The MEDIAtrix: The Social Network

 

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For the record, I am not a misogynist.  In fact, I’m probably the farthest thing from it.  I did a book report on Betty Friedan in the third grade, burned my (training) bra during a protest in middle school, and took women’s studies classes at Berkeley — Berkeley.  Are there too few women in Hollywood?  Yes. Is there a dearth of strong roles for women? Hell yes.  But even though The Social Network commits these sins, I’m convinced that it’s no more sexist than say the latest installment of Batman or Transformers.  And, in fact, the sins committed by this movie — portraying women minimally and primarily as sex objects — are done in service of shining a light on the problem.  Hello, people — this WHOLE MOVIE IS ABOUT MASCULINITY IN CRISIS IN THE DIGITAL AGE.  The lack of women is a central part of this crisis.  Face it, if Mark Zuckerberg had been getting laid a la Don Johnson by his babysitter when he was fourteen, we’d all be sitting around today chatting on IM, calling each other to get real life “status updates,” and maybe actually using LinkedIn.

Sorkin’s defense of the work as a truth-laden portrayal of a very real misogynistic culture has come under much attack, most notably on the grounds that it’s not true.  Zuckerberg, in fact, had an on-again, off-again girlfriend over the course of the early 2000s.  (Gasp!  As though no one with any issues towards women ever had a girlfriend.)  But such debate over details misses the larger point.  The Social Network is a significant film because it poses the question:  In our evolution away from the physical and towards the digital, how do we define masculinity?  What is the modern equivalent of killing a saber-toothed tiger for your prehistoric clan?  In the 21st century, it’s pulling all-nighters coding.  It’s creating a start-up.  It’s getting angel investors, doing an IPO and going on Oprah to give away some of your money to a good cause, Warren Buffet style.  Ultimately, it is about drive, success, and sex.

 

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So are women objectified in The Social Network?  Yes.  Is that okay?  Well, yes, because the whole movie is about problematizing that issue.  It’s no accident that the young lawyer (played by Rashida Jones) who reaches out to Zuckerberg is intelligent and sexy, a foil to most of the women in the movie and at the end of the day someone Zuckerberg STILL can’t impress.  She’s elusive.

Balance in the film industry does not come from some sort of idealized notion of gender equity.  Hell, we don’t have that in life, so it seems a tad unreasonable to expect it to be reflected on-screen.  I personally think that it’s the whole damn industry that we need to evaluate when we step back and take a look at claims of sexual harassment.  By my count, only 16 of the 100 top grossing films in 2010 featured a female protagonist or co-lead.  Now that’s a problem (insert obligatory statistic about women being more than half of the world’s population here).  Not that it’s never appropriate to shine a light on the treatment of women in a single movie (e.g. Sin City), but when the movie is about how badly men treat women, seems like we’re actually doing damage by complaining, no?  It’s like saying, “Oh, they shouldn’t have that rape scene in The Accused.”  Hellooo, that’s the whole point.

Frankly, I wish that there were more movies that explore the pressures of what it means to be male and that unpack male behavior toward women.  However, since I don’t think that makes a four-quadrant film (or a good lunchbox or t-shirt), I won’t be holding my breath anytime soon.  So, summary judgment?  The Social Network features young bucks who want to get laid and will go to extremes to do it, including possibly infringing on intellectual property and betraying their best friends.  The film asks, is this okay?  I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not.  As far as the women go, the women in The Social Network have a lot of power.  They approve or deny.  They get the last line.  And they get the last laugh.