I keep going back and forth on whether or not I actually like The Social Network. Before I get into the detail, let me first say that it was an incredibly enjoyable movie. Witty, fast paced, rude and completely unapologetic, its characters were completely unlikable in all the right ways and there was hardly a dull moment. It won me over in the first scene, where Mark Zuckerberg the asshole is dumped by his girlfriend with the qualifier 'it's not because you're a nerd, it's because you're just an asshole'. (Nerd boys, there's a lot of truth in this. If you're complaining that you can't get a girlfriend because you're 'nerdy', ask yourself first, are you just a dick?)
But here's the thing: I can't guiltlessly like it, because it was also unapologetically sexist. I don't find that as bothersome as a lot of the blogosphere does and I certainly didn't ruin my movie experience by sitting there analyzing all the ways that it was an inaccurate and offensive portrayal of women, but it was there and it can't be avoided. Aside from the intelligent and fed up girlfriend that appears in the first scene as the catalyst for Mark's creation of facebook (by first inspiring him to create a site where girls at the school can be compared side by side and rated) the only girls to appear in the movie are mindless objects for the enjoyment of the male dominated cast. To the extent that they have any influence over the main characters, it is negative.
It's one thing to say 'the main characters of this movie are male because the creators of this company were male', the main defense I've seen bopping around the few negative reviews of The Social Network, and another thing entirely to say that it's justifiable to have treated every single minor female character as a sex object. Even when the company has expanded to include dozens of workers and interns the only girls who get screen time are having lines of coke snorted off of their stomachs and personally delivering things to the main characters so that they can be ogled and cat called. In the background the male interns are shown writing code and doing meaningful tasks for the company...with no women among them. Aaron Sorkin's defense that it's just a reflection of the reality of the techworld doesn't really hold water. There are women doing meaningful things in that environment, they just didn't fit into his storyline so he didn't mention them, even in passing. Alright, whatever, but at least acknowledge what you're doing.
At the same time, at least the sexism wasn't portrayed as a good thing. It just was what it was. The characters were clearly assholes for a whole slew of other reasons and no one was jumping to the defense of their treatment of the women around them.
So...I still don't know if I like this movie or not. I like asshole characters in general. I appreciate portrayals of the more negative side of human personalities and interactions, without a hero or a villain. Frankly, I like seeing people screw each other over and treat each other like shit and, well, act like real people in real relationships. Because real people are generally kind of assholes. Even the nicest ones fall into that trap from time to time, and most of us aren't the nicest that we could possibly be.
So what I think it comes down to is this: I would recommend this more as a source of great amusement, it's far more well written than most anything else I've seen all year, with great pacing and decent acting. But take it with a grain of salt. Realize it could be better and take it for what it is, not what it could be.
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