The Social Network / Skippy Dies

Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer Ken Levine has an interesting blog in which he writes about, among other things, the script-writing process. He also does reviews of television shows (which are interesting because sometimes he’ll talk about how HE would have solved a specific writing problem) and movies.  Recently Ken Levine reviewed The Social Network.  The story of the creation of Facebook, written by Aaron Sorkin, Levine loved the screenplay and said:

SOCIAL NETWORK was absolutely brilliant! And the star was the screenplay. Sorkin somehow managed to take a complicated completely non-visual subject, mix it with dense legal issues, present characters who are all basically unlikable, and somehow create a spellbinding movie. The screenplay is adapted from Ben Mezrich’s novel THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES. Good luck to the guy who has to follow this and write the formation of Twitter movie.

At the time I read this blog post I had not yet seen the film so it never occurred to me to read the comments.   Apparently, a commenter named Tarasha commented that she didn’t like the portrayal of women in the film and thinks Aaron Sorkin failed the women in his script and she was surprised because Sorkin created such great women characters in his other works, especially The West Wing.  To the surprise of everyone, including Ken Levine, Aaron Sorkin showed up in the comments to respond to the criticism.  You can click through to read his whole response but here’s part of it:

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.

He then explains more and finishes with this:

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 had the opportunity to see The Social Network last night.   Truthfully, I wasn’t as blown away by the screenplay as Ken Levine was, I thought it dragged in places.  But I did find it amazing that Sorkin could make the act of writing computer code not boring.  But I buy Sorkin’s explanation of what he was trying to do and why he wrote the women’s characters the way he did.  Maybe that is because I feel that I know Aaron Sorkin’s work and I’ve seen him create many strong women characters but I really think that the point he was trying to make was very clear. 

I’m not going to judge whether this is an accurate depiction of the people portrayed in the film (no, not even Larry Summers), I would judge it only as a work of fiction.  The picture Sorkin paints is not pretty.  Yes, all the characters do treat women as sex objects/stupid groupies. And as he points out in his comment, no one holds a gun to these women’s heads and forces them to act the way they do or put up with the way they are treated.  Clearly not all women would put up with this, a point that Sorkin makes very clear in the opening scene.   He does have the lawyer of Eduardo (Zuckerberg’s former best friend) be a women and her character is strong but undeveloped.  There is also a young woman lawyer on Zuckerberg’s legal team but I found it annoying that he had her say to him at the end “You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.”   I have news for her - whether a person is an asshole at his core is irrelevant in situations in which he is ACTING like an asshole. (But then Sorkin also had this character announce at one point that she was only a second year associate sitting in and observing, only to change that story at the end when she announces that she’s an “expert” at voir dire.  uh huh. After two years.   Hard to take that character seriously at that point. ) 

All of this made me think of a novel I read last month:  Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.   I wasn’t going to blog about it because I didn’t really like it, but I have been thinking about it off and on since I finished it.  It is the story of a group of prep school boys in Dublin and their teachers.  Just as some women find the portrayal of the women inThe Social Network disturbing, the portrayal of women in this novel is disturbing.  Although perhaps not as blatant as in The Social Network, all the women characters in Skippy Dies are stereotypes and they are all seen through the eyes of the boys/men. 

The males in the story all react to the females as if the females were aliens from another planet.  And while I understand that many boys going through puberty fear girls (and the possible rejection from them) while at the same time being drawn to them by their hormones, and while I understand that this feeling may not go away completely for grown men, it is really hard to read a novel in which all girls/women are seen through the eyes of boys and boylike men.  Even when the girls are occasionally given the point of view, they don’t seem very real.   And I asked myself as I was reading this – is this novel sexist?  And I kept stopping myself from answering “yes” because I always wondered if (or maybe hoped that) the author was trying to make a point that treating the female sex like this is silly.   The ending is somewhat ambiguous on this front.  If the author was good intentioned, then he failed to make his point.  If he wasn’t trying to make that point, the novel was sexist. 

As I read that novel I kept thinking how interesting it was that many women were upset by Christos Tsolkias’ The Slap and thought it was misogynistic but there didn’t seem to be the same reaction to Skippy Dies. I seldom call any work misogynistic, I think that term is thrown around too often and overuse makes a term lose meaning.  But I have no problem talking about sexism and sexist portrayals.  I didn’t think The Slap was sexist but I did, without a doubt, think there were sexist (even, in the case of one character, misogynistic) characters in that novel.  It never occurred to me to think the author was necessarily sexist or that the novel was intended to be sexist.  Why?  Because there were many complicated female characters in the novel many of whom were justifiably appalled at the various levels of sexism exhibited by some of the male characters.  As a novelist, Tsolkias’ took care that his female characters were not stereotypes although all of the characters in the novel were types.

