Comments on: Harpy Cinematical Society: The Social Network

By: catnmus

catnmus — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:22:33 +0000

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.

By: Jha

Jha — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 21:32:58 +0000

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 =/

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:24:05 +0000

@s.o.l.a.g.: That works because I’m going to have to time-share JT with SarahMC.

By: sarah.of.a.lesser.god

sarah.of.a.lesser.god — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:20:26 +0000

MadrasSoup and Becky, you can have the Winklevi dude if you leave Jesse Eisenberg for me. Deal?

By: BeckySharper

BeckySharper — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:22:38 +0000

@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.

By: MadrasSoup

MadrasSoup — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:00:04 +0000

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.

By: emilyanne

emilyanne — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 22:59:03 +0000

@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.

By: Amanda Marcotte

Amanda Marcotte — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:28:21 +0000

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.

By: JetGirl

JetGirl — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:32:48 +0000

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.

By: Ms. M

Ms. M — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:24:02 +0000

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.