The Social Network—Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s fictionalized retelling of the creation of Facebook and the spectacular round of betrayals, accusations, and lawsuits that engulfed its Harvard-boy founders—is still the number one movie in the US this week. As soon as the movie was released, the internets began to buzz about its not-entirely-flattering portrayal of computer-geeks turned billionaires and the women who love them…or don’t. You can read Amanda Marcotte’s review for Pandagon here or Irin Carmon’s take on its “Angry Nerd Misogyny” for Jezebel here.
Join the Harpies for a lively breakdown of what SarahMC calls: The Social Network: A Case Study in Nerds Can be Misogynists Too.
Michelle: I mentioned this elsewhere, but I’ve been sort of surprised about the degree to which people have been picking up on gender politics in the movie. Even Ebert mentioned it in his review and he is not traditionally known for his gender analysis. Not to say that it isn’t fairly blatant – I’m still not sure what real dramatic purpose the Brooks-Brothers-scarf-on-fire scene served – but I’m wondering why in this movie it’s striking such a chord. Is it because it’s Sorkin, who is traditionally known for creating great female characters?
sarah.of.a.lesser.god: I think Fincher probably thought about it less than Sorkin may have. As Michelle says, Sorkin has created some great female characters in the past, whereas Fincher loves concentrating on dudely dudes. Twelve Monkeys anyone? Fight Club? And even Zodiac had only Chloe Sevigny who was absolutely wasted.
BeckySharper: I agreed with Amanda Marcotte’s take on it:
Here is why I think that it’s wrong to think that Sorkin and Fincher are trying to do anything but make you uncomfortable with the casual misogyny of the main characters in the movie: it bugs the shit out of everyone who sees it. If they didn’t intend to make a movie that was interrogating toxic masculinity and its effect on women, they managed to make a movie where that theme is the main one that everyone who leaves the theater appears to be discussing. At a certain point, the thing that is most notable about “The Social Network” might just be the thing that the movie is about. Or at least one of the things.
It’s not like there aren’t Strong Female Characters in “The Social Network”. They’re there, but they are mostly hinted at, and one thing they have in common is that they find Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies repulsive. The one character we see ingratiating herself into their group is openly portrayed as obsessive and probably mentally ill. The conclusion the audience reaches—and I suspect this was the point—was that women who have their shit together know well enough to stay far the fuck away from these guys. And in case that point wasn’t clear enough, the opening and closing scenes involve Zuckerberg interacting with these women. Or, more to the point, being basically shoved off by them.
The “shoved off by them” thing was critical, I think. Zuckerberg comes across as cringe-inducing, and he’s meant to be cringe-inducing, and that’s not an endorsement of the computer-nerd/dudebro misogyny. Women—and the viewer—don’t like him and you can tell he secretly agrees with them. He knows he’s an asshole, and while he wishes he weren’t, he’s not willing to change his behavior.
SarahMC: I doubt the filmmakers were trying to interrogate toxic masculinity, but the toxic masculinity sure is apparent throughout the film. The characters’ sexism is not painted in a positive light, even though I don’t think that’s the main theme of the movie. All in all, The Social Network seemed to be the story of the break-up between Mark and Eduardo.
The anger felt by those hurt by Mark—including his ex/girlfriend—was treated as legitimate, which I appreciated. The filmmakers knew their characters were unlikable. I came out hating Mark, feeling bad for Eduardo and proud of Erica. She wasn’t a doormat and didn’t go crawling back to Mark after he attained a huge level of success. Her character is not based on a real person, so just a little detail like that impressed me.
sarah.of.a.lesser.god: I think it spoke volumes that the movie opened with a woman shooting down Zuckerberg. And immediately afterwards he humiliates her in a public forum. If that doesn’t prove his misogyny, than I’m not sure what does. And worth noting that later in the movie Erica brings it up again, so the audience doesn’t forget that however Mark’s success may be growing, the people who know him will still call him out for being an asshole.
BeckySharper: Exactly. Erica’s only on-screen for about 10 minutes in the whole movie, and she’s a fictional character, but I think she did more for Womanity in those ten minutes than every dumbass rom-com heroine played by Katherine Heigel, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston et al. in the last ten years. Ditto Rashida Jones’s ten minutes.
