The State of the Race: Everything that Rises…

Let’s run down the list of accusations against the Social Network, shall we? Okay, so it’s only October but the film has already been accused of being: inaccurate, anti-geek, ignorant of the internet, racist and sexist. Wow, all in one week? What other film in recent memory has stirred this kind of debate? Usually this sort of thing doesn’t hit until just before nominations, which tells you that it isn’t really the rival publicists doing this — it’s just the usual stuff: “everything that rises must converge,” as Flannery O’Connor once wrote. And from thence, it must plummet.¬†¬† If we built it, we must then tear it down. Why is that, I wonder?

At any rate, it seems like a good time to discuss controversy in the Oscar race, even when it’s fake, and whether it has any effect or not.

Does it have any effect?

Of course it does. The Oscar winners are almost always made on perception. Remember, Oscar choices are rarely “right” so much as they are “right now.” People vote based on how they feel about something or someone.¬† Critics also do this, as we can see when we look back at their history; it is almost impossible not to be swept up in the momentary excitement of the now. Someday someone will be able to really get down to the philosophy of how and why people vote, but for now, I’ll rely on my own experience and history – going back nearly 11 years.

Since The Social Network is currently the lucky film that has the duel responsibility of not just being a good film but also satisfying everyone’s ethnic, moral and gender rules of conduct. We might just take Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher in front of a committee and ask them, “Did you intend to insult Asian women with your film?” “Do you think ALL women are sluts, sycophants, whores and drug addicts?” “Do you think only men are capable of starting businesses?” And if they’re found guilty, we could have a public stoning. Would that satisfy the many complaints being unfairly hurled at the film?

I’m not saying Oscar strategists are behind this — what I do know is that the way you take down a film this strong is by changing the dialogue from “It’s so good” to “it’s good, but it’s not THAT good.” If the film everyone was praising with a 97% metacritic rating was The King’s Speech, the dialogue would still shift to “it’s good, but isn’t THAT good.” Whether or not this shift makes any difference at all has to do with the singular experience of watching the film itself. Anyone could float the dialogue at Slumdog Millionaire until they were blue in the face; it wouldn’t have changed the results of the Oscar race: a sweep in most every category.

The truly vicious attacks come after that, if the film isn’t dipping appropriately. With Slumdog Millionaire it was all about the poor kids in India. That didn’t stick. With A Beautiful Mind it was the whitewashed story of John Nash. That didn’t stick either, but it almost did. Some say Saving Private Ryan was brought down by a whisper campaign, “it’s really only good for the first 45 minutes.” That really did stick, because it happened to also be true. As good as those first 45 minutes were, they couldn’t overcome the way the story fell apart. Munich suffered the same fate. I only relay this story because no matter what else I write in this piece, the only thing people will pay attention to is the Saving Private Ryan vs. Shakespeare in Love incident, which is almost as comment-worthy as the Crash vs. Brokeback saga.

Films that fly under the radar have the advantage of being thought of as the underdog. Crash and Shakespeare in Love were two films that might have been beaten had they started the race out as the frontrunner. Right now, people are still saying The King’s Speech is the one that will beat The Social Network. But The King’s Speech hasn’t even opened yet so, for now, it isn’t a fair comparison. We can’t really know which two films will be competing for the win until all of the films have been seen.

But getting back to the nasty static, it is difficult to ignore the recent spate of attacks against The Social Network – which are maybe the worst I’ve seen since I’ve been covering the race. Last year’s attempts to berate The Hurt Locker were very nearly unbearable.

The film is sexist.

O rilly?

The best female character in the Social Network, maybe the best character overall is played by Rooney Mara. She opens the film by setting up the shallow character we see before us. Mark Zuckerberg. Is he the real Mark Zuckerberg? No. He is a tragic/dramatic rendition of an American myth. Rooney Mara’s character has two really great scenes in the film where she dresses down Zuckerberg; he knows she’s smarter than he is in some ways — which is why he so broken-hearted; he isn’t yearning for Daisy with the green light at the end of her dock because SHE represents all of his hopes and dreams. He years for a woman who is smart, honorable and doesn’t only like him because he invented TheFacebook. There is a big difference there; Daisy is an illusion. Erika is not.

The other strong female character in the film is Rashida Jones – who also gets the opportunity to tell Zuckerberg where to put it. Two women in the film teach him his biggest lessons. And surprisingly, they do it without the aid of crotchless panties and a pool table.

Finally, the girl in her panties who sleeps with Sean Parker is, I believe, a Standford student. She’s no dumb slut. She slept with him; who wouldn’t at that age? Just because women have sex with men does not make them sluts. Women should be afforded the same sexual freedom and choices men have. I’m not prepared to ditch a couple of decades of feminism for this misguided notion that smart women don’t have sex.

True, there are a lot of girls throwing themselves at these boys. That is the only way to illustrate that being the guy who invented TheFacebook is like being a rock star. The point is well taken, and it’s not Hollywood’s fault. Is it a misogynist view? Sure. But they’re saying, with their film, not that all college girls are slutty hoes, but that these young dumb dudes SAW women that way. It is a perception and an interpretation. It is the unreliable narrator.

Does this make a difference to some of the women online? Nope. Just check out this post by Irin Carmon, The Social Network: Where Women Never Have Ideas, “Hollywood’s solution to Facebook’s unsexy creation story was familiar: Add women as sluts, stalkers, or ballbusters.”

