Talking About My Generation?
Every now and again, a movie or album seems to convey something of the spirit of the age. A story is told in such a way that it moves beyond its own particularity to capture a longing or frustration held by many. Whenever the adage 'generation-defining' is attached to a movie or album, it's worth paying close attention in order to glimpse and perhaps feel a shared cultural ache.
A film described in this manner was Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999). A gritty tale of postmodern angst, Fight Club was a protest against the monochrome lifestyle of modernity, with its fluorescent-lit office cubicles, Ikea catalogues and cynical consumerism. The film's antihero started a network of underground fight clubs where testosterone would fly uninhibited, offering 'salvation' from the 9-5 prisons above ground - as if violence could provide an antidote to the numbness of daily life. Fight Club's brutal rejection of the status quo symbolizes a rebellion that seems to be the hallmark of many movies given the label 'generation-defining'. Consider Rebel Without a Cause in the 1950s and The Graduate in the 1960s.
A stark contrast exists between that lineage and a recent movie that has also been described as generation-defining: The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010), which tells the story of the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. It charts the rise to dominance of Facebook as the indispensable facilitator of contemporary relationships. Or so it might seem. The film's last scene is particularly poignant, with the lonely Zuckerberg requesting, to no avail, that his ex-girlfriend become his Facebook friend. Seemingly, the more Facebook 'friends' he acquires, the fewer his actual friends become.
The Rolling Stone review observes that in 'lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness', the director and writer 'define the dark irony of the past decade'. The anger of Fight Club and the rebellion of The Graduate are replaced by the 'aching sadness' of The Social Network. The 'dark irony' is whether the myriad of social connections made possible through modern technology is actually driving people apart. Is the likes of Facebook healing our deep loneliness or, to quote the title of Sherry Turkle's new book, is it simply a way of being 'alone together'? If Fight Club can be perceived as a modern day prophetic text, then perhaps The Social Network is a type of lament.
Mark Sampson
Links
A list of movies that Rolling Stone consider as defining a generation.
Reel Issues, the Bible Society's excellent resource that brings faith into conversation with film, discusses The Social Network.
Sherry Turkle, a Professor at MIT, has written a book that looks at 'why we expect more from technology and less from each other'.
Peter Travers' review of The Social Network in Rolling Stone.
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