The last time I went to the movies I went to go see the stinker which is known as Alice in Wonderland. When I decided to go see The Social Network In theatre for extra credit, I thought to myself why do I put myself through all these bad movies and pay so much for them? Luckily I was pleasantly surprised that The Social Network was actually pretty entertaining. This blog entry is not a review though, but about how this movie relates to American culture.
The movie follows Mark Zuckerberg who is the founder of facebook and tells how facebook originally came to be. Mark Zuckerberg is made to seem his age by showing scenes of him partaking in college activities expected by of a college student, but not expected of a business owner. Throughout the movie it breaks into scenes of the courtroom where he is getting sued by Eduardo, who helped start the facebook with him, and some kids who feel that Mark stole the facebook idea from them. Though Zuckerberg is the main character of the flick he is not shown in a positive light.
One of the main themes of this movie is to show how Zuckerberg and other characters such as Sean Parker are trying to full conflicting roles in American society. They are trying to be young college students and young adults who partake in parties, drugs, and promiscuous sex while trying to also be business men (who are portrayed to do the same thing in American culture but more discretely). The fact that these conflicting roles have been presented to these two shows how technology has reshaped the business world. Technology is moving so fast that society is willing to accept any new advancement without question with idea that it will soon become obsolete soon anyway. This mentality allowed facebook to take off the way it did and throw both Zuckerberg and Parker in a position of wealth and power which they appear from the movie to not be prepared for.
The fact that this movie is such a success and that there is not a huge outrage against facebook shows a great deal about our culture too. The reaction from America about this movie shows that our standards say that it is fine to do all the things that Zuckerberg did as long as the general public does not know about it. Being cut throat when it comes to business and screwing over those who have helped (like Zuckerberg did ti Eduardo) is well known as common practice in America, but when it comes to the spotlight we tend to just give a slight slap on the wrist and then not think twice about it. Technology adds a whole new element to this too, since we still view Zuckerberg in a positive light since he has given us this new great piece of technology. The new question has now become how much can someone get away with who is capable of advancing technology?
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