The Artist

A Different Form of Escapism

Films resonate with their viewers for a whole splash of reasons, not the least of which is their ability to transport the viewer to oft-fantastic realms and exotic worlds far removed from the mundanity of the day-to-day. Christopher Latham wrote in The Chicago Tribune back in 2008 about the increasing demand for movies promising an enthralling escape. His list at the time contained sci-fi and action blockbuster films such as Hulk, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Wars. These films certainly fit the bill as groundbreaking works of cinema (er, I guess we can debate about Hulk) that function sort of as the AMC Theaters/Coca Cola theatrical opening which, in addition to zoning in on a girl drinking an excessively large Coke beverage (come on!), effectively transplants the moviegoers from calmly staring at a screen in a theater to emerging awash in a luscious forest floor, full of snaking flowers, fluttering fireflies, and a calming night sky. The message is clear: AMC (and Coke?) will bring you, via the film, to an entirely new, different world.   

The Artist, a French American film directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bujo (the latter of whom is married to Hazanavicius), works as a transplant piece for a strikingly different reason. Unlike the escapism inherent in films like Star Wars or Back to the Future, where we’re brought to Tatooine or Hill Valley, California in 1985 and 1955, The Artist impresses for its effectiveness of recreating another era through using that epoch’s method of film making. This silent film set in the late 20s/early 30s finds its voice through a pin-point accuracy of the experience of cinema in that period. It’s not a historical piece ala J. Edgar, but rather a work that, for all intensive purposes, could have been made in the early 30s.

That being said, The Artist had more than its own share of fantastical movie magic. The first scene shows George Valentin (Dujardin), the 20s star of silent features, watching his own film on opening night. As the orchestra at the front of the theater provides the appropriate background swells, we watch George being tortured and thrust into a prison cell, where he's promptly rescued by his constant companion, a furry, little white (Jack Russell?) terrier. Tintin, anyone? It doesn't end here. Throughout the course of the film, we see George and Peppy Miller (Bujo), the rising starlet who ultimately overshadows George's career, to then stoop down and help him out, in an array of scenes not entirely believable, be them surviving a chase by savage natives to ultimately sink into quicksand or the elaborate, highly choreographed, picture-perfect dance numbers. The escape offered here is the very one a moviegoer from the 30s would have relished. 

One of the more overt methods employed by the film was its use of symbolism. The advent of 'talkies' from the silent films allowed Hazanavicius (who also wrote the script) to explore other complications inherent in his characters lives, including Valentin's utter inability to communicate with his wife - "Talk!" she (silently) demands, "Why don't you ever talk!" Valentin's reluctance to embrace the new, audible form of cinema by talking ("If that's the future, count me out" he tells his producer) is encapsulated in his unwillingness to talk to his wife, which ultimately leads to a failed marriage. And the scene in which Valentin (onscreen) sinks to his death in quicksand, in one last silent film that highlights the loss of public interest and general relevance of them, neatly paints him as belonging to a previous era that's slowly sinking away, never to be revisited. Perhaps the film's loud symbolism serves to show that in an era were actors and actresses didn't actually speak, their message was communicated through easily parsed motifs and imagery. Maybe not.

Either way, this silent film will get you talking.

The Descendants: Paradise Lost

Clooney and Co. Offer a Gritty Look at Familial Devastation

            While George Clooney's most recent offering, The Descendants, may be set in Hawaii, the tone of the film offers anything but a glimpse of paradise. Though the camera pans regularly over the beautiful hills and beaches of a 25,000-acre lot of land on Kauai, the heart of this dramedy centers on a moderately dysfunctional family shaken first by a paralyzing accident and then by an equally paralyzing revelation.

