“In a world where social structure was everything that was THE thing.”

It may come as a surprise in a film about the origins of a hugely successful online social platform, that the key quote actually refers to an institution as old as the Greeks – the high-brow men’s club, the twenty-first century equivalent of going down the polis’ gymnasium, covering yourself in oil and wrestling with all the other aristocratic young men. Occupational bonds were fostered, political ties strengthened, and all just by being allowed to be silly with the other boys. THE SOCIAL NETWORK spends a lot of time debating these networks, probing, comparing, and occasionally criticising. Facebook begins to look like the great social revolution of the modern era, but Fincher’s films are never quite as they first appear.

David Fincher is quickly ascending to the annals of great American directors; and, for all its gloom, THE SOCIAL NETWORK is a great American film of success, innovation and strife – all the aspects of the American Dream so weaved to the nation’s fabric. Yet the Denver born director’s eighth feature contains one so very un-American fixation – class revolution.

Class? How can THE SOCIAL NETWORK be about class? The US doesn’t even have class! How can a movie so ostensibly obsessed with numbers and computers and coding also be about the systems of society?

The clubs are the upper-class incarnate, hiring the lowly techies to do their bidding – in this case setting up a dating website.

The trail begins in Harvard, a place that, as a decidedly snooty secretary points out, has buildings ‘older than the country they are built in’. The rooms are dark and the classrooms grey. The vibrancy of ‘The New World’ aren’t to be found here – in fact they are exposed. The Phoenix Club, one of a number of unashamedly sexist campus Finals Clubs, mocks the local statue’s inaccuracies on time, date, and author. In the halls of the most prestigious university we are beyond, above and outside the myth of American history and equality. Here is a social structure of its own, closer to the decadence of ‘Old Europe’. Or at least this is what the erodite and their silver-tongued accents would have us believe.

Right at the top are the Winklevoss (Armie Hammer), the big, strong beef-cakes of german name and hench WASP physique. They row, they wear nice jumpers and they adhere to the gentleman’s code – “we are gentlemen of Harvard, we don’t plant stories, we don’t sue people”. They and their structures aren’t just about money. As Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) comments, students have sold companies for millions and “not even come close to a Finals Club”. Family appears more important, the Winklevoss using connection to get lawyers – lawyers who later hold trial in oak-pannelled rooms. Eduardo, Zuckerberg’s jilted friend, gets close to the Phoenix club possessing a family of means (means enough to cash-flow Facebook) and a fairly prominent signet ring. The clubs are the upper-class incarnate, hiring the lowly techies to do their bidding – in this case setting up a dating website.

Does this make Mark Zuckerberg the oppressed masses? Well, clearly he isn’t of upper-class stock. Wearing grubby t-shirts and frequenting sparse (at best) Hawaiian parties, Zuckerberg is definitely a man looking up. He is only allowed into the lobby of the Winklevoss’ finals club, a point he spits out later during the court deposition.

The hallmarks of a revolution appear clear. Facebook is the great leveller of society, allowing all to share online, converse, and pervily observe women and their relationship status – thus toppling the position previously only open to the elite and their buses of females picked up from the local area. “The Winklevoss aren’t suing me for intellectual property” Zuckerberg asserts. “They are suing me because for the first time in their life things didn’t work out perfectly for them”.

Later when asked by the Winklevoss’ lawyer if he thinks he is clever, the young twenty-something in jeans and rolled-up sleeves comments: “If your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have a right to try … did that adequately answer your condescending question”. It appears Mark has won, the social tables are turned, and it comes as no surprise that the Winklevoss’ realisation of this comes at the zenith of all old class structure destinations, The Henley Regatta, raised to ridiculous levels by ‘The Dance in the Hall of the Mountain King’ and Swiss royalty. The rowing kings are dead, long live the computer kings.

