The Social Network

Written by Jonathan Jacobs

She is a damsel in distress. Everybody feels the lure of her seductive pull. Those who have not been with her talk about her incessantly. The whole world wants to be a part of her. Perhaps most interesting is her credulousness to share anything and everything with everybody. There is no holding back. She has no sense of privacy but she will respect your wishes and your boundaries. She is the worldwide phenomenon that has set the online world afire. She is Facebook. Her creator is Mark Zuckerberg. The film The Social Network is a loose adaptation of his rise to fame and fortune.

     Myspace used to be the biggest thing going since sliced bread hit the market. Imagine twelve slices instead of several clumsy polyloaves.  In 2004, while a student at Harvard University, expert computer scientist Mark Zuckerberg co-founded www.facebook.com along with Dustin Moscovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Savarin. The world renown screenwriter Aaron Sorkin worked in tandem with the author of 21 and The Accidental Billionaires to engineer the potentially award winning screenplay that serves as the basis for The Social Network. Sorkin is talented, wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and is sought after by everyone who is anyone in Hollywood. This does not exclude him from criticism however.

     Of course creating a movie is about making money. Studios need to repay investors, the actors, the editors, the cameramen, the directors and the screenwriters, among other employees. Movies are made for the express purpose of generating handfuls of cash. If there is a political message or activism so be it. What bothers me the most as an historian and as a former educator is that students, adults, and casual spectators often treat what they watch on television or in the movies as gospel. Too often casual viewers absorb the images and message seen on screen and replace any knowledge they may have or had about real life events with what they have just witnessed. Is it their fault for not performing their own research and for not searching for the truth about an event or an issue? Of course it is anyone’s fault for blindly accepting someone else’s tempered viewpoint and adopting it as their own. This however, does not dismiss a director or a screenwriter from any responsibility for corrupting history and from shaping people’s opinions about critical issues. Is the founding of Facebook such an important issue in society? Probably not. Do Mezrich and Sorkin present a compelling story? Absolutely. The Social Network is entertaining, enjoyable and electric at times.

     Before writing a review of any given film I research the background of the screenwriter, the director, the actors and I ascertain the veracity of the story. The words “Based on a true story” are some of the most heinously misleading and fallacious words in the English language. It is a nice literary trick employed to deceive unwitting fans. What I dislike most about The Social Network, aside from Jessie Eisenberg’s smugness and excessive arrogance, is something that Aaron Sorkin said about the movie. I did not know very much about how Facebook overtook Myspace as the premier worldwide social phenomenon. Perhaps gullibly I thought this movie would provide some insight into its founding and expansion. Instead, after pausing the film to research Mark Zuckerberg I happened upon a gold nugget straight from the mouth of Sorkin himself; “I don't want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling…What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?” Zuckerberg himself believes this film portrays him in a dastardly light.

     I applaud Sorkin’s honesty, but that does not mean I have to like it. Most movies are strictly for entertainment purposes and even most documentaries are riddled with biased interviewers and often times false information is used to bolster inaccurate claims. Sorkin has essentially told moviegoers (the ones who actually have brain and research Zuckerberg’s legal battles and computer accomplishments) that this movie is deliberately fictitious so as to best entertain moviegoers. Great, wonderful. I watched this movie hoping to learn something to expand my knowledge base, and now I am told what most Americans believe about these events, from watching or hearing about The Social network, is either false or connived. This sort of liberal storytelling used to have a more sinister name, propaganda. Today it is called entertainment. Political and social messages are now interwoven so deeply as to make movies indistinguishable from propagandistic lies. Oliver Stone usually comes to mind when thinking about directors that connive in order to sell their stories to audiences. This does not jive well with me.

For those of you that remain curious about The Social Network, it is a highly-entertaining picture. I could have done without Justin Timberlake and Jessie Eisenberg but they play their part as directed as well as they can. Feel free to watch this movie about one of the most popular phenomena in the history of the world. But, and I caution you in all earnestness, learn something about the background before watching this picture. And for goodness sake please take it for what it is and nothing more, entertainment.   

Jonathan Jacobs

Member FFCC

www.screenspotlight.com