Mark Zuckerberg Tries to Understand Why Hollywood Misunderstood Him

Nice try, Zuck, but no cigar. Mark Zuckerberg explains the thematic thing the Social Network “got wrong” about him in the video clip below. Basically it says that Hollywood doesn’t understand that in Silicon Valley they like building things because they like building things. It’s the “because it’s there” concept. So, okay, fine. He’s uncomfortable with the portrait of him as a nerd who wanted to impress girls and/or have friends so he build TheFacebook in order to have those things. But here’s a newsflash for Mr. Zuckerberg: it wasn’t about you.

As someone who dwells in both the Hollywood world and the tech world I can say that they are more similar than they are different. No, Aaron Sorkin is not someone who adequately appreciates technology; but David Fincher is. And somewhere between them they made one of the best, if not the best, film of 2010.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on this, you can read them after the cut. But for now, you can check out Zuck (who is, despite all evidence to the contrary, kind of a hottie).

The Social Network, The King’s Speech, Citizen Kane, The Queen, Reversal of Fortune, Erin Brockovich all have one thing in common: their central figure must be a compelling subject. One doesn’t create art by imitating reality; one interprets reality to deliver a metaphor that hopefully illuminates human nature or the nature of life. We don’t look at The King’s Speech and think only about King George the Sixth; we look at it and we relate it to the obstacles we’ve had in our own lives.

You aren’t going to make a movie like The Social Network by stating the obvious. Okay, so they like to “build things.” Mark Zuckerberg’s definition of Mark Zuckerberg in itself could be a movie. Most of us don’t see ourselves as we really are. And if anyone ever wanted to write about us big things would be made of little things.

The main difference between The Social Network and Citizen Kane, other than the changing of the names, is that in The Social Network we aren’t really asking the question throughout the film, “why does Mark Zuckerbergh do what he does?” In Citizen Kane, we’re always asking the question, “Who was Charles Foster Kane” and “What was Rosebud?”

Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can.

We don’t ever wonder why Zuckerberg built Facebook. We knew the answer was, because he COULD. We look at him as the genius that he was. We marvel at his speed and vision. His motivations for building Facebook were never part of the film’s big question. The question wasn’t why he built it. The question was why he screwed over his friends and others on the way to the top. Why did he screw over Eduardo Saverin? Why did he hurt Erica publicly? Why did he cockblock the Winklevii? That is where you start to find the answers to the character.

Since he wants to start in with the Jeff Jarvis-esque jibberjabber about how Hollywood doesn’t understand the tech world; I would submit that the tech world could use a little enlightenment where artistic expression is concerned. I realize that somewhere these two tenants of thought converge, but so far we are looking at two different paths of thinking — they seem to oppose one another, but that’s only because the ego is involved.

The downside of being Mark Zuckerberg is that he has to live with the mistakes he made at 19. The downside of being the world’s youngest billionaire is that some people might think his motives for being the one person who gets to take credit for TheFacebook are suspect. If he had been worried about his image, I’m sure he would have behaved differently. Clearly, he “just likes to build things” and image building comes last. It comes many years later when you’re trying to hold on to the empire you’ve built.

As for Sorkin and Fincher, their job was to look at Zuckerberg’s story, and give us all something to chew on about the world we’re now living in. It goes beyond entertainment, where it succeeds entirely, and into the realm of defining the era of the social network. And here, metaphor is everywhere. Art and technology are still beautiful achievements of the human brain.¬† Vive la diff√©rance.