Linesch 1 Sarah Linesch Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric, Section 13 Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin 11 October 2013 The Friendless Social Network The movie The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and the events that led to the creation and success of this social network. A major theme of the film is friendship, which the film takes a strong stance about through the friendship of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. Mark and Eduardo are best friends throughout the film, but this friendship starts to collapse once the character Sean Parker is introduced and begins to work with Mark at Facebook. When the film was first released, its promotional quote read, You dont get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies (IMDb). Before even seeing the movie, the viewer can infer that the film takes a strong stance on the power of success and its effect on friendships. The Social Network uses character portrayals of Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin, camera techniques, and film arrangement in order to influence viewers ideas of success and how it can have a negative effect on friendship. The film sets up Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, as a foil to Eduardo Saverin, Marks best friend and Facebook co-founder, in order to contrast Marks ideas of success and how they control his friendships. Throughout the film, Mark has a desire to be popular and included, and he creates the Facebook immediately after he has been broken up with by his girlfriend Erika Albright. Mark believes that popularity will be achieved through success, and this is his motivation behind creating Facebook. Sean Parker also believes that success leads to

Linesch 2 popularity, and he demonstrates this when he tells Mark in the club scene that he started Napster because he wanted a girl to notice him. Both Mark and Sean started their companies in response to rejection, with a desire to be noticed and the idea that success would bring them popularity. Marks desire to be popular sets up the exigence for the rhetorical situation of the movie, which Bitzer defines as an imperfection marked by urgency (6). The exigence within the film is Marks desire for popularity and the lengths in which he will go to achieve this. Eduardo Saverin made a lot of money through investing and is incredibly successful for his age, but Mark does not associate Eduardo with success because he is not popular like Sean is. Marks view of success dictates how he treats friendship later on in the movie, because he listens to the ideas of Sean more instead of Eduardo since Sean and Mark have similar ideas of success. Marks inclination to take advice from Sean as opposed to Eduardo is portrayed through the slow motion camera techniques used in the film. When Mark first meets Sean in California, the scene is narrated by Eduardo, but the camera techniques emphasize the popularity and likeability of Sean. When Sean walks into the restaurant, he says hello to everyone he sees, giving off the impression that he is very popular. As they sit down and drink together, the camera slows down the scene which gives viewers time to contemplate the image (Lancioni 110). Through the slow action of the scene, the viewer is given time to understand why Mark is so fond of Sean Parker, due to his popularity and success. The camera flashes from the scene with Sean to a scene with Eduardo in a conference room in which Eduardo describes the manipulative nature of Sean, and then the camera flashes back to the scene in the restaurant portraying Sean as likeable again. By flashing back and forth between these two different scenes, the film sets up a comparison between how fun Sean is and how critical Eduardo is. This shows the viewer why

Linesch 3 Mark chooses to side with Sean on most issues instead of Eduardo because Sean is portrayed as more popular, and therefore successful according Mark. The arrangement of the film is used a rhetoric strategy by portraying Sean as initially likeable and Eduardo as initially critical in order to introduce an alternate view that success is achieved through popularity, before disproving this view later on in the film. Sean is never shown alone throughout the entire film and although he is always shown with people, he is never with the same people. Sean is shown with different girls wherever he goes to emphasize that he does not have any close friendships with anyone. Eduardo is able to see through Seans fake friendships, but Mark is not and therefore he associates Seans fake friendships with success. Eduardo is not portrayed as popular in the movie and his only close friend shown is Mark, but Eduardo is still able to achieve success despite of this. This arrangement of the film is successful because the strongest argument stands to have the greatest impact on [the] audience if it is the last point that they hear (Herrick 14). By introducing the characters in this way initially, the film shows how popularity may be portrayed as a sign of success, but when the desire for popularity is placed above other aspects, including friendships, the success is not as wonderful as it may seem. This arrangement succeeds in convincing the viewer that friendship is more important than popularity because by the end of the movie, the viewer has seen the effects of neglecting friendships in place of popularity and can make the decision themselves that friendship is more important. A counterargument can be made that the purpose of the film is to show that the only way to achieve success is to not let anything, such as friendship, hinder success, but this idea is disproved by the ending of the movie. Mark and Sean are both highly successful people, but at the end of the movie they both end up in negative situations; Sean is arrested for drug possession

Linesch 4 and Mark must settle his cases with the Winklevoss Twins and Eduardo. In the final scene of the movie, Mark adds Erika Albright on Facebook, and then proceeds to sit there and refresh the page as he waits for her to accept the request. The camera slowly zooms in on Marks face, as a series of ending remarks discuss what happened with the Winklevoss Twins and Eduardo. Judith Lancioni writes that to reframe is to suggest alternate interpretations, and as the camera reframes closer to Marks face, the viewer is given time to disprove this counterargument in their own minds (112). The expression on Marks face is one of depression, and as the camera continues to reframe his face, the viewer is given time to think through the reasons why Mark may be depressed. As the camera stops and focuses in on Marks expression, the last line of the film reads Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world, and then continues to focus on Marks face for a few more seconds before ending the film. The film focuses on Marks depressing expression for its ending shot in order to demonstrate to the viewer that although Mark achieved success and is now popular, he has lost his true friend Eduardo and he is completely alone. By adding Erika on Facebook, the film is sending a message that Mark is not happy with what he has accomplished because in the end he still didnt get Erika to notice him, which was his purpose for creating Facebook in the first place. The Social Network succeeds in convincing the viewer that power and success can have a negative effect on friendships through its portrayal of Eduardo Saverin and Sean Parker, and their influence on Mark. At the end of the film, Sean is left alone in jail, and Mark is left alone in the conference room. The irony of the ending is that the creator of Facebook, the largest social network in the world, is alone and friendless. The film ends with this ironic scene to further convince the viewer that success and popularity are not always a positive thing when they negatively affect friendships. The viewer walks away from the film with the viewpoint that

Linesch 5 popularity does not always constitute success, and that in order to be truly successful one must look past the fake friends and focus on true friendship.

Linesch 6 Works Cited Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1-14. JSTOR. Web. 24 Sept. 2011. Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2001. 1-25. Print. Lancioni, Judith. "The Rhetoric of the Frame." 2008. Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. N.p.: SAGE Publications, n.d. 105-15. Print. The Social Network. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. Sony, 2010. DVD. "The Social Network." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt>.