The Social Network (2010)

[randy_byers]

A fascinating look at the upper tiers of American society. Excellent production, interesting story, great dialogue (hello, Aaron Sorkin), smooth, flowing pace. Just really well done in all aspects. However, I came out of it feeling that it was really good, but so what? Partly it's because the very final scene is such a thumb-sucker. The Beatles song used could just as well have been "Money Can't Buy You Love" "Can't Buy Me Love". Could anything be more obvious? But as I've mulled it over this morning, it does seem a perfectly fitting end, structurally speaking, and maybe the banality of it is a gesture toward the inadequacy of trying to tell a story about the founding of a humongous corporation. (Although now I'm imagining how it would play if they'd gone with the biting self-pity of Randy Newman's "It's Lonely at the Top".)

I don't know. It's certainly a movie that bears mulling over. The story of modern American capitalism. (Cue the South Asian student I overheard in a Lebanese restaurant last week saying, "America is a good place to make money." With the implication, "But I wouldn't want to live my whole life here.") I can also see why women are bristling at the boy's world portrayed in the film. Not that anybody really comes off well here. Maybe the smartest structural comment on American capitalism the movie makes is to depict it as a process of intertwining lawsuits.

One thing that occurred to me when talking it over with holyoutlaw afterward was that for the whole length of the film we see Zuckerberg resisting attempts to make money using advertising -- and one of the great triumphs is attracting venture capital so that advertising money isn't needed to expand -- and yet that's precisely how Facebook makes money now. Is that an unstated irony that we're supposed to figure out on our own?

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

That's "Can't Buy Me Love," I think.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Good call. Fixed.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I think Facebook makes more money from Farmville and Mafia Wars than ads, but it does get a lot of money from ads.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

How does it make money from the games? That's an aspect of Facebook I've avoided entirely, so I know nothing about it.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know that too. I thought the games got throughput to FB, so ads put next to them get more eyeballs hence more dosh for FB.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

It's because people who play the game will buy things to get ahead for 99 cents here, 99 cents there. It might only be five or six bucks a month per person, but added up over the millions playing, it's quite a haul.

Here's an article that talks a bit about the whole economics of game development, but not quite what I'm getting at here:

http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/03/the-economics-of-facebook-games/

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Fascinating stuff! Thanks. Interesting irony at the end about how the gaming companies are now having to advertise on Facebook in order to compete with each other. The fact that Farmville has 30 million players is just mind-boggling.