Friends and Enemies - UPDATED

Earlier today, I took a few hours off, got out of the rainy afternoon, and enjoyed a matinee movie. I haven't done this in months, and it felt good! I had been itching for awhile to see the new movie about the origins of Facebook: The Social Network.

The movie has been getting a good deal of press, not only because it covers the very controversial beginnings of this generation's greatest social revolution and one of its most successful business ventures, but also because it has been very well reviewed. Indeed, the movie is well written, acted and directed and I imagine there will be some attention from the Academy Awards - if for no other reason then that they love to be 'relevant.'

It's been suggested that the movie is somehow a character study of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook - and that it paints him as some kind of ruthless and manipulative egomaniac. However, I didn't see the movie as a hit-piece on Zuckerberg.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as an immensely gifted and yet terribly insecure college aged kid. Is he self-absorbed? Of course. Does he overestimate himself and undervalue his friends? Absolutely. Might his inability to form deep relationships and to pick up on social cues even be the signs of an Aspergers-like illness? Yes.  

But the movie does not make Zuckerberg out to be a moral monster. If anyone in the movie fits that bill, it's Napster's founder Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is pitiable. We see him make stupid (even immoral) decisions based on his own wounds and insecurities and yet we also see hints of his loyalty and his remorse for the times he's betrayed his friends. 

It's actually a pretty complex personal portrait that's hinted at, and I can't help but think that people will see a lot of themselves and their own sins in the character. At the very least, I find it hard to imagine that people could leave this movie hating Mark Zuckerberg.

But I was most interested in what cultural commentary the movie might have to offer about humanity and human relationships in the age of (the movie's title) the online social network. I would suggest the very subtle social commentary that is offered is a kind of cautionary tale based on the portrait of Zuckerberg.

Whether or not it's faithful to actual events, the movie tells Facebook's "creation myth" (the movie's phrase, not mine) by portraying Zuckerberg as motivated by the desire for revenge (against a girlfriend who dumped him), for esteem (from the exclusive societies at Harvard), and, frankly, for extramarital sex. (Zuckerberg isn't portrayed as being motivated by money - though he's now the world's youngest billionaire!)  

These are, of course, the very powerful desires at the root of almost all human sin. Now some might suggest that since these misplaced desires are portrayed as the springs from which the new social networks flow, we should simply boycott them entirely. They are the fruit of a poison seed. I would offer a different interpretation.

In the movie, the clearest indication we have that Zuckerberg actually does 'get' human interaction, is that he creates Facebook in such a way that it responds so perfectly to the desires of users for an online version of the campus community.

So it's not that we should boycott online social networks. That would be like saying we should avoid classes, parties, and other forms of social interaction. It's that we should recognize online social networks for what they are: extensions in the digital realm of our actual social interactions, and therefore fraught with the same wonderful possibilities, and the same temptations.

This might seem like the simplest and most obvious of observations. But I don't think so. I think many people act as if the Internet is somehow outside the realm of moral consequences and beyond the normal rules of human interaction. Sadly, there have recently been too many examples of this way of thinking, whether it be kids bullying fellow students online in ways that would (or should) never be tolerated on the playground, or adults commenting on blog posts in ways they would (or should) never speak out loud in a public forum.

So perhaps the "creation myth" this movie offers actually helps us humanize the Internet. It makes us aware that, for good and for ill, these newest forms of technology and communication are not as 'otherworldly,' as different or as separated from 'real life,' as we might like to imagine. Fully realizing this, we can go forward with the civilizing and evangelizing efforts that every time and place so desperately need.

UPDATE: My fellow clerical bloggers over at Whosoever Desires also have a review of Social Network - and while its longer and better written then mine, it ultimately comes to a very, very similar conclusion.