The Social Reckoning and What’s Making Us Happy

Glen Weldon (0:00)

If you appreciate the nuance and context we bring you here at Pop Culture Happy Hour, look into NPR+.

When you join, you're supporting the kind of deep dive storytelling that makes shows like Pop Culture Happy Hour possible. You also get perks like early access and bonus episodes for a wide variety of NPR shows. Join us at plus.npr.org. I think this is a funny movie with solid laugh lines because Aaron Sorkin is a funny writer. There are also equally enjoyable, wildly unintentional laugh lines because Aaron Sorkin is also a huge cheeseball.

Linda Holmes (0:34)

It's very corny.

Glen Weldon (0:40)

Don't call it a sequel. No, the new film, The Social Reckoning is a companion piece to the 2010 film, The Social Network. But where that first movie chronicled the invention of Facebook, The Social Reckoning focuses on where Facebook is now and what it's doing to the culture. It's framed as a kind of all the president's men for the digital age with Jeremy Allen White as a crusading reporter and Mikey Madison as a Facebook insider with damning information about Facebook business practices. I'm Glen Weldon and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour are a dream team, two people I want to talk about this movie with. First up, my co-host, Linda Holmes. Hey, Linda.

Linda Holmes (1:15)

Hello, Glen.

Glen Weldon (1:16)

Also with us is NPR White House correspondent, Danielle Kurtzlaib, and welcome back, Danielle.

Danielle Kurtzleben (1:20)

Very happy to be here.

Glen Weldon (1:21)

Let's get to it. The Social Reckoning is inspired by a series of Wall Street Journal articles called The Facebook Files, most of which were written or co-written by reporter Jeff Horwitz. He's played by Jeremy Allen White. A Facebook engineer named Frances Haugen disclosed thousands of internal documents to Horwitz. She's played by Mikey Madison. Those Facebook documents chronicled that the platform was causing measurable societal harm and that the company knew this and did nothing. The film's fractured timeline also features Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook isn't the ref. That's the point. That's the point, Charlie.

We're not the ref. We're the public square. It's Jeremy Strong, strongly Jeremy.

Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed the film. He won an Oscar for writing The Social Network. The Social Reckoning is in theaters now. Linda, if there was a graduate course in Sorkin studies, I would want you teaching it. You go way back with Sorkin's work, the highs, the lows, the studio 60s. The Social Reckoning, what do you reckon?

Linda Holmes (2:21)

I did not enjoy this, to cut to the chase. I think it's pretty boring, except when it is weird in ways that I did not like. It's a pretty ordinary investigation tale, I think in terms of the comparison to All the President's Men. My response is it wishes.

They try to spice it up with a couple of odd touches. I think Jeremy Strong does a pretty good, strange Zuckerberg impression.

I like Mikey Madison, I like Jeremy Allen White. I think both of the characters are pretty seriously underwritten. So the only time it really held my attention was when I was wondering whether something very odd was true or not.

In most cases, the answer to that seems to be no, which we can talk about, not a surprise based on how fast and loose the social network was with a lot of things. So I would say not a movie that I enjoyed and not a movie I took a lot away from. Either artistically or factually about Facebook.

Glen Weldon (3:16)

Okay. How about you, Danielle?

Danielle Kurtzleben (3:18)

I am in the exact same ballpark as Linda. I enjoyed it a little more, but I think I enjoyed it in ways that the movie did not intend. I was just cackling at various points.

If you are a student of Aaron Sorkin, as Linda is, and I am probably more intro level, but if you're a person who thinks a lot about Aaron Sorkin and how he does his shtick, it's probably entertaining in terms of you watch it and you can check off the boxes of, oh, there's a Sorkin thing, there's a Sorkin thing. Gratuously treating women in gross ways, got that. Characters messing up pop culture references and correcting each other, got that too. It's wild how quick you can tick through it. It really made me think so much about the social network and my continual wrestling with that movie. How much artistic license is too much with a, especially with a story that's so fresh and a story that features living people? And at what point is your artistic license obscuring the real story and obscuring some of the truth and interesting stuff that was going on? And are you using that license to try to make a fairy tale-ish story of investigative reporting, which is what I think this movie is doing, is obscuring the truth in favor of trying to give you something sweeping and Frank Capra-ish.