The+Social+Network+Analysis
Content
Herzog 1
Dan Herzog
Professor McLaughlin
WR13300
13 October 2014
Creation Myths Needs a Devil
The Social Network is a film depicting the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerburg. It
was directed by David Fincher and released in 2010. Mark Zuckerburg is depicted as a socially
awkward young man from Harvard, and no matter what he says, he usually ends up with his foot
in his mouth. It all starts with his creation of a Harvard based hot or not type website. The film
depicts Zuckerburg’s knowledge of programming, as he hacks pictures of girls to use on his
website. The website gains popularity quickly, crashing the Harvard network, and Zuckerburg is
put on academic probation. As people find out that Zuckerburg made the site, he catches the
attention of the Winklevoss twins. They have an idea for a match making website based off of
needing a Harvard email address to gain entrance. Zuckerburg likes the idea but figures he can
make a better website, so he takes the idea and runs. Through secrecy he creates Facebook from
scratch and after a while he has the site up and running. It spreads like wildfire, and when the
Winklevoss twins find out, they feel as if they had been cheated. Zuckerburg ignores their ceaseand-desist letter and expands Facebook to more than two countries. He travels to California
without his friend and original investor, Eduardo Saverin, to meet up with Sean Parker, an
experienced entrepreneur, to work on Facebook. Saverin soon finds himself out of the loop, and
through trickery Parker and Zuckerburg diminish Saverin’s shares to under one percent. We find
the film switching back and forth on a timeline between the past and the present, where
Zuckerburg is being sued by two different parties, the Winklevoss twins and Saverin.
Herzog 2
Over the course of the film, Zuckerburg might come off as a bit insensitive to others’
feelings. In the first scene we see him manage to rattle off a dozen different facts about Harvard
and his perfect SAT score, coming off as very condescending, so he gets himself dumped by his
date, Erica Albright. Later in the film, we see Zuckerburg make hard decisions on what he
thinks is best for the company, decisions that include firing his only friend, Eduardo Saverin. At
the end of the film, when the timeline switches to the present and he is being sued, his lawyer
Marylin Delpy talks with him.
Mark Zuckerburg: “I’m not a bad guy.”
Marylin Delpy: “I know that. When there’s emotional testimony I assume that 85% of it
is exaggeration.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “And the other fifteen?”
Marylin Delpy: “Perjury. Creation myths need a devil.”
Is Mark Zuckerburg the devil in Facebook’s creation? David Fincher demonstrates through a
number of rhetorical and cinematic techniques that Mark Zuckerburg was merely a pawn,
tempted and manipulated by Sean Parker, the true devil figure.
Sean Parker’s personality is grand, charismatic, and everything Mark Zuckerburg wants
to be himself. The first time Sean Parker is presented on the screen he is waking up from
sleeping with a girl after a party. We are immediately privy to his partying lifestyle. The way in
which he recites information about the girl’s name, major, and family demonstrates his
likeability. Light enters into the room and shines on Sean Parker, giving the audience a sense of
his power, even without having seen him on screen before. The technique, known as high-key
lighting, produces few shadows on the principal subject (“Film Analysis” 1). In this case Sean
Parker is the principal subject and the director is trying to get this point across.
Herzog 3
In the same scene, Sean Parker finds the girl’s laptop with Facebook open. The camera focuses
on the laptop and then zooms in on Parker’s face, utilizing a close-up to “invite viewers to
explore images, reflect on their possible meaning, and wonder how that meaning is arrived at”
(Lancioni 109). The audience can see Sean Parker’s emotion clearly, and they know that he is
interested in the website. Furthermore, in the background, non-diegetic sound plays, a perpetual,
low note eliciting a bit of suspense and wonder. The camera films Parker from below, looking
up at his face in a low angle shot, aggrandizing him as he whispers, “I just have to find you,
Mark Zuckerburg” (“Film Analysis” 1). The fact that he whispers only serves to further the
audience’s sense of wonder.
Around halfway through the film, Sean Parker meets with Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo
Saverin. The scene emphasizes Sean Parker’s “money can buy happiness” attitude. The first
thing we see is the present timeline with lawyers talking with Saverin about his trip with
Zuckerburg to New York City over Spring break. The last person they were to meet with was
Sean Parker. Despite not having been excited about and even ruining some of the previous
meetings with investors, Saverin said Zuckerburg was very excited for the meeting with Sean
Parker. The camera cuts to the past timeline, with the group sitting in an expensive looking
restaurant wearing nice clothing.
Eduardo Saverin: “He’s 25 minutes late.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “He founded Napster when he was 19, he can be late.”
Eduardo Saverin: “He’s not a god.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “Then what is he?”
Eduardo Saverin: “Twenty five minutes late.”
