever see a scene like that.
And girl,I would totally have sex with Timberlake too…
I’ll stop rambling now.
elissa, you should give us your take on Parker Spitzer.
I’m in love with Ted Wilson.
I’ve yet to see “The Social Network” but Elissa, you forced my hand. Now I’ve got to. I can’t weigh in on the contents of the film, but I do want to offer some hope. EB, you’re article is stunning and passionate and I read your tone as anger and frustration. I think it’s being misinterpreted as jealousy. The larger problem that you touch on (with your enormous cock) is that within U.S. culture, sexist ideologies (and racist ones) permeate the social structure to a degree that they become normalized. And this is infuriating. It’s in the publishing industry-it’s in every industry. But like stephen said, “revolutionaries don’t care about barriers.” For example: Rebecca Cox Jackson (1795), Sarah Mapps Douglass (1806), Soujourner Truth (“Ain’t I a Woman?” 1851), Elizabeth Keckley (1862), Zora Neale Hurston, Angela Davis. The list goes on and on.
I also agree with Gina Frangello about the difference between a social network website that was created for the purpose of partying and a revolutionary act. Zuckerberg is no Rosa Parks. He’s a heterosexual white man who has access to power, prestige and arrogance. Let’s keep him and his ambitious, entitled, cock that probably most of my hot intelligent friends want to fuck, right-sized.
Carry On.
Is it weird that I want to have sex with this review?
I felt just like this at 26. I got over it. It’s not real, it’s not productive and it IS incredibly arrogant.
nicely said. i will now friend you on facebook.
Powerful review. One question: did you have to pay extra or were the narcissistic glasses included?
Conflating REAL power (and how to get it) with the way that power is represented in the film is dangerous.
I agree that TSN’s portrayal of women in the film is atrocious. You have reason to take away the seminal angle that it seems to advocate: (ANGRY) White Men have the right and ability to change the world that women only have the opportunity to watch.
BUT YOU ARE GOING DOWN THE WRONG PATH to see in that MOVIE a greater truth about patriarchy. The film (and the REAL story of FB) could have just as easily happened to women. The story would have been equally as remarkable. The fact that MZ is NOT a woman CANNOT really say anything more that simply that.
ALL THAT SAID YOUR INSIGHT IS CUTTING AND WELL-WROUGHT. LOVED THIS PIECE.
Nice essay! One more movie I can leave off the Netflix queue.
Excellent essay, Elissa. So much great stuff here, and also in the comments from others. I don’t agree that jealousy fuels anything. I think jealousy’s a self-devouring machine. You don’t need a dick to ignite a bomb, sister. You just need to strike the match.
This film portrays men getting what they want at the expense of what women? The nameless faceless party girls who voluntarily participate in bad behavior *with* these men? The girlfriend who informs Zuckerberg that he’s an asshole, momentarily suffers from some puerile revenge plot, but ultimately has him by the balls? How about the Associate who serves as the moral center of the movie despite only having a few scenes.
Most of the men in this movie are hopelessly flawed and childish. The two main female roles are intelligent, ethical, and noble. What’s your issue with that?
If you want power, stop bitching about the people who have it, and pursue it on your own merit. I’m getting tired of these essays chiding a movie about a man’s successes and shortcomings for not having enough estrogen.
Randy- I don’t think anyone is saying you shouldn’t watch the movie. In fact, after spending so much time reading a review and then posting a comment, I think you are now obligated to watch it to fulfill some sort of artistic thinking person’s contract with the universe. If you can see how much passion and debate an internet essay about it stirs up, shouldn’t that be enough? Smart people are ignited by it. It’s worth a watch.
(I sort of feel bad posting a comment trying to get you to watch a movie that literally spent millions of dollars in advertising and promotion, but I think it’s for the good of the community that people actually experience the event in question before bothering to post about it. See a matinee. It’s cheaper and more perfect in fall. Cheers Randy!)
This is an interesting argument, and I’m really enjoying this discussion, but I can’t help but think a more accurate title would be “Elissa Bassist Presents: The Rumpus.net’s Funny Women Editor Elissa Bassist’s Original Review of How Elissa Bassist Feels About The “The Social Network” Movie, By Elissa Bassist (ed. Elissa Bassist)”.
We’ve fallen far since the days of Sandra Bullock programming in The Net and the rollerblading, computer-whiz Angelia Jolie played in Hackers. And after your choice words to describe me, Elissa, I’m going to order new business cards of my own.
@Sophie: Outstanding suggestion…and it’s so funny you mention it because the only reason we didn’t go with that title for this “review” is because that’s the title of my forthcoming book, published by Elissa Bassist.
(In all seriousness, you made me laugh so hard it hurt.)
@Brenden, platonic love my life: I think you should print your entire (and awesome) review of the movie here in the comments section. It’s too smart not to show the world…or the few people reading this.
fucking brilliant.
spot on fucking brilliant.
i don’t wanna be zuckerberg.
i wanna be elissa bassist.
