The Social Network: Living in the Digital Age (Part Two)

In my last semester of college, I completed a writing portfolio entitled "Exploring Modern American Culture through Contemporary Cinema." It contained four essays dissecting four recent films. For the last essay, I studied David Fincher's The Social Network (2010) and wrote about its portrayal of the burgeoning culture of the Digital Age. The second part of that essay is below. I will post a new portfolio excerpt every day. Previous posts: The Dark Knight - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four; (500) Days of Summer - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four; Lincoln - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four; The Social Network - Part One.

 

The Social Network: Living in the Digital Age

The Objectification of the Human Race

Deeply embedded in The Social Network is its commentary on digitalized life. It can be felt in all aspects of the film, right down to its pace. The movie crams 162 pages of script into two hours of cinema, moving at an appropriately lightning-fast pace, just like the technology that drives the story (Phillips). The criticism starts right away with a telling opening sequence. After his girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara) breaks up with him at a local bar, Mark rushes back to his dorm room, angry and ready to rant. He has a few drinks, and instead of complaining to his roommates, he decides to complain to the world. Mark pulls up his blog and writes a bitter diatribe against the girl who just dumped him. He then decides he needs to get his mind off of her. His solution? Create Facesmash, a site where students can compare girls based on their looks. At first, he considers comparing the girls to farm animals (an idea he blogs about), but ultimately decides against it. For this site, Mark uses photos of Harvard students to make the whole thing all the more entertaining for his peers.

Facemash is representative of widespread objectification that has occurred due to the impersonal nature of the Internet. This is not to say objectification was not a problem prior to the Digital Age. Mass media throughout the 20th century have made this commonplace in U.S. culture, from Hollywood’s manufacture of celebrities to stereotyping in advertisements. The Internet has added a new aspect to this phenomenon. Now people can do to their peers something that was once reserved for public figures: obsess over them, looking up their interests, history, and even their images. For example, on Facebook a person can look up any of his or her “friends” and see what others have said to them, what they are up to, and what they look like with status updates, wall posts, and photo albums. This allows one to accumulate superficial perceptions of his or her family members, close friends, and acquaintances, just as one could generate casual impressions about celebrities by reading tabloids or watching entertainment news. On the other end of the spectrum, people can try to generate their own celebrity. By carefully choosing what to share or not to share on a social network or other similar site, one can create a persona, an idea of him- or herself to put in others’ minds. The Internet did not cause the problem of objectification, but it has broadened it.

Sources

Fincher, David, dir. The Social Network. Writ. Aaron Sorkin, Perf. Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. Columbia Pictures, 2010. Film. 2 Nov 2013.

Phillips, Michael. "David Fincher's anti-social approach to the filming of 'Social Network'." Chicago Tribune 24 Sep 2010, n. pag. Web. 2 Nov. 2013.