The Social Network

The Social Network is a movie about a guy with Asperger’s Syndrome.  As with many “aspies,” he’s a genius.  Also, as with all aspies, he’s a social incompetent (I’m not casting aspersions.  While genius is a possible side effect of Asperger’s Syndrome, social incompetence is a core symptom.).  He’s smart enough to know that relationships matter and driven enough to pantomime what he perceives to be appropriate behaviors, but he can’t quite get it.  This makes him feel powerless, envious, and angry – why can’t he intuitively do this social interaction stuff that the idiots around him handle so effortlessly?

The guy’s name is Mark Zuckerberg, and he invents Facebook.  Marrying his outsider’s near-clinical observations of how people interact with his genius for computer programming, he figures out how to take the social experience of college and put it on line.  If he can put his thumb in the eyes of those he envies, so much the better.*

But he’s an aspie.  He can’t intuit whether or not someone’s a fraud.  He can’t intuit who his real friends are.  He can’t intuit how to run a relationship, much less a business, because people and their natural social organizations don’t work with the clear, understandable, and unerring precision of computer code.  He can only learn the way you might learn how to do something for which you have no talent: by flailing around until he gets it right.  When he flails around, people get hurt.  When people get hurt and realize he’s now a very wealthy man, they sue.

That’s the core of the movie, and it’s the core of the tragedy of the character of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.  To get us there, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin captures the rhythm of Asperger’s conversation and the calculating, intellectualized nature of Asperger’s interaction.  Jesse Eisenberg, playing Zuckerberg under David Fincher’s direction, redefines his career with this performance.  Together, they capture the singlemindedness of Asperger’s; the sublimated rage of disability; and the helplessness of a young man who’s too smart to realize that, in some ways, he isn’t smart at all.

The Social Network itself seems a bit cold, a bit clinical.  It thinks too much and feels not nearly enough.  But that’s the point, isn’t it?  The Social Network is unblinking in its perception and devastating in its conclusions.  I can’t wait to discuss it with my friends.

*There’s a catch, and you need to know this.  I have it on very good authority that the book upon which this film is based is poorly researched claptrap.  The character of “Mark Zuckerberg,” as depicted in the film, may not reflect the actual guy.