The New York Review of Books‘ Zadie Smith has a very thorough run at David Fincher’s The Social Network (Marina’s Review) that takes a look at generational divide, film vs. real life, web 2.0, dramatizing programming on screen, and motivations in general. I cannot disagree much with her take, but I’d make the argument here that it was the execution rather than the commentary that make The Social Network zip along as quality entertainment for me personally.
“Simply put, [Zuckerberg] is a computer nerd, a social “autistic”: a type as recognizable to Fincher’s audience as the cynical newshound was to Howard Hawks’s. To create this Zuckerberg, Sorkin barely need brush his pen against the page. We came to the cinema expecting to meet this guy and it’s a pleasure to watch Sorkin color in what we had already confidently sketched in our minds. For sometimes the culture surmises an individual personality, collectively. Or thinks it does. Don’t we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls. Sorkin, confident of his foundation myth, spins an exhilarating tale of double rejection—spurned by Erica and the Porcellian, the Finaliest of the Final Clubs, Zuckerberg begins his spite-fueled rise to the top. Cue a lot of betrayal. A lot of scenes of lawyers’ offices and miserable, character-damning depositions. (“Your best friend is suing you!”) Sorkin has swapped the military types of A Few Good Men for a different kind of all-male community in a different uniform: GAP hoodies, North Face sweats.”
Finally read this, and wow. I have been feeling some of this lately, the self-editing, what it is to dilute a message to serve so many different people. The kind of writing I have always wanted to do, and the kind or writing I am doing now. There is a dissonance like Zadie is talking about. Something has got to give. I don’t think it is just life 2.0, its not just Facebook, its… to steal from a recent phrase from a BP verdict, a culture of complacency. Its commerce dictating culture, its civics in soundbytes, its working for the weekend and probably not having the time enough to read an article like this (unless it was at work on the sly).
choice quotes:
“You have to be somebody,” Lanier writes, “before you can share yourself.” But to Zuckerberg sharing your choices with everybody (and doing what they do) is being somebody.”
and the facebook zinger:
“Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebook? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder. Blue, because it turns out Zuckerberg is red-green color-blind. “Blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue.” Poking, because that’s what shy boys do to girls they are scared to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what “friendship” is. A Mark Zuckerberg Production indeed! We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this? Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn’t it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?”
and I am definitely reading this book she talks of: You are not a gadget : a manifesto / by Jaron Lanier.