Watching The Social Network was hard – it made my life feel like so much less. The way that spending a lot of time on Facebook makes me feel.
But it was interesting. You could tell that those involved – that (dare I say) Aaron Sorkin/David Fincher empathized with Mark’s character. That as a creator – as an artist – as a “computer person”, a big part of just you wants to do your work, and sink into a hole where you can do your work and never get touched by emotion. Pay other people to do the things you don’t want to do. The moments that affected me were:
a) The moment where the Winklevosses are in the private rowing room – working ever working on their goal of being in the Olympics.
b) The moment where Eduardo sees Mark across the room in the Facebook office – sitting plugged in and untouchable.
c) The moment in the board room with the rain.
These are the moments where the characters are experiencing their bliss. And then they are caught naked by the world – their bliss judged to be not enough, because you cannot only want what you are good at. You cannot only want what you are God at. You have to want other things that are popular, and you have to dilute yourself to others’ demands of you.
Everyone was using one another wants, needs, abilities crossing. Eduardo got crossed in the middle because of a horrible, horrible disease called empathy.
That last moment was so clever. Mark sitting alone in the board room, refreshing the browser page and waiting for that girl – that inciting incident girl – to accept his friendship. That pause before he clicked “add as friend” when I thought he was going to add a personal message – say “I’m sorry”. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. As the other characters storylines were closed out – their closure accomplished, I waited for the refresh to yield a friendship, and realized that it was never going to come. “Mark” is the youngest billionaire in the world, but he’s just a guy sitting alone at his computer, waiting for an ex-girlfriend to acknowledge him.
There’s no closure when you look for the easy way out.
The movie also knifed me in that exquisitely playful scene, gorgeous rowing scene in Henley-on-Thames. When that dude’s daughter went to Cambridge, and Cambridge was mentioned right next to the chit-chat with royalty, the bright purple vulgar bouncing of American Gods meeting with ancient, dribbling elite of Europe, I felt absolute pain and resentment. A flashback of being in my classroom at City of London School for Girls when Mrs Restan ran panting into the room and said “Did Jane X get into Cambridge? Did she…? Oh THANK GOD!” And, much relieved, ran out again. And there we were.
Well. If you’re going to bake a layer cake, there’s got to be a layer on the bottom.
In that moment, I hated those Winkelvosses so much. I would have done anything to knock them off their skyscraper highchairs with their Aryan arrogance. I hated them the way that I primally, unconsciously hated those Oxbridge-Bound Luvvies who kind of sort of drove me to America and completely changed my life.
And so you push yourself back down, and you curl, as a bound foot, into yourself, and you do your work. You do your work. You do your work. You do your work you do your work.
