Touted as the first acclaimed drama of the awards season, heralded as a generation-defining epic, there couldn’t be more pomp following The Social Network’s ass out the door. The ads may declare, in pointy all-caps, that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s nascent founder played by Jesse Eisenberg, is a genius, a punk and a billionaire, but they leave off one of the film’s other significant points about him: he is a curly-haired pasty-faced J-E-W.
More specifically, a Jew desperately trying to rise above the impotent fates of his circumcised brethren.
Aaron Sorkin, the seasoned television writer whose small screen work has featured the uninterrupted prosperity of liberal, educated, upper-tax bracket Jews, offers his first Heebish protagonist on film in Zuckerberg. While memorable characters such as Toby Ziegler on The West Wing or Dan Rydell and Jeremy Goodwin on Sports Night have all served as Sorkin’s post-religious culturally identifying mouthpiece, his Zuckerberg goes in a different direction. Where those characters have never wavered from the heritage that bred them to be talented wordsmiths (Sorkin’s Jews are always writers or creators), Zuckerberg can’t seem to run away fast enough.
Early in the film, Mark and best friend-cum-adversary Eduardo Saverin are at a Caribbean themed Alpha Epsilon Pi party populated with cherubic, wooly Jewfaces. The scene is punctuated by a boy in a yarmulke, rocking out on a set of steel drums. Later in the film, after Facebook inevitably takes off, he yells at Eduardo about what’s at stake should the site fail: “I’m not going back to Caribbean night at the Jewish fraternity…Did you like being nothing? Did you like being nobody?!” There is no question that the Caribbean party was lame, but what made it that way? Was it the uninterested gaze of the Asian chicks, the non-sequitorial Niagara Falls videos playing onstage? I have a sinking feeling that the trouble was the yarmulke, sitting atop the head of a rhythmless Yid goofing off on the steel drums. For the celluloid Mark and Eduardo, the real party had no yarmulkes, no Jews. The real party was at the hallowed, veritably jizz-stained walls of the Phoenix final club, whose exclusivity compels busloads of freshman hardbodies to disrobe and get doused with champagne. Who wouldn’t want to be those goys?
My curiosity about the Jewish overtones of the film led me to Arie Hasit, Zuckerberg’s college roommate and the first non-founder to put up a Facebook profile. “It’s offensive to suggest that Mark created Facebook to improve his social status, particularly to the many of us who were his friends.” A brother at AEPi with a penchant for banging a bongo, it’s entirely possible that Arie was the schmuck goofing on the steel drums. Built like a scruffy teddy bear with a smile to match, he moved to Tel Aviv after Harvard, straight to the center of a culture the film’s Zuck tries to avoid. It is clear, from the moment I ask about it, that the idea of the film strikes a nerve. “Regardless of whether or not the film is good, it bothers me. This is something that actually happened, these are events that I witnessed over the course of a few years. To see it all get misconstrued is unsettling.”
At a press conference for the film, director David Fincher didn’t mince words: this is not a biopic. Still, the filmmakers have attracted a shit-storm given that they made a film about real people, most of whom refused to cooperate with them. For example, actor Jesse Eisenberg portrays Mark in a manner that has been described as similar to someone with Asperger’s, an affectation that has been attributed to the CEO. “That is ridiculous,” Arie tells me. “It’s offensive to Mark, and it’s offensive to people with Asperger’s that people feel they can casually diagnose somebody that they know nothing about.”
But what of Zuckerberg’s Judaism? “I can’t really speak to that; it’s none of my business. He liked AEPi, so did Eduardo.” I tell him about the scene where Mark declares he can’t go back to life at a Jewish fraternity. “I never got any sense that Mark or Eduardo were embarrassed to be Jewish. Eduardo was in the Phoenix, and he sometimes brought his friends from AEPi to hang out there.” Mark has since gone back to speak at an AEPi convention and is featured prominently on the organization’s famous alum listing on its website. If he has tried to drop his affiliation, he has done a pretty terrible job, especially for someone who very nearly runs the Internet.
Sitting in a room with opposing counsel, Eisenberg’s Zuck is asked when he first shared his idea for Facebook with Eduardo. “It was at a party at Alpha Epsilon Pi”. The attorney needs clarification. “What’s that?” Mark takes a moment to answer, his face, which barely emotes throughout the film, is seen to almost sink, ever so slightly. “The Jewish fraternity.” Disdain. Shame. The silver screen Mark doesn’t want anyone to know of his Jewish beginnings.