            Directed by Alexander Payne, who wrote and directed the Academy-award winning Sideways, The Descendants offers, like the aforementioned comedy about two oenophiles on a week-long trek through the Santa Barbara Wine Country, a gripping portrait of a man on the brink of collapse, living in a constant state of uncertainty and flux, who keeps it together simply because he must, because he has no alternative. Matt King (Clooney) is a Hawaiian real-estate attorney forced into the prickly role of taking care of his two daughters after a boating accident sends his wife Elizabeth into a coma. King is self-described as ‘the back up parent, the understudy,’ overtly spelling out his ineptitude as a caretaker. His life is further shaken when his doctor tells him Elizabeth will never wake up from the coma and he should get her affairs in order. To add more fuel to the fire, his daughter Alexandra alerts him that Elizabeth had been cheating on him at the time of her accident. It’s a series of shockingly disastrous events for a man living in a purported paradise.

            What follows is a glimpse into a family trying to deal with the sudden upheaval of having their mother and wife exposed as a fraud, trying to cling to some understanding after the initial jolt of a loved one turning out to have been a stranger. Though Elizabeth might have had a strained relationship with her two daughters, the rebellious Alexandra and ten year-old Scottie, and found herself growing continually distant from a husband she claimed was “out of touch with his emotions,” the far-reaching effect of her actions could not have been anticipated. One of the most powerful scenes in the film occurs when Alexandra tells King about the affair. Watching Clooney squirm for a grasp on the situation, mouth clenching and then loosening as his mind spins rapidly, offers a transfixing look at a husband receiving the ultimate blow sans preparation. It becomes clear quite early on in the film that the only paradise The Descendants offers is in its soundtrack, which uses exclusively Hawaiian music to set a breezy, autumnal tone that nicely contradicts with the grief and despair overwhelming the screen.

            There are moments of poignancy and tenderness even in the most emotionally devastating circumstances; the scene in which Elizabeth first hears and reacts to her mother’s fate is a memorable sliver of particularly moving underwater cinema (though I’m hard-pressed to thing of other significant examples, save for Dustin Hoffman in the diver suit in The Graduate). Hearing King’s cantankerous father-in-law (Robert Forster) berate King as he surveys his comatose daughter, declaring she deserved better than the husband she ended up with, that ‘she was a strong, faithful woman,’ and then watching Clooney’s face contort as he visibly struggles to refrain from debunking and shattering his father-in-law’s perception of his daughter’s fidelity makes for especially painful, honest cinema. The film’s true value is in its realism, in the utterly convincing nature of its scenes. Not once throughout the film is the story’s legitimacy brought into question. At times it feels like the viewer is sitting in on a King family therapy session, seeing the characters for the people that they in actuality are, with all of the fear, rage, dishonesty, and dissatisfaction that makes them human.

            The cast is stellar and tight knit, especially the three nuclear members of the King family. And then there are the wider circles of family members, whose adulation of King is brought into question as he falters in his commitment to sell the 25,000 acres of inheritance for an exorbitant amount that would render them all millionaires. The film has understandably generated significant Oscar-buzz, of which Clooney said at the November 15 Hollywood premiere of the film: ‘I’ve been the front-runner a couple of times and have lost. So I don’t ever listen…’ Clooney better perk up his ears; this one’s a winner.

A Secret Life

The Complications of Character in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar

            What’s striking about J. Edgar, the most recent offering from Clint Eastwood, is the complications existent in the layered personality of the title character, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover, portrayed by an explosively determined Leonardo DiCaprio – whose granular croak can take some getting used to – is painted as a character whose need to seek security and power stems from a two pronged void planted within him both by his mother and himself, a deficiency in character that leads him to act in ways deemed less than heroic. In an early scene flashing back to his childhood, his mother (wonderfully animated by Judi Dench) tells him that one day he’ll be ‘the most powerful man in the country,’ in a sense determining (and imprisoning) young Eddie to that unattainable goal. This void becomes offset, after a number of scenes detailing Hoover’s growing awareness of his homosexual yearnings, by a riveting scene in which he tries to vocalize his sexual identity – ‘I don’t like dancing with women!’ he irately vocalizes to his mother – only to hear her stoically intone that ‘I would rather have a dead son than a dandelion for a son.’