1) Facebook is not a revolution. It’s a business. Social media is killing true revolution. Money kills revolution because the people with money fear revolution. I’m not sure how revolution became a topic here.
2) Jealousy is not the framework for revolution. That’s like saying, if you see injustice, Oh, you only care about the injustice because you’re jealous. It’s a favorite gambit of those who like to belittle people who care about equality, liberty, etc., but it isn’t accurate.
3) I like smart men, but I don’t like assholes, period. If someone is an asshole, no, I don’t want to fuck them, I don’t care how smart, how rich, how motivated, how despondant, how vulnerable, how faux-revolutionary they are. When I meet an asshole my instinctive, knee-jerk response is to want to crush them. And that is not a euphemism or secret Freudian desire. Crush. Them. To. Bits.
4) I didn’t see this movie as trampling on women so a bunch of nerds could have their way with the world. The nerds already have their way with the world, long before Zuckerburg and Co. came along. That idea implies women had something for men to wrench away from them, or rather girls had something for boys to wrench away, since these were a bunch of children. There was only one thing to wrench away, and that is the fault of the writer, and the Patriarchal society we live in, and that is the basic humanity of women. I saw this movie as totally disregarding women as human beings. Woman As Object. (Insert image of me rolling my eyes HERE.) Cuz THAT’s never been done before. Or every single day, in every form of media.
I could go on, but I have something to do in the real world. This is as close to social networking as I ever get, outside of business. Probably another reason why I’m not impressed with the advent of Facebook in and of itself.
Really well written piece, as always. The most interesting points you make relate only tangentially to the movie, I think. I am saying this without benefit of having watched the movie, a move an arrogant man–or, you know, an arrogant woman–might pull. In fact, I’ll go even further and ignore the Zuckerberg story too.
You might find, at some point, that you don’t want to fuck this movie or the men or even the type of men in it. You might also find that the real story, the interesting story, has nothing to do with this movie or these guys or movies or guys like these. In other words, the Z. story and the movie version thereof seems to be a very conventional story in a lot of ways. Granted it’s got the trappings of a new story (tech, social networking, youth), a revolutionary story (change, change, change), but it’s really just the same old story of greed and careerism and vying for power in very traditional senses of the word: power as money, influence, status. If you accept these things as characteristic as *your* paradigm of success/power you will no doubt be trapped by its trappings. So first you have to decide what it is that you want.
Is it this kind of power/success ummm penetration (yes hello Freud)? Or some other kind? If other, define it, write it small and large and know that it will change over time. In other words, if you step outside the screen/frame/expectation of achieving power in the terms by which our culture defines it you might discover what is central to you, what is important and of value and meaningful to you. If you’re going to be caged, at least make your own cage–don’t just fuck around with the perch. Decide what you want, what you’ll be satisfied with and explore it. You might discover that what you want has something to do with honest interaction and perhaps reciprocity rather than jealousy, coveting, whatever.
(Sorry if I’m offending by writing this response so directly to you. It’s very personal and passionate review, so I thought it would be okay.)
Revolution is a big dramatic term. Revolutions might be borne of reaction, but they are only true revolutions if they result in the creation of something new. The first step in revolution, as far as I know, is examining and getting to the heart of what actually exists, insofar as this is possible, questioning why it exists and how–and then asking how it might be envisioned in different ways. Once the envisioning part is done, for the most part, the next step is figuring out how to affect change, if that’s what you decide you want to do.
By the way, I don’t buy the part about jealousy (envy maybe?) fueling good social change. Maybe tangentially and sometimes, but overall this strikes me as an overly cynical take on things. Some people do have a sense of fairness and would like fair treatment for others as well as for themselves. In fact, sometimes this is a relatively egoless desire: I want you to be happy or at least treated with kindness and respect because just the fact of that is heartening. Not everyone has these notions, not everyone feels them in their gut, but some do.
Okay, I’ve typed so quickly and so much I’ve lost track.
One final thing, though–you might want to think about the difference between fucking and fucking over. There is top, bottom, 69, sideways and more–and this is, as the kids say, all good. There is certainly no *one* way, no *single* center, there doesn’t always have to be an over, one person doesn’t always have to come out on top.
I think I’m in love with Ted Wilson too.
OK, that was an amazing review/rant and I agree that having sex with Justin Timberlake would be beautiful and transformative in ways I can’t even speak to now, however –
This is how I see it: startups on the interwebs have always been portrayed as the pet projects of acne-covered, greasy-haired, dollar-signs-in-the-eyes male gearheads at certain selective universities across the country. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a ton of female entrepreneurs out there, but they for whatever reason don’t tend to be the ones dweebishly going after early retirement or social acceptance, etc. That is to say, I haven’t seen a ton of female entrepreneurs on the internet trying to “change the world” for self-directed reasons. I mean…I’m sorry…let’s just get down to brass tacks here. Zuckerberg is a twit. He really is. Have you seen the pictures of him? The kind of pale-faced privilege I wouldn’t want at my Shabbos table. The kind of “me, me, me I wanna have fun and be popular and special and impress everyone and be the smartest” thing that, while human, can become uber-repulsive when it’s allowed to totally shape one’s life. The only thing that saves him from being yet another businessman driven solely by the care, feeding and fame of Numero Uno is his ability to recite Vergil at the drop of a hat.