And yet there was heated debate over The Slap and not for Skippy Dies which contains no female characters that seem more than caricatures.   Why?  Maybe the point of Skippy Dies was more apparent to other readers than to me.  Or maybe it is a problem with the readers.  I often encounter other readers who judge novels by whether they “like” the characters or not. .  I won’t tell other people how to read books, but in my opinion, just because characters in a novel are sexist doesn’t make the novel a sexist novel. It makes it a novel with difficult characters.  And just because the characters in a novel are basically good and childlike doesn’t mean that the novel isn’t sexist. 

I had almost put the question of Skippy Dies behind me when I went to see The Social Network.  And as I watched the characterization of women in this film I found myself asking the same question.  Why is Sorkin creating a universe where all college aged women are perceived as sex objects and most act like stupid groupies?  Is he trying to make a point?  And, if so, what point is he trying to make?  And is his point about the women or is it about the men?  Unlike Skippy Dies, I found his point pretty easy to follow.

Unlike the woman lawyer at the end though, I did think that Mark Zuckerberg (the character) was an absolute jerk.

Coffee Houses: Where Ideas Have Sex

I’m always fascinated by sociological and historical studies of how people come up with great ideas.  So I really liked this Ted Talk by Steven Johnson because it combines the history of coffee houses with studies of scientists coming up with ideas.  He talks about how he has been studying environments to determine what kind of an environment leads to creativity.  

One concept that I’ve often heard is that it is important to get beyond the language you normally use to describe a concept because language can be constraining.   So Johnson asks us to stop thinking of an idea as a “flash” and instead think of it as a network.  First, an idea is a product of the network that is our brain.  But, second and maybe more importantly, ideas often come out of networks of individuals.  And if you want good ideas, you need to create environments that will allow a network to develop that will lead to good ideas.  People have half of an idea and in the right environment they will find the other half of the idea.   Sometimes this happens by chance but he thinks that some environments promote the possibility of those chances more than others and those environments are those with connected minds.   As he says, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

What I’m Watching

I got my hair cut this week and my hairdresser, Grant, and I dissected the new TV season.  He’s a big Glee fan too.  Here’s my take on the new TV season and what I’m watching.  Keep in mind that, except for Castle, I don’t watch almost anything in real time.

Castle (ABC on Mondays at 9:00 central) – Luv it.   I wondered if this third season would see the writers run out of ideas, but I think this may be the best season as far as plot-of-the-week goes.  They’ve kept me guessing.  And there seems to be a lot more humor this year.  Not that there wasn’t humor in other years but it seems as if the writers and actors aren’t holding back this year.  There are some plot holes in the ongoing stories.  What happened to the boyfriend Alexis had over the summer, for instance?   But so far a great season.   A-

Glee (Fox on Tuesdays at 7:00 central) – Uneven.  The writers are giving Brittany more air time this year.  There seems to be a cult-like following for Brittany and I just don’t understand it.  I don’t think her lines are that funny.  But she’s a fabulous dancer and that made the Britny Spears episode tolerable.  They still have at least one too many musical numbers per episode and the lip-synching isn’t always accurate and that bothers me.  I’d prefer fewer numbers, better performed.  But I like the ongoing storyline about Kurt this year.  And I like the new football coach.  And next episode they are doing Rocky Horror .  Oh yeah.  Let’s do the time warp again … ahem.  Anyway.    B

Bones (Fox on Thursdays at 7:00 central) – Better than I expected.  They built a weird “almost a year has gone by” into the break between last year and this year which I thought wouldn’t work.  They introduced a new love interest for Booth which I thought wouldn’t work.  They made Angela and Hodgins a formal couple with a baby on the way and I thought that wouldn’t work.  But so far it is all working well.   It might be my imagination but the dead bodies this season are even more disgusting than in other seasons.   And I’m not sure how they are managing to get all the squinterns back after a year, but that’s a minor point.  On the whole I’m enjoying it. B+

Fringe (Fox on Thursdays at 8:00 central) – Surprise of the Season so far.   I was not a big Fringe fan before.  I generally only watched it if I had nothing better to do.  I always thought Anna Torv was miscast as the lead.  But this year?   I’m totally hooked.  Torv is showing dimensions I didn’t suspect playing both Olivia and Fauxlivia – and it’s even more complicated because Fauxlivia is pretending to be Olivia and Olivia is brainwashed to think she is Fauxlivia.  Got that?  Having the episodes jump back and forth between the alternate universes, a different world each week, is working for me.  I find myself invested in the characters.  A

I’ve only watched one episode, each, of SGU and Caprica so I’m reserving judgment.  I’ve found myself liking 30 Rock again this year. Last year I found myself deleting it from my Hulu queue without watching it.  I might not have even watched it this year except for Matt Damon being a guest star.  But I’m enjoying it.  