            The portrait that emerges is a man demonized by his need to fulfill an acerbic mother’s promise for him to become the country’s most powerful man while being withheld from pursuing love due to the dishonor and loathing it’d inevitably elicit. This incongruity paints a portrait of a man ravaged and withheld, determined to accomplish regardless of the cost or effect it may have on him.

            The film sputters back and forth between Hoover’s last weeks in his position of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as he dictates the recollections of his life to young, male agents (a different one each time) crafting his biography and the real-life recreation of the situations he describes. Historical events that Hoover was directly involved in lend these recollected scenes a sense of authenticity, including the deportation of anarchist Emma Goldman, the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s son and ultimate arrest of kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann, and other landmark events under Hoover's tenure as FBI director, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

            But the centerpiece of the film that brings Hoover’s complexities into sharp focus is his relationship with his companion and co-worker Clyde Tolson, played by Armie Hammer (who lit up the screen as the Winkelvi in The Social Network). Their relationship is one of constant company – they rarely miss a meal together from the beginning of their work together – with underlying shades of mutual attraction, desire, and repression.
           The confusion with which Hoover stumbles through trying to understand his sexual identity as well as the discomfort he experiences around female courtiers is evident in his interactions with Tolson. A scene which serves as the initial culmination of their under-the-table flirtations between the pair, in which Tolson tells Hoover that he loves him, ends with the two of them punching one another in the face before Tolson drags Hoover to the floor and plants an aggrieved kiss on the clenched lips of his boss, who warns him from ever attempting that sort of behavior again. It’s great cinema, full of passion and pain, and highlights the repression in which Hoover felt compelled to live, and which inadvertently dragged Tolson down with him. Though tough to watch at times, the complexity of the character of Hoover makes for a transfixing take on one of the most interesting, multi-faceted public American figures of the twentieth century.

Talkin’ ‘bout Freedom: 9/11 and The Beatles

A Fan’s Recollection of a Lost Family Member in Light of ‘The Love We Make’

            Although I was directly impacted by the events of 9/11 — my uncle Ari had worked on the 103^rd floor of Tower 1 — it wasn’t until two years later that I had a similarly life-altering run-in with the Beatles. I was at my desktop, late at night, when I stumbled across a well-known image of the thousands of reeling fans who swarmed the Dakota in the hours immediately following John Lennon’s murder. There was a shot of one such fan staring numbly into the camera, holding up a picture of a young John with the simple, piercing question of ‘Why?’ The ability for one man’s death to have such a taxing effect on thousands of people the world over piqued my interest in these Liverpudlians and set me on the path to my own brand of Beatlemania. But it was their music, of course, that really got to me and caused me to pick up the guitar and begin penning my own songs, poems and drawings, an interest and preoccupation I shared with my uncle, Edward “Ari” Lichtschein.

            My recollections of Ari — my family always called him by his Hebrew name — can be neatly broken down into two categories: those that occurred before his death and those I created after it. I was 13 in September of 2001, and my memories of him, while affectionate and playful, often seem to be as affected by family videos and pictures as by actual remembered events.

            That being said, I do recall him playing guitar in our house on numerous occasions. He was a macho guitar player, a gruff strummer rather than a delicate finger-picker; for him playing the guitar was more about pomp and less about introspection or calm. I’ve got a vivid memory of him howling his way through “Wild Thing,” and another one of him coarsely strumming bar chords as I watched from the side, awestruck. He was a fanatic of both popular and independent music. After his passing, I was giddy to discover Beatles CD’s, biographies of Lennon, and compendiums of interviews with the Fab Four in the belongings of his my family inherited after his death. Though the pain I felt at losing Ari was largely realized after the fact, I always found it fitting and most appropriate that music, especially that of the Beatles, offered me such a powerful means of solace.