Anyway, I’ve always been grossed out by the “revolutionary” male presence on the internet, because it’s just an echo of the penis-swagger that was happening all the time in the greedy ’80s. You think “The Social Network” was sexist? What about “Wall Street”? We don’t even get to see the face of the girl Charlie Sheen is fucking!! Those Harvard boys are just a reprisal of that self-directed money-and-fame-mongering. And frankly, that’s not the kind of “revolution” I’d like to be part of. I’m OK with the fact that this money, power and fucking dialectic appears to belong completely to men. If I were to revolutionize the world, I’d want the revolution to take place in a more wholesome and generative way, and I’d want it to stick (hey Seneca Falls!). Facebook’s great, yeah, but look at what happened to Myspace.
The kind of revolutionary genius I admire can be found in women like Hannah Arendt, Irene Nemirovsky and Jane Campion. I mean, come on. That’s power. That’s brilliance. Zuckerberg’s cocaine looks tasty and the girls’ breasts look big, but none of it comes close to the intelligible beauty of the short stories in “Dimanche,” or the effortless genius of stuff like “The Human Condition” and “The Piano.” And the world recognizes genius, regardless of its gender!! I used to get freaked out about this, too, but now some amazing women in my life have convinced me otherwise. Maybe it’s just my expensive liberal arts education that’s warned me against wealth, but I sincerely think Zuckerberg commands a more superficial “power” than the artists and thinkers who, just in virtue of producing such magnificent work, have provided us with evidence that they actually give a shit about something besides themselves. And that’s way the fuck more than Zucky et. al. can say.
haha I said “generative” when I meant “genuine.” Now THAT’S a Freudian slip.
Great review! Very comvincing and able to relate to
Hey Elissa once you get all the power, money, and acclaim what are you going to do with it?
Bravo! What she said. (While he fucked her six ways sideways.)
nailed it.
Appreciate the intensity of Elissa’s ideas/feelings, but this review seems to be a lot more about the reviewer than the movie.
As other comments have pointed out, the world in which this story takes place is a male dominated one (computer programmers are generally guys). I don’t think it has to be that way, but the movie only reflects that reality. Having worked in the Dot Com world during the “revolutionary” late millennium, and now working in film advertising, I think the movie is a hollywood mirror of reality – Sorkin “juiced” it up a bit with the cocaine off breasts etc. That stuff is hollywood movie making 101. Put some drugs and slutty chicks in, we’ll get more butts in the seats. Sad, but the sadder thing is it works. Mass marketed films are at least 50% business decisions. And from my personal experience, in the world the movie covers, women often are secondary. Sorkin tries to hedge this I think by using the lawyer at the end as a moral compass (which sure isn’t coming from any of the boys here), but really the story is what happens to someone when they are so consumed they loose everything around them. It is a cautionary tale in the vain of citizen kane. It’s not like any of them are “role models”. When Elissa says ” If you see this movie and you don’t admire them, you’d be wrong not to” I think she totally misses the point. I didn’t admire them. Though I did see Sorkin trying to make them a lot sexier than they really are. But like I said, that’s a business decision.
And it’s not like Zuckerberg is presented as a tech revolutionary anyway. The movie makes clear he stole the idea. He’s a revolutionary in the way Bill Gates was to Steve Jobs. (Sorkin even draws this out with the whole Gates scene). He executed an idea that made a big impact but it wasn’t even his idea and if he hadn’t made facebook someone else would have. The idea is important, not the vehicle.
In some of the comments the word “revolution” is tossed around in a way that confuses me. What are we talking about here? Communist revolution, sexual revolution? I tend to think “revolutions” are more propaganda than reality. Most change – social, technological what have you are paradigm shifts that take a while – and a lot of hard work – to become normal behavior. Revolutions often don’t deliver the dramatic change they promise.
I also am confused about what why this movie prevents Elissa from being an intellectual revolutionary. “if The Social Network’s point of view is correct, I can never be with them. I’m someone who dreams as big as Zuckerberg but lacks the penis required for social revolution”. I don’t get how this movie represents this point of view at all. How does showing one thing, mean something else can’t be shown?
So I can see why the world of the movie reflects sexism but how does one film stop any others from being made? Maybe Elissa’s problems are her revolutionary dreams are not as interesting to other people as her. There is a foundation of narcissism in this review that is not productive or to me very interesting. If you want to do something, do it – it’s as simple as that. How does some mass market movie stop you from doing that????
And why does Z. being 23 mean Elissa should already be successful? Literary vs technological change are very different things. Young people are always on the cutting edge of technology; they’re growing up with the latest stuff. Literature – to me – requires experience and reflection. Both things come with age. Who cares how old you are anyway? If you contribute something of lasting importance, I don’t think it matters whether you’re 26 or 56. You sure aren’t getting there by complaining.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.