SarahMC: It’s too bad the strong female characters were pushed to the side, but, I guess I can overlook that since the male characters were not exactly lionized.
SarahMC: What did you want to say about the Asian women? (I know what you are thinking, I’m sure)
BeckySharper: Holy dragon lady/ tiger lily objectification, Batgirl! I mean, one of the characters, I forget which one, goes on a rant about why Asian girls and Jewish guys make sense together….
Michelle: It was Eduardo.
BeckySharper: That’s right, Eduardo. It was a monologue of douche-y stereotypical crap. And then that leads to the ridiculous scene where the two hot Asian chicks blow Mark and Eduardo in the bathroom. Those girls were lifted right from some “hot Asian chick” porn site. Blargh. And Eduardo’s Asian girlfriend is basically just useless arm candy until she turns into a pyro. The stereotypes were flying fast and furious at that point.
SarahMC: Right. I just found it outrageous that Eduardo’s girlfriend would get so violently angry with him, setting the bin on fire and all that. There are plenty of Asian women at Harvard so it’s not like it would be unusual for the men to have Asian girlfriends, but the dragon lady/tiger lily was going strong!
BeckySharper: Further gratuitous objectification alert! I want to give a shout-out to Justin Timberlake, because I thought his Mephistophelean Sean Parker was awesome. Dude can act. My off-again, on-again love affair with JT is now officially back on.
Michelle: I thought JT was terrible, but I seem largely immune to his charms.
SarahMC: My love for JT has been going strong since the early oughts, and his performance was strong, too.
Feel free to add your own thoughts about The Social Network in the comments.
Don’t plan on watching it. Bad enough I use Facebook.
As to misogyny in the geek world, of course it’s there. Tech is filled with guys, because of course girls are not supposed to like math, computers, video games, etc. The geeks drool over the same over-hyped, badly-Photoshopped, breast-augmented segment of the female population that all other male-dominated groups do. The clothes are different, the speak is different, but the hormones are the same.
I haven’t watched the movie, but I wonder if some of the broad discussion of sexism (in otherwise woman-unfriendly circles) results not so much from the misogyny itself, but from the kind of protagonists perpetuating it. There seems to be a widely seen (if highly inaccurate) stereotype of geeks and nerds as either Too Adorably Socially Awkward to Ever Get a Woman or Too Much of a Nice Guy. It surprises people a little bit when they first realize that nerds can be douches, whereas the same actions might not shock them if we were watching, say, the football team.
Brennan, I think that’s a fair point. I saw the movie with my father and stepmother, neither of whom grew up in a world with computers — let alone social networking. My dad, in particular, commented that he expected that Zuckerberg & Co. would have been ‘nerds’ by which I think he meant typical movie nerds. As Nefarious Newt commented, misogyny exists in the tech world. The thing is that because someone thinks about Zuckerberg with his hoodies and flip-flops, or even Bill Gates with his ‘unstylish’ glasses, there’s a sense of ‘oh, this must be a world filled with unthreatening guys.’
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: Surprisingly, in the tech world, it is even more endemic than in other groups. Not that geeks can’t accept women in their midst. It’s just that they never seem to appreciate women who are into tech as anything more than “one of the group.” On the one hand, it can be a great equalizer; on the other hand, a geek girl can find it hard to get the attention of geek guys.
I loved this movie. I’m a bit older than many here, Facebook is not part of my life like it is for many a bit younger. Yet I’ve lived through the “rise” of the geek millionaire. My husband is a software engineer and we lived in Silicon Valley at the height of the crazyness many yrs ago. It’s a bizarre culture, and I saw a lot of it reflected in this movie.
I don’t know why everyone is talking about the misogyny is this movie, because that is how much of the geek culture IS. Many of the so called “bumbling clueless geeks” are really assholes (as said in the movie).
Geek culture has been changing as the dot.com geeks mature, marry, have kids. But the venture capital start-ups with young hotshot techies are still often like a giant misogynistic frat party situation.
I was a bit surprised by how much I disliked the Zuckerberg character after seeing this film. He was so one-note awful to pretty much everyone he meets, and it made me wonder what the real guy is like, and whether he really is such a vicious misogynist/passive-aggressive bully.