The Farnsworth Invention, Sorkin’s 2007 Broadway play about the invention of television, featured a prominently Jewish David Sarnoff battling the unlikely Idahoan inventor, Philo Farnsworth. The reconciliation of his religion and his business savvy, two opposing worlds, form Sarnoff’s character arc while he is vilified for stealing Farnsworth’s technology. The Social Network tells roughly the same tale eighty years in the future, with Mark Zuckerberg a cross between both roles. Perhaps all of Sorkin’s Jews languish, on some level, in the depths of stereotypical self-loathing. The murky waters here are that the film assumes that being a Jew isn’t that cool. I, for one, don’t believe that is a given, and neither, it seems, does Mark Zuckerberg.
-Artwork by Harrison Freeman
Great review. Can’t wait to see the film now!!!!
Very interesting and well-written review!
Good stuff
Mark Z was such I nice bright-eyed kid when he was in an Old City Yeshiva and now I hope he still finds the time to learn a bit of Torah, but nevertheless I would like to know what he will answer his Rosh Yeshiva Z”L upon meeting him in the next world and being asked why it was so hard and so slow to get neonazi pages removed from his site; we all know that it is the captain of any ship to be responsible for any acts of the crew, and some swear by the old custom of remaining on the ship if/when it sinks.
I have seen the movie and am a jew who has gone to a college with an active AEPi Chapter. Let me tell you: AEPi is neither a monopoly on Jews at elite universities nor is representative of them. Far from it. It just happens to be one of the more visible groups of jews on campuses. For the character of Mark in this film to not want to go back to AEPi doesn’t necessarily mean he is swearing off his Jewishness (it isn’t as though he wasn’t to be associated with the second group (of goy) to bring a lawsuit). In this film part of his drive seems to stem from his desire to not only go beyond his peers but the entrenched elite of the ivy league who run the final clubs.
‘The silver screen Mark doesn’t want anyone to know of his Jewish beginnings’. I think you might be stretching things a tad to make a point. His name is Zuckerberg after all, it’s not like he could have fooled anyone. The use of the quote about not going back to Caribbean nights should be put in context: his anger was caused by Eduardo closing their account and threatening bounced checks, and therefore was referring to the shame and inconvenience of being poor. And anyway I’m not sure why you’re trying to reclaim the Jewishness of a guy who comes across as a money-grabbing, opportunistic dick.
Another gratuitous, random reference to Jesse Eisenberg being Jewish? I’m pretty sure that, at this point in the game, every such reference should be accompanied by a mention of the fact that Natalie Portman, Logan Lerman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Rudd and Mila Kunis are also all Jewish. That’s for starters.
Who cares?
I have been an Impresario of Professional sports for decades . My favorite sport to promote was Prizefighting. Proud to say that in Boxing , & car – racing the athlete can be seriously injured ,or buy the farm. EG . Baseball – Walk, Basketball -Foul, NFL – 15 ids. NHL -Penalty box, Tennis-Fault, Gold- Bogey. In Prizefights even if you win you , have a guy like ‘Iron’Mike Tyson punching you for 3-36 minutes, car-racing Indy 500, when you have a Shunt (Hit the wall or other cars ,doing a Double-Century (200 MPH), it hurts. I love being Jewish ,it pisses everyone off,& 99% of Pro-Athletes are non-Jewish. If I fast on Tisha-Bov ,my athletes & families fast,if I am staying with them. When I go to their homes, non-Jewish athletes families make sure everything is Glatt Kosher. Everyone is Equal ln The Ring. In matter of fact my Christian athletes, never make fun of Jesus, Muslim athletes, never talk bad about Mohammad. It seems some Jew’s are embarrassed, assimilate Why? “Aaron Braunstein -Host of ”WISEGUYS BLACKGUYS & RABBIStm” celebrating our 18th year ,on the air. ”Keep On Punchin’ ”.
Mark,Bar-Rafaeli told me last night on my Talk Show that she would like to meet you. Bar went on about you, & Ms. Chen are an item?
[…] cutoff, *The Social Network* takes the top spot this year. Yes, it has some dubious issues with accuracy and Jewish identity which I was critical of when it came out. Still, it is a beautiful convergence of talent. At the […]
[…] cutoff, *The Social Network* takes the top spot this year. Yes, it has some dubious issues with accuracy and Jewish identity which I was critical of when it came out. Still, it is a beautiful convergence of talent. At the […]