Date: 2010
Director: David Fincher
Actors/ Characters:Jesse Eisenberg/ Mark Zuckerberg, Rooney Mara/ Erica Albright, Andrew Garfield/ Eduardo Saverin, Armie Hammer/ Cameron Winklevoss / Tyler Winklevoss, Justin Timberlake/ Sean Parker.
Summary: Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the co-founder who was later squeezed out of the business.
So after years of meaning to watch this film after hearing nothing but good reviews I finally did it! Definitely worth the wait, Fincher is just a masterful director who never seems to disappoint and I have to say The Social Network might be my favourite films of his. Anyway the film got me thinking about the concept of what makes a central character and what makes a protagonist and antagonist. Mark Zuckerberg is a problematic protagonist and is described time after time in the film as being a total ass. I found it hard to relate and sympathise with Mark at times and other times I would think to myself: yeah Mark is the protagonist of this film, but the answer to my question of whether Mark is a protagonist is not so clear cut.
I think the best way to tackle this examination is through the theories of Murray Smith, Smith wrote a hypothesis in Altered States: Character and Emotional Response in the Cinema on how audiences can relate to characters through three different concepts: recognition, alignment and allegiance. Firstly, recognition simply relates to who the audience identify as a 'central character' so the characters that lie at the heart of the film. Alignment describes something more developed from the initial recognition phase, the audience are encouraged to align with characters by the filmmakers choice to tell the story through their eyes. Finally, allegiance refers to the moral evaluation of characters by the spectator, this is something out of the creators control in which the audience judge the character's morality for themselves and thus deciding how strong their emotional connection to the character is.
One could argue that Mark is clearly the protagonist of the film because he is the central character, the individual the film revolves around and therefore the audience are prompted to follow his struggles and his journey. Usually, the character that the audience sees through the eyes of for the film is better understood and thus more relatable. There were instances in the film in which I found myself thinking that Mark's actions were justified and that he was right to do as he did through the film. Mark is clearly insecure deep down why else would he want to put other people down through the form of the FaceMash website, because we are encouraged to empathise with Mark this action of cyberbullying feels far less serious because we sympathise with his insecurities and the fact that he has just had his heartbroken. I could also understand where Mark was coming from with regards to the lawsuit, from a legal standpoint I was in his corner he made sense logically and legally to me so I felt a sense of alignment to him in that regard. I think the issue with me and Mark's character stems from a lack of allegiance to him because of how he acts towards his friends and the people around him.
Allegiance towards characters is rooted in the audience's ability to side with their moral choices and actions but I just couldn't when it came to Mark. His decisions within the narrative are mostly antagonist. Take Eduardo for example, he shows Mark nothing but loyalty and compassion through the film and like he says to Mark in the third act he was Mark's only friend. Mark throws Eduardo's kindness back in his face by reducing his worth in the company to practically nothing, this is a completely malicious move when Eduardo was so generous and loyal to him. Fincher almost motivates the viewer to allege themselves to the other characters in the film rather than Mark because their actions are more rooted in morality.
I would say that although Mark is the central character of the film, he is not necessarily the protagonist. I think that the bottom line is, it depends on the individual audience member's moral viewpoint on Mark's action as to whether he is a protagonist or an antagonist.