The one show I have not seen this year that I miss is Big Bang Theory.   I’m seldom home at the time it is on and when I am it is up against Bones.  CBS doesn’t participate in Hulu and I find the CBS site difficult to navigate.  So I have not seen a single episode this season.  I guess it will give me something to watch during “repeats”. 

Irish Wit(t)

It has turned out to be an Irish themed weekend for me, full of celebrations of life.  Yesterday I was at the wedding of my 24 year old cousin Maggie, a celebration of life for a young couple starting out together.  She chose an Irish theme for her wedding.  On my side (her dad’s side) we are part Irish but she’s very Irish on her mom’s side.  So the bridesmaids wore green, the groomsmen’s vests were pale green, there was an Irish blessing at the wedding ceremony and there were shamrocks on the cake.  The bride’s twin sister, Mollie, gave an Irish toast, and there was much laughter as everyone claimed she mangled it. I don’t remember exactly what she said but it was supposed to be:

May the saddest day of your future be no worse
Than the happiest day of your past.

It’s a nice thought.

But there will always be sad days. 

Today I’m going to an “Irish Wake”.  My old friend Jim, who had battled cancer for a long time, died last weekend.  He was always a strong-willed man and toward the end they say he didn’t want visitors.  He also insisted that there be no funeral service.   He always hated funerals.  But he did allow that there should be a wake.  An Irish Wake.

There is an old Irish Blessing that goes like this:

May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven
half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

I don’t know if Jim believed in heaven, but having his wake a full week after his death is a good way of fooling the devil.

The celebration of Jim’s life will be at a local Irish establishment and I’m sure we’ll lift a glass or two in his honor.  And I’m sure we’ll tell stories about him. As the Irish say, “There is no tax on talk.”   Some of the stories will evoke nods, “Oh I remember when he did that”, and others will be new.  And maybe there will be a few tears.  But there will also be laughter.  It’s what he would have wanted. 

So it is an Irish weekend with both ends of the emotional spectrum represented.  

And there is a twist to both celebrations. My cousin Maggie married a nice Texas boy with a good German last name: “Witt”.   My friend Jim came into my life when he married my friend Deb, who grew up next door to me and who died a few years ago.   Her maiden name was a good German name: “Witt”.  That seems like something out of an Irish novel. 

I’ll leave you with a final piece of Irish Wit:

If you’re enough lucky to be Irish...
You’re lucky enough

Take a Seat

In today’s New York Times (sub. req.) John Edger Wideman has an Op Ed entitled The Seat Not Taken in which he talks about being a black man on the Acela train between New York and Rhode Island, a train trip he takes a couple of times a week during the school year.

Over the last four years, excluding summers, I have conducted a casual sociological experiment in which I am both participant and observer. It’s a survey I began not because I had some specific point to prove by gathering data to support it, but because I couldn’t avoid becoming aware of an obvious, disquieting truth.

Almost invariably, after I have hustled aboard early and occupied one half of a vacant double seat in the usually crowded quiet car, the empty place next to me will remain empty for the entire trip.

I am a white woman but I can verify Mr. Wideman’s sociological experiment.  Because I did the same experiment on Southwest Airlines over a three or four year period.  But I called it my “Secret to Getting a Good Seat on Southwest Airlines”.

A number of years ago my sister and I had season tickets to Chicago’s Lyric Opera and I travelled to Chicago about once a month to see operas with her.  I would fly up and back on Southwest Airlines (in those days you could get $30 one-way tickets – you couldn’t drive for that price).   Usually the flights were crowded and usually the plane was pretty full when I got on because St. Louis was the last stop before Chicago.  Often there would be only a few empty seats on each flight.  Southwest Airlines planes had three seats on either side of the aisle and it was open seating.   So, only if you were lucky would you end up in one of the few rows where there was an empty seat between you and the other person in your row. 

I preferred not to rely on luck.  I preferred to rely on the racism of others.  Every time I got on the flight I would look for a black man, preferably one sitting in a window seat (I like the aisle), who was sitting in a row that was otherwise empty.   I would nod to him and ask if the aisle seat was taken.  He would say no.  I would sit down. And both of us would wait as the plane filled up and latecomers searched for empty seats.  The middle seats would begin to fill in but the seat between us would remain empty until the very end.  If the flight was full, eventually someone would take that seat between us.  But if there were a few empty seats left on the flight we would end up with the empty seat between us. 

