Speaking of Social Network, it kind fo reminds me, how all fictional villains the barely coherent imbecile Trump gets compared to are charismatic and careful about their image, with how the movie imagines Zuckerberg as quick-thinking master manipulator, as opposed to awkward nerd (bastard) he actually is in real life. I feel like this is means something, but not sure what.
I would argue that The Social Network doesn’t depict Zuckerberg as a quick-thinking master manipulator at all. I mean, that’s what the character thinks he is, and he certainly talks fast (he’s an Aaron Sorkin character after all), but he’s terrible at manipulating other people, he’s incredibly rigid, and he doesn’t actually seem to be planning further ahead then next week. How do you get back at the girl who just dumped you? Get drunk and write nasty things on your blog. How do you steal someone’s idea and then string them along? Just awkwardly avoid them and tell them you’re still working on it. Hey look, Justin Timberlake is telling you he can solve all your problems! You should definitely listen to him!
Pictured: Trustworthy Hair
That’s not master manipulator, that’s dumb college student.
That said, what you’ve described is absolutely a trend in how popular culture imagines villainy, and I think it’s a bigger problem than just bad writing (which it often is).
I was once in a college class trying to explain to another student what systemic oppression is. I can’t remember the exact context, but I do remember that I said something like “I feel like you think that there’s a group of rich straight white men somewhere who meet to hand down edicts that the system will be racist and sexist and homophobic.” And she said, “Yeah, I kind of do.”
Which, yeah, I thought was pretty stupid at the time, but looking back on it I think she was just being honest, and saying something that a lot of people believe deep down: we want there to one, cackling villain organizing all the wrongs in the world, and even if we know better intellectually, we often still operate on the idea that if we find that villain (or those villains) it will fix everything.
These immigrants are ruining everything!
All men are pigs and rapists and we should just choose to be lesbians because that’s a thing we can do!
Let’s kill all [insert race here]!
somethingsomethingREPTILEPEOPLE!
It’s conspiracy theory logic, and as always, the best argument against any conspiracy is:
So then we get Trump: the most cartoonishly evil president in a long time, possibly ever, but also, and this is what trips people up, one of the stupidest. I’ve heard smart people claim that Trump knows what he’s doing, that he has some larger plan. And it’s just patently not true. If he behaves like someone who’s only in it for his own ego, who just does whatever he feels like doing whenever he feels like it, who’s making decisions based on pettiness, unthinking hatred, and plain old trolling? Then that’s probably what he is. Also, most of the horror, destruction, and death inflicted by humans was inflicted by exactly those type of people.
It was inflicted by instinct, by accident, by stupidity. That’s what real life looks like.
We can’t effectively combat people like Trump if we imagine him as something he’s not, and we can’t combat systemic problems at all if we imagine them as all about villains and victims.
This just in: stories matter.