Herzog 4
It is immediately apparent that Zuckerburg looks up to Sean Parker. Sean Parker created a large
following through Napster, a music sharing site, in the same way that Mark had been working
towards making a huge following through Facebook. Sean Parker finally arrives, making a
grand entrance worthy of a king. The camera pans, following Sean Parker as he enters the
building. He is greeted by a number of people, suggesting he frequents the expensive restaurant.
When he makes it to the table, the camera is placed looking up towards the confident, suitwearing Parker. He is the main subject of the shot and the audience can clearly see his emotions.
He cracks a smile and reaches out to shake hands. The timeline cuts back to the present, and
Saverin notes that from that point on, it was a “Sean-athon.” The camera cuts back to the past
and the group is drinking and discussing nothing but Sean Parker’s successes. Non-diegetic
intense music starts to play as the camera cuts quickly, an example of visual rhythm. Lancioni
describes this effect in her work “The Rhetoric of the Frame.” She states that “Viewers construct
meaning from shot content and context, from the relationship of shot to shot, and from the
rhythm of the cutting, all of which contribute to a film’s visual rhythms and constitute an
important aspect of its rhetoric” (109). She goes on to say that with slow pans and slow cuts, the
audience has time to decipher the information. However, in the case of The Social Network’s
restaurant scene with Sean Parker, Zuckerburg, and Saverin, the quick montage cuts create a fast
visual rhythm which is used to illustrate time passing. The audience’s perception of this scene is
that Sean Parker loves to talk about himself, and Mark loves to listen.
Late in the film, Sean Parker convinces Mark Zuckerburg to fire his best friend Eduardo
Saverin from his position as CFO. Some might argue that it was Zuckerburg that made the
decision to fire Saverin. However, we know that Zuckerburg is not very business conscious, and
we see evidence of this throughout the course of the movie. Earlier we learned that he invented
Herzog 5
an app in high school that recognizes the user’s taste in music. Microsoft tried to buy it but
Zuckerburg uploaded it for free. Another example is when Mark kept denying Saverin’s
requests to put advertisements on the site and start monetizing Facebook. Zuckerburg wanted
Facebook to stay “cool,” and ads would ruin that. More importantly, we can look closely at the
cinematic techniques of the scene to realize that it was not Zuckerburg that decided to fire
Saverin, it was Parker. When Saverin is called into the office, a lawyer is there waiting for him.
He motions him over to join him at the table. The camera cuts to Sean Parker, and we see a
close-up of his face. We can see him take a sip of coffee and stare into the room, almost
smirking. He knows what is about to happen and we get the sense that he is responsible for it.
Finally, we are given some hints at the end of the film that Zuckerburg sees the light and
realizes that Sean Parker, the man that he emulated, had led him astray and ruined his friendship.
Sean Parker was arrested at a sorority party for cocaine possession. He calls from the police
station to explain to Zuckerburg what had happened. The lighting is dark. Sean Parker is in the
shadows as he asks Zuckerburg if everything is going to be ok. The dark lighting is known as
low-key lighting, and it “creates strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subject”
(“Mise-en-scene” 1). Sean Parker is obscured; the audience feels his uncertainty. He is a far cry
from his first scene with high-key lighting that made him out to be a very powerful, confident
man. Mark Zuckerburg ends the phone call and looks down at his business card, a card which
we know Sean Parker had a hand in it as it reads “I’m CEO Bitch.” The camera focuses on his
face, and with disgust he crumples up the card, signifying his contempt for the person whom
Sean Parker had made him into. Could it be that the camera’s focus on Zuckerburg’s emotion to
show his disgust in himself, and not in Sean Parker? The answer to this lies in the previously
mentioned business card. This card is a rhetorical symbol, used to demonstrate deeper meaning
Herzog 6
to the audience (Herrick 5). When the camera pauses on this symbol, the audience can truly
appreciate the influence that Sean Parker had had on Zuckerburg, which is what Zuckerburg was
really disgusted in.
The Social Network demonstrates the effective usage of cinematic and rhetorical
techniques to elicit a response from its audience. The audience can watch The Social Network
and see the story play out, yet they are largely unaware of the subconscious sway of their
thoughts as they are influenced through camera angles, lighting, music, and editing. David
Fincher masterfully portrays the creation of Facebook and the character of those involved.
Through subtle rhetoric, he invites the audience to look deeper into the film to see the way in
which the creator of Facebook was manipulated and changed over time.
Herzog 7
Works Cited
"Film Analysis." Film Analysis. Yale University, 27 Aug. 2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.
Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An
Introduction. Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2005. 1-30. Print.
Lancioni, Judith. “The Rhetoric of the Frame: Revisioning Archival Photographs in the Civil
War.” Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. Newbury
Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008. Print.
"Mise-en-scene." Mise-en-scene. Yale University, 27 Aug. 2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.
