The Social Network Reflection
In the movie, The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg showed the dark side of the creation of the biggest global social networking site. Zuckerberg’s irony shined through with his need to be accepted but doing it through the vulnerabilities and objectification of others, specifically women. It was shocking to see how much women and misogyny were prevalent in Zuckerberg’s world while he was rising to become one of the biggest moguls. In the first scene of the film, he treats his girlfriend, Erica, as a trophy, insinuating that she should be honored to be his girlfriend as when he gets into a final club, “I will be taking you to all the gatherings and you’ll be meeting a lot of people you wouldn’t normally get to meet”. Mark continues to insult her for not being as smart as him, or by his extremely high standards, by remarking that she didn’t need to go study“because you go to BU”.
The scene about the launch of Facesmash further shows his deep seeded resentment and need to be liked because while he created this “cool” new outlet for people to use, he gets to also use it to make fun of other women to compensate over his own pain of being dumped. It was especially sad to see the group of guys during this same scene huddling around the website and a fellow female student trying to see what they were so entranced by and seeing that her roommate was being compared to another. The film’s plot continues with a pattern of objectifying women by having scenes that portray women as social climbing for guys with high social standing. Specifically, when Zuckerberg and his business partner and “friend” Eduardo became famous around Harvard for their site The Facebook, two women practically throw themselves at them because of their desire to be associated with them. As the film progresses, despite the influx of women Marc is surrounded by, they never appeared to contribute any value other than serving as under-dressed props for the men in the film to enjoy and unwind with.
From the beginning of the film, it is already expected that Zuckerberg would ultimately lose what little friendships he had, and end up as alone as he started. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the film was Marc’s dedication to Facebook, a site he created for everyone else to keep up with/socialize with their friends yet he doesn’t have any himself. This is partly due to the toxicity towards women that Zuckerberg held on to merely because of one breakup in college. Yet despite this seemingly traumatizing event, he still manages to send Erica a friend request, desperately trying to receive any last bit of acceptance that he can. This final scene made me recall when Marc had cynically asked Erica in the first scene if she was “like whatever delusional” when really, it’s Marc who is delusional for thinking that she would want to talk to him after mocking her and comparing women to farm animals on his blog. Essentially, it was nothing other than Zuckerberg’s own callous attitude that caused his downfall but the movie showed that his horrid treatment of women and the people in his social circle came back to bite him.
