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If you got bored reading this, it may be because you've read this same article a dozen times before. The only difference was the name of the movie. Whether it'
by Towle_ 16y ago
If you got bored reading this, it may be because you've read this same article a dozen times before. The only difference was the name of the movie.
Whether it's The Social Network or, say, any Judd Apatow film of the last few years, there's been no shortage of oblivious feminista blogger-types dying to tell you how offended they were by...(what are actually) figments of their own imagination/ the selection errors of their own narrow perception.
The Social Network is an exposé on Mark Zuckerberg. It is NOT a commentary on the state of gender relations in the social areas of either college or the tech community at large. As an exposé on Mark Zuckerberg, its main focus will be, you guessed it, Mark Zuckerberg. If you, Jezebel columnist Irin Carmon, happen to place your focus anywhere other than Zuckerberg, you are bound to find inconsistencies with the real world (movies, as portrayals of the real world, are inherently fake and inconsistent). Women never have ideas. Also, a disproportionate number of the lampshades are forest green; in FY 2004 forest green accounted for a mere 3.3% of lampshade sales in the United States, whereas in the movie, no fewer than 4 of 9 lampshades is forest green-- WHAT THE FUCK.
Maybe the roles women fill in the movie isn't some sort of perverse commentary on everyone with two X chromosomes. Maybe those roles are just the only ones available for women to fill in a movie about a Harvard computer hacker, his Harvard computer hacker buddies, and the tech company they founded together. Or does Sorkin need to manufacture a prominent female character who's smart, comes up with lots of fantastic ideas, actually happens to be the best computer hacker on campus, would never stoop to wearing slutty clothing to attract men, sometimes wears slutty clothing but lambasts every man who compliments her attire by asking why you don't compliment Joey on his rugby shirt because you're a sexist that's why, would never have an abortion because of her earth-shattering instinct for motherhood no matter what society says about the appropriate time and place to have a family, would definitely have an abortion if she wanted to because it's her choice anyway not that dumb jock's and who cares what her dad says anyway he's just a cog in the Patriarchy.
- FlemishBeeCycle 16y ago... there's been no shortage of oblivious feminista blogger-types dying to tell you how offended they were by...(what are actually) figments of their own imagination/ the selection errors of their own narrow perception. ...and they do a disservice to humanists and women everywhere. I can find no more appropriate analogy than the "boy who cried wolf". When all people see are logically unsound articles based on the forced, manufactured "offense" of the author, the more likely people will be to dismiss genuine issues of gender discrimination. Everybody loses except those that make their careers drumming up "discrimination" where none exists.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mklg1266 16y agoWow. Way to not pay attention. It's not that Sorkin didn't "manufacture a prominent female character." It's that he manufactured lots of other things about the founding of Facebook, Harvard culture, and Zuckerberg's motivations that all lead to a movie in which women are, across the board, portrayed as stupid slutty airheads who exist solely to serve as prizes for the awesome hackers. To choose some examples at random: much of Zuckerberg's motivation in the movie come from his bitterness over being dumped by a girlfriend (...a fabricated girlfriend), which led him to make a site to let male students compare the hotness of female students (...modified from real life: facemash compared both men and women; the objectification overtones were far less substantial), which led to blow jobs from personality-less groupies in bathrooms (I can't speak to that, but it would surprise me), while being jealous he couldn't get into to final clubs that featured naked girls dancing on tables, having been bussed in by those final clubs for that purpose (I don't know if Zuckerberg wanted to be in a final club, but I can tell you that the rest of that clause is pretty much entirely fabricated, except for maybe the existence of the bus, which is probably referring to the shuttle that runs between Wellesley college and Harvard square). I don't have a problem with movies being fiction, I'm just a little confused as to why this story had to be fictionalized in such a glaringly misogynistic way, especially given that A) there's no evidence that Zuckerberg hates women and B) the story is pretty interesting on its own.