Dan Herzog
Professor McLaughlin
WR13300
13 October 2014
Creation Myths Needs a Devil
The Social Network is a film depicting the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerburg. It
was directed by David Fincher and released in 2010. Mark Zuckerburg is depicted as a socially
awkward young man from Harvard, and no matter what he says, he usually ends up with his foot
in his mouth. It all starts with his creation of a Harvard based hot or not type website. The film
depicts Zuckerburg’s knowledge of programming, as he hacks pictures of girls to use on his
website. The website gains popularity quickly, crashing the Harvard network, and Zuckerburg is
put on academic probation. As people find out that Zuckerburg made the site, he catches the
attention of the Winklevoss twins. They have an idea for a match making website based off of
needing a Harvard email address to gain entrance. Zuckerburg likes the idea but figures he can
make a better website, so he takes the idea and runs. Through secrecy he creates Facebook from
scratch and after a while he has the site up and running. It spreads like wildfire, and when the
Winklevoss twins find out, they feel as if they had been cheated. Zuckerburg ignores their ceaseand-desist letter and expands Facebook to more than two countries. He travels to California
without his friend and original investor, Eduardo Saverin, to meet up with Sean Parker, an
experienced entrepreneur, to work on Facebook. Saverin soon finds himself out of the loop, and
through trickery Parker and Zuckerburg diminish Saverin’s shares to under one percent. We find
the film switching back and forth on a timeline between the past and the present, where
Zuckerburg is being sued by two different parties, the Winklevoss twins and Saverin.
Herzog 2
Over the course of the film, Zuckerburg might come off as a bit insensitive to others’
feelings. In the first scene we see him manage to rattle off a dozen different facts about Harvard
and his perfect SAT score, coming off as very condescending, so he gets himself dumped by his
date, Erica Albright. Later in the film, we see Zuckerburg make hard decisions on what he
thinks is best for the company, decisions that include firing his only friend, Eduardo Saverin. At
the end of the film, when the timeline switches to the present and he is being sued, his lawyer
Marylin Delpy talks with him.
Mark Zuckerburg: “I’m not a bad guy.”
Marylin Delpy: “I know that. When there’s emotional testimony I assume that 85% of it
is exaggeration.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “And the other fifteen?”
Marylin Delpy: “Perjury. Creation myths need a devil.”
Is Mark Zuckerburg the devil in Facebook’s creation? David Fincher demonstrates through a
number of rhetorical and cinematic techniques that Mark Zuckerburg was merely a pawn,
tempted and manipulated by Sean Parker, the true devil figure.
Sean Parker’s personality is grand, charismatic, and everything Mark Zuckerburg wants
to be himself. The first time Sean Parker is presented on the screen he is waking up from
sleeping with a girl after a party. We are immediately privy to his partying lifestyle. The way in
which he recites information about the girl’s name, major, and family demonstrates his
likeability. Light enters into the room and shines on Sean Parker, giving the audience a sense of
his power, even without having seen him on screen before. The technique, known as high-key
lighting, produces few shadows on the principal subject (“Film Analysis” 1). In this case Sean
Parker is the principal subject and the director is trying to get this point across.
Herzog 3
In the same scene, Sean Parker finds the girl’s laptop with Facebook open. The camera focuses
on the laptop and then zooms in on Parker’s face, utilizing a close-up to “invite viewers to
explore images, reflect on their possible meaning, and wonder how that meaning is arrived at”
(Lancioni 109). The audience can see Sean Parker’s emotion clearly, and they know that he is
interested in the website. Furthermore, in the background, non-diegetic sound plays, a perpetual,
low note eliciting a bit of suspense and wonder. The camera films Parker from below, looking
up at his face in a low angle shot, aggrandizing him as he whispers, “I just have to find you,
Mark Zuckerburg” (“Film Analysis” 1). The fact that he whispers only serves to further the
audience’s sense of wonder.
Around halfway through the film, Sean Parker meets with Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo
Saverin. The scene emphasizes Sean Parker’s “money can buy happiness” attitude. The first
thing we see is the present timeline with lawyers talking with Saverin about his trip with
Zuckerburg to New York City over Spring break. The last person they were to meet with was
Sean Parker. Despite not having been excited about and even ruining some of the previous
meetings with investors, Saverin said Zuckerburg was very excited for the meeting with Sean
Parker. The camera cuts to the past timeline, with the group sitting in an expensive looking
restaurant wearing nice clothing.
Eduardo Saverin: “He’s 25 minutes late.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “He founded Napster when he was 19, he can be late.”
Eduardo Saverin: “He’s not a god.”
Mark Zuckerburg: “Then what is he?”
Eduardo Saverin: “Twenty five minutes late.”
