To celebrate 100 years of Columbia Pictures, Annie Lyons demands your full attention as she leaves her Prada at the cleaners and wires into the romantic comedy undercurrents at the heart of David Fincher’s The Social Network.
Nearly fifteen years on from The Social Network, the film’s final image remains prophetic as ever: in an empty room, Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg sits alone, endlessly refreshing his browser to see if his ex-girlfriend has accepted his friend request. The fire-and-ice pairing of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher came together for a picture with lore as storied as Facebook’s own, from the 162-page script to the famed 99 takes of the opening conversation between Eisenberg and Rooney Mara. With more than 2.7 million logs and a 3.9 average rating, the film ranks 58th on Letterboxd’s 1,000 Most Watched Films list and 89th on the Official Top 250 Films with the Most Fans. And as our hyper-online world reaches a tipping point, isolated and fractured, the Rashomon-style saga about the conflicting perspectives of Facebook’s origin and ensuing lawsuits continues to be a hotbed of discussion.
But, if I am to be ever so blunt, I don’t particularly care that Fincher and Sorkin took factual liberties or that their characterization of Zuckerberg hasn’t aged particularly well as the Meta-née-Facebook CEO has routinely demonstrated amid various scandals. These days, when I rewatch The Social Network, one thought soars above the rest, starting the minute that I see co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) amble into Mark’s dorm room:
This is a romantic tragicomedy. Eduardo and Mark are in love.
In the fourth most popular Letterboxd review of the film, with nearly 12,000 likes, Sree wonders: “Literally why did David Fincher turn the plot of the invention of Facebook into a gay drama like what was the reason.” “So you’re telling me this ISN’T a rom com? I don’t believe it,” declares Anika, while Muriel muses, “It is gay for a man to have his best friend’s shares diluted down to 0.03 percent.” Asks Isobxl: “Wyd if you ask me to put on my favorite gay movie and I turn on The Social Network?”
They’re not alone. The Social Network is a staple on such thematically overlapping lists as movies that are actually gay rom-coms but are d as men being Cool; filmbro movies that are actually gay rom coms because I love making filmbros mad; gay (movies that are not d as gay but actually are in fact gay); Aesthetically Adjacent to Gay; Fellas is it gay to have homoerotic subtext; and Dude, is this gay? Or, simply, yaoi.
As evident in those titles, there’s a degree of irreverence that comes with this queering of the “filmbro movie”, but that doesn’t negate the sincerity behind the interpretation either. So what is it about this Shakespearean tragedy about elite college students that lends itself so generously to queer readings?
For starters, Eisenberg and Garfield possess astounding chemistry, all brusqueness meets tender vulnerability that reaches a fever pitch every time their eyes meet across the deposition table (more on this later). In a romance genre image replicated ad nauseam, Eduardo shows up in the pouring rain on the doorstep, like a possessed Mr. Darcy, after Mark forgot to pick him up from the airport. G observes of the overall film, “It’s like if you played Pride & Prejudice backwards.”
The language that defines their bond can be strikingly plain, cutting through the typical, delightful verboseness of Sorkin’s script. Approaching a point of no return, Eduardo professes over the phone, “I had to get your attention, Mark.” Never one to stammer or stumble over his words, Mark in the same call pleads: “I want, I want—I need you out here.” Inevitably, the relationship splinters with the fateful laptop smash in a breakup scene to end all breakup scenes after Eduardo learns Mark cut him out of the company. A summary by Clementine: “bro, we are co-owners of facebook bro. its ok to cry around me . im ur best friend . i love you . ... bro, we are kiss ing now . . no don’t dilute my shares to 0.03% bro .. bro …”
Consider Eduardo’s introduction. After reading Mark’s spiraling blog posts following his breakup with Mara’s Erica Albright, Eduardo rushes up the steps of Kirkland House—never mind that it’s past 2 am. “Are you alright?” he asks. “I need you,” Mark replies. Eduardo drops closer, eyes wide and glowing, and then earnestly says the words that set up their lopsided power dynamic for the next two hours: “I’m here for you.” Of course, emotional connection is not really what Mark had in mind. He just wants Eduardo’s algorithm for ranking chess players for Facemash.