The courts which frame THE SOCIAL NETWORK are the adult’s world – the internet is the reserve of the young

Mark’s retort to the wise-cracking Winklevoss lawyer also alludes to the revolution secreted in the second half of the film – the overthrow of the suits. Having conquered the Winklevoss and left their Anglo-Saxon cut jaw-lines well and truly gob-smacked, the Facebook prodigy now turns his attention to the city slickers his pal Eduardo (Andrew Garfiald) seems so desperate to court. With the help of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the ultimate class rebel – he didn’t even go to school (gasp) – the ‘old-fashioned’ businesses are discarded left, right and centre, as Mark ridicules them in dressing gown form.

“Let me tell you what happens to a twenty year old kid with a top of the hot dot-com” spells out Sean. “They want you for your idea, not you … they want you to say thank you when you wipe you chin and walk away”. The money-making city is the enemy, and Eduardo courting their favor, taking their internships, is out of touch with the computer-age Che Guevaras. As the new kid on the block emphasises, “The grown-ups are going to say “That’s great kid, we can take it from here” – but this is our time!”

How can the kids beat the grown-ups? By going outside their laws. When recounting his experience with Napster, Sean describes a great victory. “But you didn’t bring down the record companies – they won” demands Eduardo. “In court” is Sean’s laconic reply. The suits may think they have had the day, but out there on the internet “if you want a record do you go to Tower High”? The courts which frame THE SOCIAL NETWORK are the adult’s world – the internet is the reserve of the young, a whole different social system where the rules are being rewritten in code.

Mark expresses the same subversion, or diminution of the old rules in his court case. The Facebook founder cares little about the money and penance the old guys and their laws want from him. Settle, take the hit, is the advice, it’s a minor blip in the road to the glorious dawn he is constructing for himself. He is the only one, as he brazenly instructs the Winklevoss and their lawyer, who is “changing the world”, who is putting social systems in Bosnia where “they don’t even have roads”. But is he “changing the world” … ?

One of the great twists of the final act is its return to the beginning. The veneer of innovation all begins to crumble with Sean. Sean is the ultimate slick young thing of the revolution. Yet with success suddenly his frailties begin to be exposed. He likes drugs and partying, and these ostensibly appear his downfall. But even before this his deficiencies are revealed by Eduardo. Flinching from a punch thrown in righteous anger, Sean’s cowardice is laid bare – “I like standing next to you Sean, it makes me look so tough”. When Sean is later busted by the police at the 1,000,000 facebook user house party, his inhaler and epi-pen are taken from his pocket as he cowers in desperate pleading.

Sean’s physical frailty stands to represent his natural and unchanged deficiencies. For all their money and success, he and his like are still the high-school nerds hiding from the bullies, the Winklevoss or even the usually amicable Eduardo. His money can’t buy him better physique, health or character, nor hide the underlying fear of his own inferiority.

Fincher’s great triumph is to lead us down the path of social structures, before peeling these away to reveal their limitations.

What of Zuckerberg, the technological equivalent of Gengis Khan? It is conspicuous that having previously been in a suburban Californian playground, Mark’s pyjama stunt leads him to accept a deal from the money-men, landing him a cool, trendy, but very official office. In screwing his partner, Eduardo, out of money, it is the suits that organize the trick deal, Mark using them as a cover. Even his lawyer’s attempts to comfort the facebook founder – “You’re not a bad guy. You are just trying hard to be” – seem to allude to a sense of inauthenticity. Mark wants to see himself as the big, bad wolf of twenty-first century corporate society – but he’s not even that.

It is as the film closes, however, that we see the truest frailty, and once again it is within natural deficiencies. Desperately refreshing the page, hoping for a change in the friend request he has just sent, we are lead to ponder the ultimate consistency – Mark is socially defective and utterly alone. For all the victories and achievements featured in the THE SOCIAL NETWORK, it is the first defeat that is resided on – Mark’s inability to maintain a girlfriend. A brief moment of notoriety at a Bill Gates talk gets him briefly laid (the ultimate sign of success in the Harvard world as the Final’s Clubs prove) but as the dust settles our lead is more lonely and without status than ever. Fincher’s great triumph is to lead us down the path of social structures, before peeling these away to reveal their limitations. The page keeps on being refreshed but nothing is changing.

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