Dating Mark Zuckerberg, a few years before he guided a computer conceit into the most successful American company of this century, was “like dating a Stairmaster.”
So says his girlfriend, Erica, upon dumping the soon-to-be-founder of Facebook in the Gatsby-esque opening scene of “The Social Network,” a front-runner for Best Picture in Sunday’s Academy Awards. Though clearly a brilliant mind, the fictional Zuckerberg is stewing in a Harvard funk because of a class system with multiple barriers of entry.
Mark: I’m just saying I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs.
Erica: Why?
Mark: Because they’re exclusive. And fun. And lead to a better life.
Facebook, by this telling of its creation myth, was started because the nation’s most prestigious university made one edgy student feel left out of an even more exclusive interior space. His revenge was a juggernaut that allowed half a billion people to be connected, while leaving him essentially friendless.
In a normal year, a well-made Hollywood product that is not a toy spinoff and actually says something about the human heart would be the odds-on favorite for Best Picture.
But this year, “The King’s Speech,” concerning a monarch with a stammer, seems likely to win. And here’s the surprise: the period drama with Brits born on third base is a more compelling story of class mobility than the tale of America’s young elites inventing something that changed the world.
The Oscars are always a good indicator of how we see ourselves in the cultural mirror. Look at Best Pictures from the past: from “It Happened One Night,” the 1934 film about a reporter who shows a spoiled heiress about real life, to the 1976 fantasy of a Philly contender in “Rocky,” to “Forrest Gump,” in 1994, featuring a Southern simpleton who parlays plain-speaking all the way to a White House reception, and “Million Dollar Baby,” 10 years later.
In each of those films, average people do extraordinary things, because in America all you need is a dream and desire, baby. This year, with half the republic cheering on a campaign by billionaires to strip away collective bargaining rights of teachers and fire fighters, those fables seem less sturdy – let alone real.
In its place, we have the Facebook story, as told by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. In his version, Zuckerberg, the brainy product of Phillips Exeter Academy, is shunned by girls and Harvard’s rarefied clubs. Building on (or stealing from) an idea of the insufferable Winklevoss twins, he creates a social network for Harvard, then expands it to other top-tier universities. It’s all about exclusivity – “like a final club and we’re the president,” he says.
On his way to becoming a billionaire before his 25th birthday, he betrays his business partner, gets sued by the Winklevosses and follows a coke-snorting flash to Palo Alto.
“These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80s,” Sorkin said in a New York magazine interview. “They’re very angry that the cheerleader wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men who are running the universe right now.”
Perhaps the only likeable character in the film is Erica, object of Mark’s desire and condescension. She doesn’t have to study, he says dismissively, because she goes to Boston University. And – oh, my God! – she actually has a friend who is not an Ivy genius.
“The door guy? His name is Bobby,” says Erica in defense of the poor prole. “He’s a perfectly good class of people.” As to the Winklevii, as Mark calls them, “They’re suing me because for the first time in their lives things didn’t go exactly the way they were supposed to.”
And that’s just it: a fight among the privileged for further privilege.
Laurie Sparham/The Weinstein Company, via Associated PressColin Firth, left, and Geoffrey Rush in “The King’s Speech.”
By contrast, “The King’s Speech” shows what can happen when someone reaches across the class divide. Here, the stammering Prince Albert who will become King George VI befriends a basement-dwelling voice therapist named Lionel Logue. His clothes, his home, his office are threadbare, in contrast to the monarch’s gilded environs.
Logue will not accept pretense or title, calling the prince “Bertie” instead of “Your Royal Highness.” In the best line of the film, he dismisses the physicians who’ve been giving the prince royal advice.
Logue: They’re idiots.
Prince: They’ve all been knighted.
Logue: Makes it official then.
The touchiest scene is also about the nuances of class. Mrs. Logue, stumbling upon the royals in her tiny flat, invites them to dinner. The Duchess of York – and future Queen Mum – jumps in:
“We would love to, such a treat, but alas…a previous engagement. Such a pity.”
When Logue is unmasked by the king’s keepers as a man without credentials, Bertie does the opposite of what Zuckerberg does – he stands by his partner. The miracle is that they become lifelong friends. This isn’t supposed to happen in stratified England – prince and pauper bonding despite the obstacles of birthright.
But the best American movies don’t tell stories of loyalty across class lines either, at least not this year. The door guy’s Facebook page, no doubt, has no friends from Harvard. In a decade when the richest 10 percent control more than two-thirds of America’s net worth, that man will not be king.
For life-affirmation in the latest version of such a fairy tale, look to a long-forgotten story about an English king with a problem completing his sentences.
