Was THE SOCIAL NETWORK Sexist? Aaron Sorkin Thinks Not

David Fincher‘s Facebook biopic, THE SOCIAL NETWORK is still going strong at the box office and it’s one of this year’s favorite movies, I haven’t met a single person who told me they hated it or thought it was just ok. No doubt in my mind that it’s going to be a serious Oscar contender and if screenwriter Aaron Sorkin didn’t get a nod for his adaptation, then something is definitely wrong with the universe. But not everyone was entirely happy about the movie, a commenter at TV writer Ken Levine’s blog said that the only thing she didn’t like about the movie was that it had a poor portrayal of women, she’s basically saying the movie’s sexist…

“I also loved The Social Network, except for one thing– the lack of a decent portrayal of women. With the exception of 1 or 2 of them (Rashida Jones included), they were basically sex objects/stupid groupies. … kinda makes me think that Aaron Sorkin (though I love his writing) failed the women in this script.”

SPOILER ALERT! Those of us who’ve seen the movie would remember the party scenes, women stripping, groupies in bathroom stalls, they’d throw themselves at Harvard’s boys, not to mention that psycho b*tch well-played by actress Brenda Song.
I guess those are what the commenter was referring to.. Guess what, Sorkin heard about the comment and he responded…

Believe me, I get it. It’s not hard to understand how bright women could be appalled by what they saw in the movie but you have to understand that that was the very specific world I was writing about. Women are both prizes an equal [sic - "prizes and equals", I think]. Mark’s blogging that we hear in voiceover as he drinks, hacks, creates Facemash and dreams of the kind of party he’s sure he’s missing, came directly from Mark’s blog.

With the exception of doing some cuts and tightening (and I can promise you that nothing that I cut would have changed your perception of the people or the trajectory of the story by even an inch) I used Mark’s blog verbatim. Mark said, “Erica Albright’s a bitch” (Erica isn’t her real name–I changed three names in the movie when there was no need to embarrass anyone further), “Do you think that’s because all B.U. girls are bitches?” Facebook was born during a night of incredible misogyny. The idea of comparing women to farm animals, and then to each other, based on their looks and then publicly ranking them. It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who’d most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard.

More generally, I was writing about a very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people. These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80’s. They’re very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren’t women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.) And this very disturbing attitude toward women isn’t just confined to the guys who can’t get dates.

I didn’t invent the “F–k Truck”, it’s real–and the men (boys) at the final clubs think it’s what they deserve for being who they are. (It’s only fair to note that the women–bussed in from other schools for the “hot” parties, wait on line to get on that bus without anyone pointing guns at their heads.)

These women–whether it’s the girls who are happy to take their clothes off and dance for the boys or Eduardo’s psycho-girlfriend are real. I mean REALLY real. (In the case of Christy, Eduardo’s girlfriend so beautifully played by Brenda Song, I conflated two characters–again I hope you’ll trust me that doing that did nothing to alter our take on the events. Christy was the second of three characters whose name I changed.)

I invented two characters–one was Rashida Jones’s “Marylin”, the youngest lawyer on the team and a far cry from the other women we see in the movie. She’s plainly serious, competent and, when asked, has no problem speaking the truth as she sees it to Mark. The other was Gretchen, Eduardo’s lawyer (in reality there was a large team of litigators who all took turns deposing witnesses but I wanted us to become familiar with just one person–a woman, who, again, is nobody’s trophy).

And Rooney Mara’s Erica’s a class act.

I wish I could go door to door and make this explanation/apology to any woman offended by the things you’ve pointed out but obviously that’s unrealistic so I thought the least I could do was speak directly to you.

I gotta go with Sorkin on this one.. not because I’m not pro women but his reply made sense.. turns out, some of those things did happen and he was just adapting it like it was and he never intended to single out a specific real person. He went his way to mix things up or make a exaggerated version of the character.
I’m glad Sorkin responded,.. not to shove his intellectual might in the commenter’s face but to clarify things and I think he did a good job of explaining himself to the point of no further controversy will happen because of it.
After all, there will always be those who thought Tropic Thunder mocked people with developmental disabilities. Those who thought The Last Airbender was racist (when racism was like the 6th thing that’s wrong with that movie!), and those who thought Michael Bay is just a terrible director.. o wait,… that last one’s a fact..