The things you own end up owning you - Tyler Durden (David Fincher’s Fight Club)
One can share pictures & be in touch online without using FB. Though there are two things that immediately come to mind which make Facebook addictive – navigating through other people’s pros & ‘status update’. Afterall, a good business idea is – which is able to ‘generate a need’.
Mark Zuckerberg is a Harvard student, obsessed with the idea of exclusivity, which is established right from the opening scene where he is discussing getting into the ‘best’ student club at Harvard – the Final Club, with his girlfriend. What follows is a break up & from there on Zuckerberg uses his latent faculties to get back at people closest to him, emotionally.
Fincher’s Zuckerberg is a genius who’s “trying hard to be an asshole”. Sharp, motivated, focussed, go getter , carefree, agitated, arrogant, obsessed. Genius nonetheless. He is like Hirani’s Rancho, only a twisted one. Perhaps, a flesh & blood Rancho.
Eduardo Saverin – Zuckerberg’s best friend is like most of us – he sees wrong around him & doesn’t want to get engaged with it but, as he too wants to be an achiever, he ignores and moves on with life. Whenever something significant occurs in his college life, Saverin refers to his father – “what would he think?”.
Zuckerberg is the product of environment, Saverin – the result of it.
Sean Parker is a guy who does networking. Using his flamboyant confidence, he establishes connections with the right people. He’d know your pulse rate if you are sitting at the table across him. Parker breezes in & out of business meetings, charging the environment & infecting it by planting seeds of ‘big thinking’ into the fertile minds – “Drop “the”. Just “Facebook”. It’s cleaner” – that’s all he brings to the table as investment. That’s his asset! When he is around you don’t need to sniff to get high, it’s in the air…just breath!! Sean Parker implies the importance of middlemen in the world of private profit. But he is no gangster, he is the guerilla capitalist!!
The difference between Saverin & Sean Parker is – ‘Harvard education’. While commenting generally on the education system in the scene where Winklevoss brothers go to meet their Harvard director, I think, Fincher specifically suggests the outcome of exclusivist education through Eduardo Saverin. He tells Parker – “I like standing next to you, Sean… it makes me look so tough.”
On the other hand, Winklevoss brothers & Divya Narendra are not as brilliant as Zuckerberg or as savvy as Parker, but they are dedicated. They know – a team is important because a leader can’t accomplish on his own, and not vice versa. All wealthy & well resourced people are not first rate assholes. Unlike Saverin, they try to be ethical but the rowing competition proves too much for them.
The whole rowing competiton sequence is very symbolic. Winklevoss brothers finish second in the tournament. The post competition party shows how anyone who is not an achiever (and here achiever means numero uno) is treated by people. Inspite of finishing second in the race, Winklevoss brothers feel humiliated & the mention of Facebook’s success at the party only make them lesser “gentlemen” from then on.
The Social Network is a morality tale – its basically about our obsession with achievement or rather, our fixation with the perception of it. The movie cleverly jumps back and forth between deposition scenes and sequences leading to the invention of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin’s solid & layered screenplay keeps you on the edge & engaged in the drama and, also provides more than a few sharp, biting lines.
Fincher has always used music tastefully. The Social Network is no different. Whether it’s the first meeting between Parker and Zuckerberg-Saverin or the night club scene with Zuckerberg & Parker or, the night scene in the dorm when Zuckerberg first gets the idea of FaceMash. Or the last Beatles song. It’s killer!
In a world where the usage of ‘moral’ in your vocabulary could be LOLed at, and the word ‘practical’ has become most functional – Mark Zuckerberg is a hero, though fallen.
Behind every successful man there is a woman – Zuckerberg comes out as a cold & an obsessively ambitious genius who just couldn’t get Erica Albright out of his mind. And that’s what qualifies him to be a protagonist in this story.