I didn’t think of this strategy by myself.  I noticed it one time when I just happened to choose an aisle seat and wondered why no one was picking the middle seat next to me.  So the next time I experimented.  

I still use this strategy when I fly Southwest. And, yes, sometimes I feel a little bit guilty that I am benefitting from the racism around me.   Sometimes I wondered what the man in the row with me thought about it.  I suspected it was probably a mixture of annoyance and joy at not being crammed three to a row.  I never felt comfortable asking.   But here’s what Mr. Wideman says:

Of course, I’m not registering a complaint about the privilege, conferred upon me by color, to enjoy the luxury of an extra seat to myself. I relish the opportunity to spread out, savor the privacy and quiet and work or gaze at the scenic New England woods and coast. It’s a particularly appealing perk if I compare the train to air travel or any other mode of transportation, besides walking or bicycling, for negotiating the mercilessly congested Northeast Corridor. Still, in the year 2010, with an African-descended, brown president in the White House and a nation confidently asserting its passage into a postracial era, it strikes me as odd to ride beside a vacant seat, just about every time I embark on a three-hour journey each way, from home to work and back.

I admit I look forward to the moment when other passengers, searching for a good seat, or any seat at all on the busiest days, stop anxiously prowling the quiet-car aisle, the moment when they have all settled elsewhere, including the ones who willfully blinded themselves to the open seat beside me or were unconvinced of its availability when they passed by. I savor that precise moment when the train sighs and begins to glide away from Penn or Providence Station, and I’m able to say to myself, with relative assurance, that the vacant place beside me is free, free at last, or at least free until the next station. I can relax, prop open my briefcase or rest papers, snacks or my arm in the unoccupied seat.

But the very pleasing moment of anticipation casts a shadow, because I can’t accept the bounty of an extra seat without remembering why it’s empty, without wondering if its emptiness isn’t something quite sad. And quite dangerous, also, if left unexamined. Posters in the train, the station, the subway warn: if you see something, say something.

Teaser Tuesday

I thought I’d steal a meme from the Book Blogs.  Grab a book you are reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences.  No spoilers.

From The Long Song by Andrea Levy, page 9:

Reader, my son tells me that this is too indelicate a commencement of any tale.  Please pardon me, but your storyteller is a woman possessed of a forthright tongue and little ink. Waxing upon the nature of trees when all know they are green and lush upon this island, or birds which are plainly plentiful and raucous, or taking good words to whine upon the cruelly hot sun, is neither prudent nor my fancy. Let me confess this without delay so you might consider whether my tale is one in which you can find an interest.  If not, then be on your way, for there are plenty books to satisfy if words flowing free as the droppings that fall from the backside of a mule is your desire.

Caprica

Unlike the debut of Stargate Universe, which I was only slightly looking forward to, I am very much looking forward to the debut of the second half of the first season of Caprica on Tuesday night.  If you haven’t given it a chance, and you like Sci Fi television, try it.  It’s on the SyFy channel but last year the episodes were run later on hulu where I watched them.

I’m concerned, though, that it might not last.  I don’t think it had very good ratings.  Which is a shame, because it is a well made, well acted, well written show that raises lots of thought provoking questions.  The writers took a long time to set up the characters and the convoluted plot in the first half of the first season so it moved slowly, which seems to have turned off some people.  Hopefully things will pick up now that the characters and that will mean more people will watch.   And maybe moving it to Tuesday nights will also help.

It isn’t a perfect show by any means, but the things they do right they do wonderfully well.  They have created a great character in Zoe – who is really three different characters consolidated into one.  Great credit goes to actress Alessandra Torresani who creates Zoe.  Zoe started out as a real teenaged girl named Zoe Greystone.  She was a student in an upscale private school, a teenager who had fights with her parents and was in love with the wrong boy and wanted to change the world.  Zoe’s father, Daniel (played by Eric Stolz), became rich by inventing a device that allows people to access virtual realities.  By putting on a pair of special glasses with computer chips in them the person enters into a virtual world that seems completely real but is actually all in the person’s head.  However, other people who are also using these glasses and who are logged into the same program, are in the same virtual reality.  So people are reacting to each other and “seeing” each other in virtual locations.  Each person is represented in the virtual world by an “avatar”  that looks like them and to all extents and purposes is them, except of course that they can do all kinds of dangerous things and never get killed.  It’s like the Star Trek holodeck without ever leaving the comfort of your couch.  Or maybe it is like combining blogging with avatars.

