(no subject)
Mar. 2nd, 2012 10:26 amSo, I kind of screwed up the other day. I was in a sour mood just in general, and I’d just read a chapter of “The Accidental Billionaires” which had ticked me off, and I was annoyed because none of the female cast members were in the commentary track for “The Social Network”. So I wrote that Sorkin’s screenplay “shows glimmerings of metatextual awareness” about the characters’ sexism. And then ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shezan very sensibly pointed out that it was a lot more than glimmerings. So I got to think about it, and she was entirely right. There were all kinds of signals in the screenplay that these characters’s viewpoints were flawed. So I went back and edited the post to cut out “glimmerings of” and just leave “shows metatextual awareness”. But I forgot to put in the usual “Edited to Add” thing and just made the change without attribution. Attributing now.
shezan also brought up a really interesting point, that my assumption the author of the book *endorses* his interview subjects’ sexists views may well be incorrect. Ben Mezzioh is a journalist, and a journalist’s job is to report what they’re told, not to editorialize, and let the readers figure things out for themselves. Shezan has read the book herself, and felt Mezzioh did a good job of reporting without endorsing. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I read another chapter with Shezan’s advice in mind, and found it easier to take.
I am still bewildered, though, at the fact that real!Eduardo Saverin and the real!Winkelvosses collaborated with the author on the book, and apparently failed to notice that they come across looking like big old jerks. Regardless of whether Mezzioh approves of his characters’ worldviews or is merely damning them with their own words, you’d think they’d have a smidgen of self-awareness and realize how arrogant they seem. Apparently not.
Edited to Add:ide_cyan makes some excellent pcomments about the movie's erasure of real Asian-American people and their making the only Asian character with lines a psycho.
shezan very sensibly pointed out that it was a lot more than glimmerings. So I got to think about it, and she was entirely right. There were all kinds of signals in the screenplay that these characters’s viewpoints were flawed. So I went back and edited the post to cut out “glimmerings of” and just leave “shows metatextual awareness”. But I forgot to put in the usual “Edited to Add” thing and just made the change without attribution. Attributing now. shezan also brought up a really interesting point, that my assumption the author of the book *endorses* his interview subjects’ sexists views may well be incorrect. Ben Mezzioh is a journalist, and a journalist’s job is to report what they’re told, not to editorialize, and let the readers figure things out for themselves. Shezan has read the book herself, and felt Mezzioh did a good job of reporting without endorsing. I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I read another chapter with Shezan’s advice in mind, and found it easier to take. I am still bewildered, though, at the fact that real!Eduardo Saverin and the real!Winkelvosses collaborated with the author on the book, and apparently failed to notice that they come across looking like big old jerks. Regardless of whether Mezzioh approves of his characters’ worldviews or is merely damning them with their own words, you’d think they’d have a smidgen of self-awareness and realize how arrogant they seem. Apparently not.
Edited to Add:
ide_cyan makes some excellent pcomments about the movie's erasure of real Asian-American people and their making the only Asian character with lines a psycho. 
