The Town & The Social Network

The Town and The Social Network both did not disappoint. I watched both movies yesterday by accident. The reviews for both movies have been accurate and reflected the artistry of the makers, so for once, I have decided not to write my own review in my Urban Archaeologist blog. 
Instead, I decided to write my reflections about these movies, their themes and messages. (I must be really stressed out from preparing my next trips that I desperately need the distraction of doing this.)
It helped that creatively I liked the cast of The Town, and that bias made it easier for me to enjoy the story and plot development. I never knew before that Charlestown in Boston had notoriety of being the place where families literally handed down their criminal activities. It must be like farming! But I think most migrant peoples forming ethnic clusters will do that for survival and Asian triads and the Scilian mafia are not exceptions. So, what struck me about the film - apart from its wonderful Bonnie and Clyde/Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid exploits - were the acute pathological understanding the crime busters (Jon Hamm not quite as a mad man) have about these people. What do people do after a successful heist? Well, they might go out splurge and celebrate. It is such a basic human response. Yet, criminals have a knack of behaving in particular ways to escape detection, and you wonder if their emotional and social intelligence is heightened by their own pathology for crime.
Afterall, how many of us are comfortable breaking rules or the law. That does not mean that we may not be found contravening some rule or law, even in our everyday life and much of that depends on the repercussion or consequence. I suppose that after being comfortable with a yard, we might go for the mile? If that were true, we would all be murders and rapists over time. So it seems that there is a mental safety catch somewhere. I adored Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker and his character James in The Town reminds me of some people I know whose ability to exceed the imaginary boundary of ordinary is astounding. There is a built-in intensity whenever passions arise, and things are literally thrown out of whack. I cannot tell if it is a case of instinct (fight or flight) or pure adrenalin (and other substances) ruling (or ruining) the brain. But in the climatic shoot-out at the end of the film, the inevitable happens. "He who lives by the (gun), dies by the (gun)," to paraphrase the dictum. One can suspend belief in some parts of the film because by then you are so absorbed into the charm of the characters. I think that was what Ben Affleck succeeded so well in doing. He created these characters that you feel "live just around the block" and are too plainly familiar and not so roughnecked that you would avoid them. They could just be your neighbour. There is nothing horrifying about that, because their actions are committed in disguise, so you don't feel threatened directly. And for that reason, it became believable for a robber to fall in love with his former hostage, and vice versa. 


On that note, I need to turn my thoughts to The Social Network, because there is a certain veil as well as open window which one has when connected online. You can be both voyeur as well as exhibitionist, and by equal measure seduce others to believe in what you want them to.


Again, the reviews for this well-hyped film have been fair and well-disposed, thanks to a Sorkin script and fine cast. What struck me most was that which we knew for the most part. Even genius in youth may be great in creative work - in this case programming - but may be socially inept and awkward. You almost feel that to any level of genius has to include a necessary flaw. Needless to say, Jessie Eisenberg is much prettier (hence more tolerable to watch and listen) than the real Mark Zuckerberg. I could not put this on Facebook! Zuckerberg in real life is still very boyish and has a tendency to speak nasally, and with his nose up. I want to say it is a Jewish-thing, but I don't mean it derogatorily, so that's an unfair stereotype. But for all his smugness (hence the theme of being an asshole in the film, as it starts and ends with that remark), he is just a consummate lover of his art, which is much less about programming than about intuitively understanding how people communicate on a digital network. He is a true digital artist. Programming is just the alphabet.


As his friend Saverin says in the film, "Mark doesn't care about money. He needs to be protected." And whether it is true or not, it is Sean Parker that seems to devastatingly mercenary. You just have to read the "Info" on his Facebook account to understand what could be so right and so wrong in the same thing. It reminds me of the social etiquette among diplomatic circles where smiles and handshakes conceal everything, where they can put something on the agenda that spells goodwill but where the objective is exploitation and self-interest at the same time. There should be a name for this.


If you want to think the Justin Timberlake character is fake, well, go on and read all about what Parker says about himself, not the least that he calls himself a "anti-imperialist avenger". I wonder what he thinks about the Facebook empire and its adherents? I guess they all just feed his ego and income while he thinks we are all nothing but a city of suckers (ie. "zucker-berg").


There is not much difference between the cloak-and-dagger world of the Roman forum or the Greek agora. Today, we bleed differently maybe.


People are driven by their goals and usually blind-sided by these as well, unless we have the good fortune of having excellent conscience and strategists on our side, capable of achieving what one has set out to do. Why preach Six Sigma, KPIs and benchmarking if we all did not care about results. There is the situation which is recounted in many tales, where the persecutor holds the young child hostage and asks for information, which the child beguilingly reveals, leading to the capture of the prey. You get a sense of this when Sean Parker moves into Mark Zuckerberg's inner circle and deposes a relatively inept Saverin in the money-making expansionist scheme. Plainly because Parker has an intuitive mastery over the digital network of hearts and minds, spanning the very corporate entities he despises and the little artful infant companies he courts. 


It reminds me of a Polish intern in a former company of mine who was so utterly enamoured of the seductive words of  "respect and dignity" that he became an informant about the behaviour the corporate executive body. Arbitrarily, he would seek out information among the junior executives and be a snitch of sorts. Yet, a genius of sorts in doing this work (his family was in fact from a farm under the Soviet regime), he was completely without self-awareness in his own activities and the consequences being born out.


Similarly, among the juvenile executive ranks, there is as much ideal as there is passion and talent. Which minced together without supervision and guidance can be a potent and even virulent force, which is looks seductively impressive but is actually very volatile. The same executives who gripe about management around the water fountain (the new euphemism for Facebook) are giving irresponsible behaviour a new definition. The proof, when discriminating video or comments and material are posted online to embarrass or hurt others. Now that sort of behaviour has become so captivating that the liberal news mongers of today editorially indulge in the same tactic to get "sticky" with their audiences. Because we are led to believe that there is "prospective value" in the invisible and often deceptive milieu of communication with the masses.