So begins a familiar pattern in the pair’s relationship: Wardo, wearing his heart on his sleeve and in abject awe of Mark, and Mark, seemingly indifferent and later even bristling at this devotion. As Eduardo progresses in the exclusive Phoenix Club initiation, Mark undercuts him with casual cruelty (“You’re right. It’s probably a diversity thing”) and rarely reciprocates the same considered attention—except when he does. When Mark shows Eduardo his name on the masthead, Eduardo smiles at his friend, whose eyes stay fixated on the screen. “You don’t know what that’s going to mean to my father,” he says. His gaze turns to the screen, and it’s only then that Mark looks up at him. “Sure I do,” he replies, with a matter-of-factness belying the intimacy of the moment. “The way Mark [and] Eduardo constantly circle back to each other!! Like there is an invisible thread connecting them, allowing them to pick up where they left off, but ultimately ending up causing each other pain..... this is my Normal People,” Laura professes.
If you’re reading this piece, I’m going to assume the words “the babygirlification of Kendall Roy” might mean something to you. A strong connective tissue runs from the Tumblr lovers of The Social Network to the X-née-Twitter lovers of HBO’s Succession: complicated business and legal dealings punctuated by insult-laden dialogue, studies of awful people doing awful things that somehow we can’t help but humanize, and as Lily declares, “This and Succession prove that the only way to make stuff about business interesting is to add a little bit of homoeroticism.” What are Kendall and Stewy, if not Mark and Eduardo persevering? Or Yasmin and Harper across the pond? Industry falls under this psychosexual umbrella, too, though with the nuance that the London-set investment banking series tends to be more frank about sex than the Roy family.
The rise-and-fall of Big Business continues to provide biopic inspiration, too, from Steve Jobs (also penned by Sorkin) and The Founder to limited series WeCrashed and The Dropout. But in a time when corporate IP reigns supreme, the “brand origin” movie has exploded in recent years, covering the full dietary spectrum from breakfast treats (Unfrosted) to spicy chips (Flamin’ Hot) with lukewarm results.
At the time of The Social Network’s release, Fincher and Sorkin courted surprise with their chosen subject matter, a reaction nodded at by the title of the accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary, How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook? As we know, the film is not really about Facebook, but the success of its thriller-meets-courtroom-drama style has inspired a template of injecting genre intrigue to corporate beginnings. Tetris positioned itself as a Cold War-thriller, receiving a direct comparison to The Social Network by star Taron Egerton, while Air strove for a heist movie via business meetings.
Following the rise and fall of the eponymous mobile device, Matt Johnson’s dryly humorous BlackBerry soars a level above these other successors, understanding that the best of this subgenre rejects irreverence toward The Brand. Plus, as an added bonus, it’s rife for its own queer readings. “The Social Network but less gay in unsurprising ways but also gayer in other surprising ways,” Keith suggests.
Reflecting on The Social Network’s queer legacy in Adolescent, Kaiya Shunyata summarizes: “To Eduardo, Facebook was never just a business; it was a culmination of his and Mark’s relationship. Facebook was a figurative child they built together, and losing that meant heartbreak. The film essentially begins and ends with a breakup: one between Mark and his fictitious girlfriend Erica [Mara], and the other between Mark and Eduardo.”
That latter breakup is precipitated by the arrival of Justin Timberlake’s wildcard Sean Parker. When he crashes into their fragile Eden with a never-ending procession of Appletinis, it’s like a dunk in an ice bath for poor Eduardo, who can scarcely put up a fight as Mark and Sean realize they speak the exact same language—down nearly to the acerbic rhythms and pace of their Sorkinese. “I think that Sean is as close to a kind of soulmate to what Mark is trying to accomplish as anyone else that he meets,” Fincher once said. “I think Wardo’s jealous,” Eduardo’s girlfriend Christy (Brenda Song, we love you) aptly diagnoses. “I honestly wasn’t jealous. I was nervous,” Eduardo tries to justify in the deposition. In some ways, isn’t that the same thing?
