The current movie about the creation of Facebook paints its founder Mark Zuckerberg to be an a-hole. After an obsessive rant about how badly he wants to get into the top fraternity at Harvard (though he’s a computer geek), and a competitive argument about future success, his first girlfriend leaves him saying that though he may fear girls won’t like him because he’s a nerd, it will really be because he’s an a-hole. He runs back to his dorm, and in addition to calling her a bitch on his blog, he out of bitterness hacks into a college Face Mash website and pairs the faces of female students next to each other asking, “Which One’s Hotter?” It explodes overnight, and the men on campus have fun with it, but it draws the ire of women on campus, as well as the school, due to privacy invasion.

His brilliance with computer programming and singular focus, however, lead to the development of Facebook by him and his friends, with many bumps along the way, such as getting sued for intellectual property theft since it was originally someone else’s idea, and then also sued by his business partner.

But what I noticed throughout the film was the portrayal of women. The main characters were men (boys) and women were objects to be obtained. The main object of almost any activity was to “get girls.” The first girls we meet, Christy and Alice, end up having sex with Mark and his friend Eduardo in a bathroom stall, and there are numerous scenes of women partying and drinking, and even doing cocaine off the bare belly of another woman. An intern working for the newly formed Facebook was told she was doing a good job, but then Mark and his friend check her out as she walks away.

In one scene, the character Mark sees his ex-girlfriend and she blows him off, so he goes back to his dorm room with a renewed urgency to expand the company and make it more successful. (Her approval seems to be the driving thread of his motivation.) He stands giving orders to his friends on next steps, and when Christy asks what she and Alice can do (both are presumably also Harvard students) he says “nothing.” Later in the film we see Christy as the “stalking” girlfriend of Eduardo who goes crazy and sets his trash on fire on his bed.

Throughout the whole film there was only one circumstance when women were portrayed as intelligent. This was in the interrogation scenes where Mark and those suing him were offering depositions, and there were two female lawyers in the room. Towards the end of the film, one of them ties up the story saying, “You’re not an a-hole, Mark, but you’re trying so hard to be.”

The final scene though, showed his vulnerability. He goes on Facebook (which is now worth millions), finds his ex-girlfriend, and makes a “friend” request. It was poignant and ironic. It’s possible it was his way of reaching out when at that point he was roundly abandoned, and he still wanted her acceptance. It seemed to show again that his motivation for all of his troubles was to prove to her (or himself?) that he would be a success. But another interpretation was that it was a way to rub in her face that he created a hugely successful and lucrative business, that she was now a part of without even knowing all the angst that went on to create it.

Though some of this could be fictional and Hollywood-ized, it was pretty sad to watch all this. For such an intelligent film, I wonder if anyone else picked up on the misogyny. The film was cleverly made to put all these incidents together to paint the picture of the men involved as fiercely struggling with egos, loyalty, business ethics, and 20 year old hormones. The characters lacked both the skill in dealing with women as full equal people, and in any inclination to see deeper than skin. I suppose this is typical college guy behavior? If so, it’s pretty scary. Ironic that the founder of a social network left much social acumen to be desired. I hope the real life Mark knows better.

– Beth Fiteni