Herzog 4
It is immediately apparent that Zuckerburg looks up to Sean Parker. Sean Parker created a large
following through Napster, a music sharing site, in the same way that Mark had been working
towards making a huge following through Facebook. Sean Parker finally arrives, making a
grand entrance worthy of a king. The camera pans, following Sean Parker as he enters the
building. He is greeted by a number of people, suggesting he frequents the expensive restaurant.
When he makes it to the table, the camera is placed looking up towards the confident, suitwearing Parker. He is the main subject of the shot and the audience can clearly see his emotions.
He cracks a smile and reaches out to shake hands. The timeline cuts back to the present, and
Saverin notes that from that point on, it was a “Sean-athon.” The camera cuts back to the past
and the group is drinking and discussing nothing but Sean Parker’s successes. Non-diegetic
intense music starts to play as the camera cuts quickly, an example of visual rhythm. Lancioni
describes this effect in her work “The Rhetoric of the Frame.” She states that “Viewers construct
meaning from shot content and context, from the relationship of shot to shot, and from the
rhythm of the cutting, all of which contribute to a film’s visual rhythms and constitute an
important aspect of its rhetoric” (109). She goes on to say that with slow pans and slow cuts, the
audience has time to decipher the information. However, in the case of The Social Network’s
restaurant scene with Sean Parker, Zuckerburg, and Saverin, the quick montage cuts create a fast
visual rhythm which is used to illustrate time passing. The audience’s perception of this scene is
that Sean Parker loves to talk about himself, and Mark loves to listen.
Late in the film, Sean Parker convinces Mark Zuckerburg to fire his best friend Eduardo
Saverin from his position as CFO. Some might argue that it was Zuckerburg that made the
decision to fire Saverin. However, we know that Zuckerburg is not very business conscious, and
we see evidence of this throughout the course of the movie. Earlier we learned that he invented
Herzog 5
an app in high school that recognizes the user’s taste in music. Microsoft tried to buy it but
Zuckerburg uploaded it for free. Another example is when Mark kept denying Saverin’s
requests to put advertisements on the site and start monetizing Facebook. Zuckerburg wanted
Facebook to stay “cool,” and ads would ruin that. More importantly, we can look closely at the
cinematic techniques of the scene to realize that it was not Zuckerburg that decided to fire
Saverin, it was Parker. When Saverin is called into the office, a lawyer is there waiting for him.
He motions him over to join him at the table. The camera cuts to Sean Parker, and we see a
close-up of his face. We can see him take a sip of coffee and stare into the room, almost
smirking. He knows what is about to happen and we get the sense that he is responsible for it.
Finally, we are given some hints at the end of the film that Zuckerburg sees the light and
realizes that Sean Parker, the man that he emulated, had led him astray and ruined his friendship.
Sean Parker was arrested at a sorority party for cocaine possession. He calls from the police
station to explain to Zuckerburg what had happened. The lighting is dark. Sean Parker is in the
shadows as he asks Zuckerburg if everything is going to be ok. The dark lighting is known as
low-key lighting, and it “creates strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subject”
(“Mise-en-scene” 1). Sean Parker is obscured; the audience feels his uncertainty. He is a far cry
from his first scene with high-key lighting that made him out to be a very powerful, confident
man. Mark Zuckerburg ends the phone call and looks down at his business card, a card which
we know Sean Parker had a hand in it as it reads “I’m CEO Bitch.” The camera focuses on his
face, and with disgust he crumples up the card, signifying his contempt for the person whom
Sean Parker had made him into. Could it be that the camera’s focus on Zuckerburg’s emotion to
show his disgust in himself, and not in Sean Parker? The answer to this lies in the previously
mentioned business card. This card is a rhetorical symbol, used to demonstrate deeper meaning
Herzog 6
to the audience (Herrick 5). When the camera pauses on this symbol, the audience can truly
appreciate the influence that Sean Parker had had on Zuckerburg, which is what Zuckerburg was
really disgusted in.
The Social Network demonstrates the effective usage of cinematic and rhetorical
techniques to elicit a response from its audience. The audience can watch The Social Network
and see the story play out, yet they are largely unaware of the subconscious sway of their
thoughts as they are influenced through camera angles, lighting, music, and editing. David
Fincher masterfully portrays the creation of Facebook and the character of those involved.
Through subtle rhetoric, he invites the audience to look deeper into the film to see the way in
which the creator of Facebook was manipulated and changed over time.
Herzog 7
Works Cited
"Film Analysis." Film Analysis. Yale University, 27 Aug. 2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.
Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An
Introduction. Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 2005. 1-30. Print.
Lancioni, Judith. “The Rhetoric of the Frame: Revisioning Archival Photographs in the Civil
War.” Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. Newbury
Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008. Print.
"Mise-en-scene." Mise-en-scene. Yale University, 27 Aug. 2002. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.
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