Speaking of Christy, there’s no denying The Social Network gives women the short shrift. With the one key exception of Erica’s exacting appraisal of Mark in the opening scene, the women in the film serve as interns, “crazy” girlfriends and sex partners, empty vessels to impress and to lust after. The biggest question marks revolve around their hotness and whether they’re underage. Lawyer Marylin (Rashida Jones) might get the film’s devastating final line in a perfect bookend to the Erica breakup—“You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be”—but even she has spent most of the runtime slightly in awe of her team’s defendant and how many website hits Facemash got in two hours.
Credit to Sorkin and Fincher, this is all mostly by design—and the latter certainly came good on the shortcomings of Christy’s “crazy girlfriend” by subverting the trope with Gone Girl. Starting with the inception of Facemash, the writer-director duo acutely demonstrate how misogyny is intrinsically baked into the design of Facebook. In The Social Network’s eyes, Mark’s partly driven by his outsider status and a desire to upend a rapidly changing world’s power structure to place himself on top. He even says as much: “Wardo, it’s like a final club but we’re the president.” And to these proud gentlemen of Harvard, women are trophies, tokens of social prowess and capital.
Yet as much as this unspoken competition between men revolves around women, The Social Network carries an indifference to the whole affair, all slickly routine shots of women making out at a final club’s party or Christy coolly tipping over a flaming trash can. Even as Mark fixates on one-upping Erica after she rejects him, his obsession feels staunchly anti-sexual; his internal wiring instead just can’t seem to compute that someone recognizes he is the smartest person in the room, but still decides to cast her dice elsewhere.
Absent of any sensuality, this objectification more serves to conceal the homoeroticism underlying the men’s social rituals. When The Facebook’s popularity on campus brings Christy and a fellow ‘groupie’ their way, the only true joy of the act comes from the gleeful smile Eduardo and Mark share together afterward. They even hook up in adjacent bathroom stalls. Helena gets it: “Fellas, is it gay to get a bj from a girl in a bathroom stall while your bff is also getting a bj from a girl in the bathroom stall next to yours?”
I should clarify that I’m not trying to make a case that Eduardo and Mark’s romance is canonical in the film. Amid his exploration of Great Men, ambition, power and betrayal, I don’t particularly think that Sorkin meant for their friendship to read as anything other than purely platonic. (Though, predisposition toward these stately themes aside, his pen almost inadvertently gravitates towards the missed signals and gaps in communication within relationships. See: basically any romantic pairing in his numerous television series.)
But subtextually? This isn’t the first time Fincher has made a film about the social rituals and ambitions of men with underlying homoeroticism—he’s openly acknowledged that he “sort of thought Fight Club was a romantic comedy.” And there’s a fascinating tension in how he views Eduardo and Mark’s relationship, having explained in a 2010 interview, “I feel it would be irresponsible to say this is the story of a guy who betrayed his friends. I think Eduardo had a real failure of imagination.” He expanded elsewhere: “The movie is very clearly not saying that Mark thinks Eduardo is his best friend. The movie is saying that Eduardo thinks that’s what Mark feels about him. It’s never clear that this is reciprocal.” There’s the rub. The messiness of Eduardo’s feelings and the ambiguity over whether they’re requited, platonic or not, feel rife for queer interpretation.
Jeff Cronenweth operating as the director’s DP for the first time since that aforementioned 1999 rom-com certainly doesn’t hurt either. Nor do the moody techno synths of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Oscar-winning score that heighten the piercing stares and surreptitious glances in the deposition room, with curiously evocative song titles like ‘A Familiar Taste’, ‘Hand Covers Bruise’, ‘It Catches Up With You’ and no-I’m-not-making-this-up ‘Penetration.’ Particularly in this post-Challengers world, it comes as no coincidence that, as lovingly documented by Suspirliam, The Social Network is a film Luca Guadagnino likes. (Of the Italian filmmaker’s recent tennis romp, Felix observes, “The absence of gay sex is merely the shadow of the presence of gay sex. Basically The Social Network for people who like a nice glass of Pinot.”)
