If you’ve been to the movies in the past few weeks, chances are good that you’ve seen this trailer for The Social Network, the upcoming film about the very fraught beginnings of Facebook, penned by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher.
The Social Network is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Mezrich’s account, which many critics slammed as highly fictionalized and tawdry (see the NYT takedown here), painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as significantly less-than-awesome (the title alone tells you all you need to know about how Mezrich characterizes Zuckerberg). The book turned out to be not just a page-turner, but a really successful one: it debuted at #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list. No doubt the popularity of the book – as well as Facebook’s ubiquity – is behind its adaptation to the screen with talents like Sorkin and Fincher on board.
But it’s that last point – Facebook’s relevance to our lives – that most interests me. Facebook was launched in 2004 (yes, it’s only been around in our lives for six years – and much less time for most users) so the events that The Social Network dramatizes are only a few years old. That’s a pretty short time between event and re-enactment by Hollywood standards for anything other than wars (and we’re talking major motion pictures, not “ripped from the headlines” cable TV treatments). I can only think of a few recent-ish films that share such a short time window, among them Flight 93, released in 2006, five years after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, and Shattered Glass, released in 2003, five years after Stephen Glass’s journalistic fraud was exposed. But what makes The Social Network so different is that it’s about the founding of a Web platform that continues to evolve and grow in its impact on our lives.
And the marketing of The Social Network capitalizes on this deep and evolving connection a half-billion people have with Facebook. The film’s trailer opens with re-enactment, not of Facebook’s history, but the experience of actually using Facebook. It connects viewers directly, intimately, to the events of the film, and stresses the importance of the platform to our lives in order to raise the emotional/dramatic stakes. The work of movie trailers is, of course, to draw you into the events of the film and underscore how relevant the film is to your life, but we don’t often see trailers that make such an intimate, dynamic connection. The trailer seems to say, “All these moments that you’re having and sharing online, from everyday shit to life-changing events? Yeah, this is the story of how that came about. And you know what? It’s your story, too.” It seems to me a smart, and, well, uniquely social way to market a film. And it’s a film that supposes to be all about the guys who built the social platform that’s shaping, in large part, the very way we socialize today.
Several people I know think this trailer is actually a great commercial for Facebook, given that it basically reinforces all of Facebook’s claims about the way it benefits our lives. It doesn’t surprise me that the trailer has already started accumulating parodies that imagine a similar portrayal of Twitter and Youtube. The fact that these videos poke fun at the earnestness of The Social Network’s trailer, though, just ends underscoring how important Facebook has actually become to so many people.
In the end, I’m guessing that The Social Network and its combination of fact and imagination will end up being the de facto founding myth of Facebook. What we just don’t know is how much the film will impact Facebook or our experience with it. Somefolks predict this could be a public relations disaster for Facebook – especially in light of the uproar over privacy issues this year – and further damage Zuckerberg’s reputation. I doubt this will be entirely the case. I believe it will probably codify the feelings of Zuckerberg’s critics, but perhaps not the opinions of 500 million Facebook users. Between Sorkin and Fincher, I think we’ll end up seeing Zuckerberg emerge as a complex, troubled, and flawed visionary. But how sympathetic we’ll find him? That may ultimately depend on how much we align our own motivations for using Facebook with the film’s portrayal of his motivations for creating it.
Tangentially, did you hear the news last week that Isaiah Mustafa, the actor behind the Old Spice Guy, has landed two film roles, including a lead role in Tyler Perry’s latest film in the Madea franchise? While Mustafa is hilarious and cuts quite a fine figure in the Old Spice commercials, it seems pretty likely that part of the reason why he’s being snapped up so quickly (he also has a deal with NBC in the works) is the social capital of the Old Spice commercial campaign itself. Old media leveraging social media celebrity?
What do you think about the way that line between old media and new media continues to blur?
The Social Network: Will You Unfriend Mark Zuckerberg after Seeing this Movie?
If you’ve been to the movies in the past few weeks, chances are good that you’ve seen this trailer for The Social Network, the upcoming film about the very fraught beginnings of Facebook, penned by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher.
The Social Network is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Mezrich’s account, which many critics slammed as highly fictionalized and tawdry (see the NYT takedown here), painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as significantly less-than-awesome (the title alone tells you all you need to know about how Mezrich characterizes Zuckerberg). The book turned out to be not just a page-turner, but a really successful one: it debuted at #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list. No doubt the popularity of the book – as well as Facebook’s ubiquity – is behind its adaptation to the screen with talents like Sorkin and Fincher on board.
But it’s that last point – Facebook’s relevance to our lives – that most interests me. Facebook was launched in 2004 (yes, it’s only been around in our lives for six years – and much less time for most users) so the events that The Social Network dramatizes are only a few years old. That’s a pretty short time between event and re-enactment by Hollywood standards for anything other than wars (and we’re talking major motion pictures, not “ripped from the headlines” cable TV treatments). I can only think of a few recent-ish films that share such a short time window, among them Flight 93, released in 2006, five years after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, and Shattered Glass, released in 2003, five years after Stephen Glass’s journalistic fraud was exposed. But what makes The Social Network so different is that it’s about the founding of a Web platform that continues to evolve and grow in its impact on our lives.
And the marketing of The Social Network capitalizes on this deep and evolving connection a half-billion people have with Facebook. The film’s trailer opens with re-enactment, not of Facebook’s history, but the experience of actually using Facebook. It connects viewers directly, intimately, to the events of the film, and stresses the importance of the platform to our lives in order to raise the emotional/dramatic stakes. The work of movie trailers is, of course, to draw you into the events of the film and underscore how relevant the film is to your life, but we don’t often see trailers that make such an intimate, dynamic connection. The trailer seems to say, “All these moments that you’re having and sharing online, from everyday shit to life-changing events? Yeah, this is the story of how that came about. And you know what? It’s your story, too.” It seems to me a smart, and, well, uniquely social way to market a film. And it’s a film that supposes to be all about the guys who built the social platform that’s shaping, in large part, the very way we socialize today.
Several people I know think this trailer is actually a great commercial for Facebook, given that it basically reinforces all of Facebook’s claims about the way it benefits our lives. It doesn’t surprise me that the trailer has already started accumulating parodies that imagine a similar portrayal of Twitter and Youtube. The fact that these videos poke fun at the earnestness of The Social Network’s trailer, though, just ends underscoring how important Facebook has actually become to so many people.
In the end, I’m guessing that The Social Network and its combination of fact and imagination will end up being the de facto founding myth of Facebook. What we just don’t know is how much the film will impact Facebook or our experience with it. Some folks predict this could be a public relations disaster for Facebook – especially in light of the uproar over privacy issues this year – and further damage Zuckerberg’s reputation. I doubt this will be entirely the case. I believe it will probably codify the feelings of Zuckerberg’s critics, but perhaps not the opinions of 500 million Facebook users. Between Sorkin and Fincher, I think we’ll end up seeing Zuckerberg emerge as a complex, troubled, and flawed visionary. But how sympathetic we’ll find him? That may ultimately depend on how much we align our own motivations for using Facebook with the film’s portrayal of his motivations for creating it.
Tangentially, did you hear the news last week that Isaiah Mustafa, the actor behind the Old Spice Guy, has landed two film roles, including a lead role in Tyler Perry’s latest film in the Madea franchise? While Mustafa is hilarious and cuts quite a fine figure in the Old Spice commercials, it seems pretty likely that part of the reason why he’s being snapped up so quickly (he also has a deal with NBC in the works) is the social capital of the Old Spice commercial campaign itself. Old media leveraging social media celebrity?
What do you think about the way that line between old media and new media continues to blur?