Of course the porn industry loves the device.  But the technology has also been hacked by gamesters who create their own virtual games, of which Daniel Greystone claims to have no knowledge.  His daughter Zoe is as much of a creative computer genius as her dad and that’s where things got interesting.  Zoe figured out how to create an entirely virtual “character” who looked like her own avatar and who had all of her own memories and feelings but who wasn’t Zoe’s avatar.  Real Zoe’s avatar could interact with Virtual Zoe in the virtual world – they could see each other and talk to each other.  The Real Zoe had some kind of plan to take Virtual Zoe to one of the allied planets (did I mention this is sci fi?) for some mysterious purpose but in the midst of the plan the Real Zoe’s deadbeat boyfriend blew up a train, killing himself and the Real Zoe.  Daniel and Amanda, the Real Zoe’s mom, were devastated.  Amanda was even more devastated when she discovered that the Real Zoe was somehow involved in the bombing.

The Real Zoe’s best friend (who was supposed to be on the train too but she chickened out) knows about Virtual Zoe and continued to interact with her in the virtual world.  Then the Real Zoe’s dad found out about Virtual Zoe and downloaded her onto a chip that he then embedded in a giant robot he has been trying to create for the military (a Cylon).  The Robot had its own programming to try to make it think for itself, so now Virtual Zoe is out in the real world living in this huge, powerful robot and she has not only the Real Zoe in her but also the knowledge of the Robot.  And she is also herself.  She is evolving beyond Virtual Zoe into her own personality – Cylon Zoe? 

Confused?  No wonder.  But you have to admit it’s a fascinating premise. 

And the way the directors film this very confusing situation is creative.  Sometimes we the audience see what the other characters see – a robot.  But sometimes we see what’s inside the robot – Virtual Zoe (Alessandra Torresani).  So we are always constantly aware that there is an artificial intelligence in the Robot that is as good as human.  When the the first half of the first season ended, Cylon Zoe has busted out, stolen a car and is on the run.  It’s not clear where she will go, after all she looks like a giant, scary robot.

In the meantime, we’ve discovered that Daniel is not a very stable guy and is, to put it charitably, ethically challenged.  In the aftermath of Real Zoe’s death he met Joseph Adama, whose wife and daughter Tamara were also killed on the train.  When Daniel discovered the existence of the Virtual Zoe he tried to figure out how the Real Zoe made her.  So he let Adama talk him into trying to create a virtual stand alone version of Tamara.  Daniel thinks he failed -- but he didn’t.  There is an Avatar Tamara who exists but has no one to explain to her who she is and where she is.  Finally she meets Virtual Zoe (it’s too confusing to explain how) who gives her some guidance and Avatar Tamara starts to figure out her own way in a totally virtual world that is a game being played by people from all over.  She is interacting with them but they are the avatars of real people and she is only an avatar.  The rules of the game say that if a player’s avatar is killed then the player is “out”.  Their avatar disintegrates and they can’t ever come back and play again.  But Avatar Tamara doesn’t have a real Tamara to be shut out of the game.  She exists outside the rules of the game and so she can’t be killed.  She is now a legend in the game – she has become part of the game.  It remains to be seen what happens to her.  But Joseph Adama has discovered her existence and wants to get to her because he believes that is a way to get his dead daughter back.  In his obsession he has been neglecting his son William and Willie has been hanging out with his uncle, Sam Adama, who is a hit man for the local mob.  I think Sam Adama was intended to be a minor character but actor Sasha Roiz has acted the heck out of that part and hopefully he will get an even bigger role.

Anyway.  Even more confused?

On top of all this there is a strange religious cult who is trying to take over.  Turns out that Real Zoe was a member of this cult. James Marsters makes guest star appearances as a leader of that cult.  Polly Walker plays a headmistress of the Real Zoe’s school and she is secretly a member of the cult.  Lots of the cult members are trying to find Virtual Zoe to use her.  We don’t know for what, but it can’t be good.

Who knows what will happen?  Well, actually we do know.  The Cylons will destroy the human race except for those who escape on a spaceship led by old William Adama and they’ll have a good run as the cast of Battlestar Galactica.  But that’s a long time in the future.

It isn’t a perfect show.  There are things I would change.   If I were the writers I would kill off a couple of characters – Zoe’s mother, for one.  And Polly Walker’s character either has to go or it needs to become different.  The story slows down whenever it focuses on  her.  I would have more Sam Adama.  I love the Game that Avatar Tamara lives in but it isn’t yet clear where that storyline is going and I think they need to make that clear because, as great as the virtual world is, so far it hasn’t really moved the plot along very much.  But all in all this is a series that keeps getting better and better and everyone should watch it.