But I’m beating around the bush here. Because to talk about The Social Network’s queer legacy is to talk about the Eisenberg, Garfield and The Social Network press tour. From Garfield joking that he’s auditioning to be Eisenberg’s Oscars date and regularly effusing his love (“There’s something about your face that kind of engenders kind of… a well of joy… springs from my soul”) to Eisenberg nipping Garfield’s fingers and deeming his co-star “obedient”, the actors played up their bond, seemingly winking at their characters’ power dynamic.
With this came acknowledgment of the romantic undercurrent between Mark and Eduardo. “He’s got to feel like my flesh and blood for the betrayal to mean something to me... Jesse had to be that person, the person that I would never expect it from. And that was incredibly easy. As soon as I met him, I fell in love with him,” Garfield explained. “I had to be in awe of him. I had to him and his genius and to be protective of him and want him for myself and to be his boyfriend, really, in every way but a sexual way.”
In the commentary track for the film, Garfield also recalls shooting the seismic phone call confrontation as an off-camera. Eisenberg “kept on giving me these wonderful little ad-libs for me to react to for the last part of the scene. I think at one point I made him say, ‘I love you, you’re my best friend. Come, and we’ll get married, and we’ll live in a house together.’ Just to give me that right kind of reaction,” he said.
In their essential tenth anniversary analysis of the promotional phenomenon, Frankie Thomas writes: “If you were there… well, then, I don’t need to explain anything to you. You watched the fanvids. You caught Andrew tenderly brushing lint off Jesse’s shoulder (to you, of course, they were always ‘Andrew’ and ‘Jesse’); you heard Jesse saying, ‘You didn’t know me at thirteen,’ and Andrew murmuring in response, ‘I really wish I had.’ You cringed through the bizarrely intimate Moviefone featurette in which Jesse slyly asks Andrew, ‘How did you fall in love with me, onscreen?’ ‘And off,’ adds Justin Timberlake, a third wheel who will not speak again for the duration of the clip. ‘And/or off,’ Jesse amends.”
Together, Eisenberg and Garfield set the bar for the sort of press tour antics we can’t help but latch onto online nowadays. Think Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy’s “negroni, sbagliato, with prosecco in it” for HBO’s House of the Dragon; Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist for Challengers; or, even Garfield’s current charm offensive for We Live in Time, complete with puppies and a metatextual Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg.
Back in 2010 and 2011, The Social Network press tour also vitally coincided with the fast-rising popularity of Tumblr, sparking a dedicated fandom that embraced and proliferated the film’s reading as “one of the great LGBT movies of the 21st century”. Of course, not everyone got it—established publications and trades certainly weren’t doing contemporary analyses of The Social Network’s gayness and the movie’s “filmbro” reputation persists for a reason. But even as a queer interpretation has gained more of a foothold in recent years, it importantly existed right from the start for some audience , thriving within a treasure trove of Tumblr pages and fanfiction.
“Being an active Tumblr during the release of The Social Network is an experience that has changed the chemistry of my brain forever,” Kai its. “They forgot to include ‘would go on to inspire the cultural phenomenon Red, White & Royal Blue in the epilogue,” shares Sarah, referring to a persistent rumor that the politics-meet-the-Crown gay rom-com originated as The Social Network real people fanfiction about Eisenberg and Garfield. (As explored in depth by Jane Mulcahy, all signs point to an empathetic no, but that doesn’t stop Nykiah from wishing otherwise.) In a five-star rewatch, Nadia simply declares: “At the point where I’m about to search Sean Parker x Eduardo Saverin fanfic on Ao3.”
It was the perfect storm: young, charismatic actors, a genuinely superb movie with a long awards season press run and the rise of a (non-Facebook) social media site fueled by fandom. “After my viewings, and after watching it win Best Picture at the Golden Globes that night, I sought community. I logged onto Tumblr.com (again, it was 2011) and I found exactly that: hundreds of girls my age, desperate to discuss David Fincher’s The Social Network,” Aya Lehman shares in a retrospective for Merry-Go-Round Magazine, noting that most of those like-minded friends were queer: “maybe we connected with the deeply toxic, lowkey sapphic, obsessed-with-your-best-friend trope that the film is built upon.”
This image of queer connectivity offers a surprisingly hopeful contrast to the loneliness of Mark sitting over his laptop in the film’s final shot. Click.
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