LONELINESS AND MONEY ARE AT THE ROOT OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK
The main focus of The Social Network is who profited from Facebook. Director Peter Fincher rushed to film Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (2009), assured that millions of Americans who have unmasked their privacy on the website will be intrigued by an exposé of how the world’s youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), struck it rich yet never sought riches. The story begins during 2003 with Zuckerberg clumsily unable to attract friendship from a fictional date, Erica Albricht (played by Rooney Mara), by out-arguing her. He then retreats to a Harvard dorm (though filmed at Johns Hopkins), to get revenge on Harvard coeds. He develops a social network program by stealing one casually developed elsewhere on campus. Thereafter, he expands and markets the idea to elite colleges, including Stanford, where he soon attracts the interest of Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), inventor of then defunct Napster, and then dumps Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), his original CFO, who fails not only to read the fine print in a contract but also to understand the real world of high finance. The film is laced with sex, in which mostly Asian women are treated as mere sex objects and, with the exception of Erica, appear to like their degradation. Zuckerberg is consistently portrayed as an unlikable asshole, whereas those he cheats are the nice guys in the film, though the reality may differ. The point of the film appears to be that money is made by those with vision, manic energy, and the right connections, whereas users of Facebook appear as self-indulgent neurotics. What holds the film together is a running lawsuit deposition with flashbacks. Zuckerberg’s attorney eventually suggests that he should appease his adversaries with payoffs of substantial millions to keep Facebook unencumbered by endless damaging litigation. Credits at the end provide information on what subsequently happened to those featured in the story. MH