From what I’ve read, he’s been in a steady relationship since 2003 (yes, his girlfriend is Asian), he’s close to his sister, and has an older techie Harvard grad, a woman, as one of his closest business associates. He’s still close with Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz. I imagine the real Zuckerberg has definite jerk and misogynist tendencies, but the film was so cartoonish when it came to him, it just felt false.
And is Eduardo Saverin really such a sad-sack?
I get that this is a movie, but my journalist side cringes at what may be gross factual errors.
It’s interesting to me that it’s easy for people to see that portraying doesn’t equal endorsing misogyny when it’s in a show like “Mad Men”, where it’s set in the past. But same strategy in a movie set in modern times, and suddenly you see a lot more people get upset. Is it that we don’t like admitting sexism is still a problem in society? When we see it on screen, are we more eager to say the film is the reason, not the world the film is commenting on?
Not you guys, of course. I just meant the critiques I’ve seen that fall into the “nuh-uh!” category.
I do think the intention was to examine toxic masculinity, which is a favorite theme of Fincher’s to explore. Dunno about Sorkin, but Fincher definitely looks at modern masculinity with a critical eye.
@Nefarious Newt I don’t know that I wouldn’t go to the movie because it’s about Facebook – I mean my impression is that it’s only very nominally about Facebook but rather more about power and its abuses.
I have next to no interest in Facebook itself – I don’t have a Facebook account, I don’t do social networking in any form (unless posting here counts) but I agree with Amanda Marcotte above that Fincher definitely has an interest in examining aspects of modern masculinity and I think Sorkin has always been interested in the way in which we wield power.
This movie seems to me as though it would at least address these issues – although admittedly I’ll have to find the time to see it first.
Great discussion, guys. I, for some reason, could not wait to see this movie, despite my longstanding refusal to join Facebook. But my reasons for not being on it don’t preclude me from recognizing its cultural relevance, and I really, really enjoyed the film. It has huge problems of course, but I’ve lost patience with many of the commentaries about it (until I came across yours and Amanda Marcotte’s). I just don’t think the “I went to Harvard and here’s how they got Harvard wrong,” and “I work and tech and here’s how they got the tech world wrong,” pieces about the film are all that interesting (especially because they seem so self-absorbed/self-serving, at the end of the day). It’s like getting mad that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has Zombies in it.
Also, while I have in the past been charmed by Justin Timberlake, on this outing I thought he was totally out of his league. I mean, can we talk about the dude playing the Winklevoss Twins? His version of the Winklevi needs its own spinoff.
@MadrasSoup: I totally didn’t realize until the credits that the Winklevi were played by only one dude. I kept thinking “Wow, how’d they manage to find twins who look like that and can act?” I am kind of slow on the uptake sometimes.
I thought he looked like he was lifted straight from a 1930s Aryan propaganda poster. So tall! So blonde! So muscular! I could have watched him (them) all day. Plus “I’m 6’5″, 220 and there’s two of me” was one of the best lines in the movie.
MadrasSoup and Becky, you can have the Winklevi dude if you leave Jesse Eisenberg for me. Deal?
@s.o.l.a.g.: That works because I’m going to have to time-share JT with SarahMC.
I thought the Winklevoss twins were hot. I want Winklevi dude, too. I asked a friend who went to Yale if Ivy Leaguers do actually talk like that, and she was like “yes, and this is why I am not going to watch this movie.”
I went in accepting that it was going to be highly fictionalized, but I was still pretty annoyed at Zuckerberg’s actual Asian girlfriend being erased entirely from the story, to be replaced by Eduardo’s hot Asian trophy girlfriend trope. I guess it was for the best though – no sense in having a sister being maligned alongside her boyfriend.
I thought she was looked familiar and checked out the IMDB and was like “!!! Brenda Song!!” How she’s grown from Disney channel days…. here’s hoping she gets better movie roles in the future, because as it is, this role sucked for her =/
I think the part with Eduardo’s Asian girlfriend is being taken the wrong way. I see it as, he is such a geek and so blinded by his own success and the fact that the Hot Asian Woman is not only willing to go out with him, but to actually be his GIRLFRIEND, that he completely overlooks the fact (until far too late) that she’s actually psycho. How many women have gone out with hot guys and put up with domestic violence, just because they’re in disbelief that such a good-looking man is interested in them? Same thing.