The Social Network

I think once, every decade or so, Hollywood gets bored and finds a movie that they feel they can market as a movie that 'defines a generation.' It's irritating, because how do you really define a generation? It's a pretty vague, abstract concept to begin with, but to anoint an entire movie as the cinematic definition of a generation? It immediately makes me suspicious...

The sad part then about the all the hype that surrounds 'The Social Network' is the fact that, unfortunately, grudgingly, I'm forced to admit that maybe Hollywood wasn't spinning it's usual bullshit when it anointed this movie the definition of a generation, because really and truly, it may well be. That's a sad reflection of my generation, but there you go: apparently we're all self-obssessed, bitter, losers trying to take comfort in our shallow meaningless existences by drowning ourselves in as much superficiality as we can handle.

That seems to be the basic premise of 'The Social Network.' Socially awkward, self-obssessed nerd Mark Zuckerburg (played with excellent prickery by Jesse Eisenburg) breaks up with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) and then goes on a nerd-like rampage to prove how awesome he is by first building Facemash.com which crashes the Harvard University network and then, having attracted the attention of the more popular, richer and equally ambitious Winkelvoss Twins, who want to create their website (a weird dating/Facebook combo called HarvardConnection.com) he instead runs with his own idea along with his best friend Eduardo (played by Andrew Garfield) an entirely different website called: 'TheFacebook' which eventually morphs into the Facebook we all know, love and waste hours of time on.

There's a large element of 'Revenge of the Nerds' that runs through this movie, because Zuckerburg, decidedly not getting close to the Harvard in-crowd, essentially makes his own in-crowd and goes viral thereby gaining the satisfaction of proving himself better than pretty much everyone. But underneath that, yeah, I have to admit that there is a sad commentary on the state of our generation: high school became more about social dynamics and the social experience than education. Colleges pimp themselves out to kids around the country based on the fantastic experience they can have if they go to that particular college- with a degree at the end of it as a sort of cherry on the top. So much of my generation has been defined by social networks, so in reality, Facebook was probably less revolutionary and more inevitable, given our hunger for all things wired and superficial. Facebook is almost the ultimate nexus of both notions.

So does the movie live up to the hype? None of the acting performances especially blew me away- I mean, how hard is it to be a giant asshole? But the music is fantastic: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross hit it out of the park, turning in a score that's subtle, understated and compliments the movie rather than overwhelms it. All love to Daft Punk and TRON:Legacy but they just got pushed into second place in my book.

If I do have some issues with this movie, it's mainly because I really don't want it to be true. I don't want my generation to be a bunch of shallow, self-obsessed, wired losers trying to find meaning in whatever superficiality we can find. Unfortunately- and this was probably the most depressing part of the movie, I don't think I can say that. We are all as shallow as we think we are.