Let’s go over this again. In the first scene, Mark gets dumped by his girlfriend. Historical documents back up the fact that Zuckerberg did get dumped and drunk the night he thought up FaceMash. Mark then humiliates not just his own ex-girlfriend but all women at Harvard by comparing their looks. That sets Mark up to be a misogynist – perhaps. He’s a 19 year-old dumbass. He hasn’t yet learned not to be a misogynist. He will. He will go on to depend on women, respect women, have a long, lasting relationship – but at that moment in his Harvard dorm room he does something he lives to regret later (video of Zuckerberg backs this up as well).

What is at stake for the characters in the film? Everything. Money, power, success, and yes, SEX.

Or love.

That is the beauty of the film. Each of these imperfect characters, but especially Zuckerberg, learn something by the end. He grows up a little bit.   The film ends on an uptick for him.

The film owed it to Zuckerberg to make him a nice guy:

Well, no, they didn’t. Zuckerberg made his bed and thus, he has to lie in it. This is what happens when you are known by 500 million “friends.” You become a myth, an icon, a person in the public domain. Some complain that we don’t ever really get the picture of just how special his creation of Facebook was. We don’t need to know that, we see it every time we login to Facebook.com. We know what an essential application it is and how brilliant the people behind were/are. No one is begrudging him his fame and success. But when he made a conscious decision (backed up with text messages that are authentic) to screw his friend Eduardo Saverin out of his fair share, knowing he would be faced with a lawsuit but deciding to take it anyway, he sealed his own fate. It was a shitty thing to do. Full stop.

But in fairness, the film doesn’t paint Saverin as a hero. In fact, he comes off lost, left behind and incompetent. Almost no one comes off very well in this film. Each and every male character is deeply flawed. But what Zuckerberg’s character is probably akin to is the little brats we become the moment our identity blooms online. He IS probably more like Zuckerberg’s online persona, when human interaction and culpability are removed from equation; we all know about this, don’t we? We leave comments and say things in text we would never say to a person face-to-face. To that end, the cinematic Zuck is his own avatar.

Did Zuckerberg fuck over Eduardo Saverin in real life? YES. Is there actual proof of this? YES. Does anyone care about that minor detail? NO. They just care that Zuckerberg isn’t getting the credit he deserves for yadda yadda yadda. To me, he’s a brilliantly written, extremely complex character who shows that all he wants is to be connected to someone — namely, Rooney Mara.

The film pushes forward the “me so horny” Asian stereotype

I can’t really argue with this. The book talks about these particular dudes’ “taste” for Asian women. I don’t see how this is different from a guy only wanting to date black women, or white women — these inclinations DO exist. Should the filmmakers have said “well, we can’t put that in, even if it was true, because it paints Asian women with one brush and in a bad light.” That is not an ethical decision I’d ever want to make. All I can think is that they made a conscious choice to put it in the film — now they must take the hit.

One thing I can comment on, though, is Brenda Song – a character I thought was great. You can take it as “all Asian girlfriends are crazy” or you can take it as, what a great part. I choose the latter. You know, put Asians in films with interesting roles like this one and they’re promoting an Asian stereotype. Only cast white women because no one would complain and people would complain they weren’t hiring minorities for certain roles.

Something that has long bugged me about this complaint is that minorities seem never able to be portrayed as anything other than “good” characters without various ethnic and gender groups getting upset, which is why you always see “good” gay characters and “good” African Americans.

I think people can get mad at the movie if they want. No one wants to support films that promote negative stereotypes. At the same time, something else is also at stake: artistic expression.¬† Are we now asking our filmmakers and writers, poets, photographers, painters to make sure they never try to tell a story that doesn’t portray all minorities in a positive light? Are we ready to make a list of what they can and can’t explore in film?

I can tell this is going to be a hell of a combative season.

Finally, the most ludicrous accusation of all —

The Filmmakers Didn’t Celebrate the Internet Enough.

Several articles have popped up about this.¬† The best one actually does make a good point and it’s written by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig. In it, he says that Aaron Sorkin missed what might be the most important point to note – but one so egg-heady audiences wouldn’t be able to grasp it, probably — no one I know can even grasp it, so I can’t imagine general audiences concerned with it. It has to do with the upcoming tragedy of our government allowing corporations to control the channels of the internet. The freedom of the internet as it is now is what allowed Facebook to flourish at all; one day we will look back at 2010 and we will say, wow, that was back when anyone could build a website like Facebook and become a billionaire almost overnight. These freedoms are going to be taken away eventually. What we have now is called “internet neutrality” and it is what allowed me to build this site and make a living off of it.

The tragedy—small in the scale of things, no doubt—of this film is that practically everyone watching it will miss this point. Practically everyone walking out will think they understand genius on the Internet. But almost none will have seen the real genius here. And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea.

Columnist Jeff Jarvis’ main complaint was that the film made Zuckerberg into “the other” and didn’t give him proper credit for creating Facebook. He then takes this concept and morphs it into “The Social Network is anti-internet.” I didn’t realize Facebook WAS the internet, and as I tweeted to Jarvis, I always thought Facebook did to the internet what Starbucks did to coffee shops.

But don’t ask me what I think. I don’t know anything about anything. All I know is what I live by: if you’re pissing people off you must be doing something right.