            Which is exactly what Paul McCartney gives as his motivation for organizing and performing at the Concert for New York City in Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan’s new documentary The Love We Make. Having grown up in the shadow of World War II, Paul recalls that “you saw how [people] dealt with [tragedy], they dealt with it with humor and music.” And such is his mindset in attempting to ease the pain and devastation of a city left so vulnerable by the tragic events a mere month earlier. Maysles, whose previous work with McCartney includes 1964’s What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. — which documented the Fab Four’s first foray into America — retains his fly-on-the-wall cinéma vérité style, capturing many mundane moments in the superstar’s day-to-day life. Whether it’s hearing Paul muse about pacifism and his father while his face gets swathed in make up, or seeing him chat with his driver about how Roger Clemens fared in a recent Yankees/Mariners game (“second rate,” is the driver’s verdict), or simply watching Paul chomp into an Entenmanns’s donut as he stands around during band rehearsal, the artfulness of Maysle’s direction is in his ability to fully blend into the background; when, in 1964, Maysles instructed the Beatles to ignore the crew during filming, McCartney recalls that “We thought that was the best bit of direction we’d ever received.”

            The film follows Paul in the days after 9/11, in his preparations for the concert, which include an appearance on the Howard Stern Show and an interview with Dan Rather, all leading to the film’s grand finale, the concert itself. The show, which took place at MSG on October 20, 2001, features celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Carrey, Steve Buscemi, Bill Clinton, and Paul’s daughter Stella rubbing elbows with billed performers including Mick Jagger, the Who, James Taylor, Jay-Z, and Bon Jovi. New meaning is given to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” (performed by David Bowie), and Elton John’s “Your Song” as shots of firefighters swaying and singing along with their spouses overwhelm the cameras. The Who power along to “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” joined on drums by Zak Starkey, Ringo’s son (“Isn’t he great?” Paul gushes backstage). And then there’s Paul himself. He smatters a couple of Beatles numbers alongside cuts from November 2001’s Driving Rain, before unveiling ‘Freedom,’ his post-9/11 celebratory anthem for the grieving city.

            The film’s beauty is in its gentle combination of gravity with joy, pain with heart, and suffering with resolve. The very first number aired in the film, a blistering, furious version of “I’m Down” dissolves crisply into shots of a serious-faced Paul in an interview discussing his whereabouts on the morning of the 11^th (he’d been taxiing to his plane to Britain when he heard the news). The suffering of the city seems to be mellowed — if only briefly — for the duration of the concert. “Like everyone else, I thought I wanted to do something…something else,” Paul says, explaining his involvement in the concert. Recalling how in his younger days, listening to Elvis’s “All Shook Up” helped him overcome an agonizing headache, he again expresses his belief in the healing power of music, in its ability to unite and offer respite to millions of people. He brings New York a night of celebration and joy sorely needed in a time of confusion and chaos. This desire to march on in the blizzard of anguish reflects wonderfully of the actual experience of 9/11, with the momentous grief and horror brought on by the attacks getting offset by the hope and resilience of a city uniting to console and shoulder the weight of those more directly impacted.

            Ari would have loved the film, I’m sure. He was a hardcore fan of the Stones and the Who, having seen them both perform in the 1980s, and he’d have been overjoyed watching Mick continue to strut his stuff and Pete windmill his guitar. And that’s to say nothing of his admiration for Paul McCartney and the Beatles. Before my 9/11 experience, I might have said that Paul’s belief in the almost “magical” healing properties of music sounded a bit outlandish, but having gone through Ari’s loss using music as a remedy removed any doubt I may have had.

George Condo's Mental State

The Take Away from Art that Horrifies in Equal Measures as it Fascinates

           

            It’s all about the maniacal grins in George Condo’s exhibit down at the New Museum. These ghoulish smirks stare down from all angles, from all sorts of warped creatures ranging from those more-or-less realistic to the chillingly inhuman. Condo, a figurative artist who specializes in odd, warped portraits, decks his characters with oversized rodent ears, bared Bugs Bunny buck teeth, circular clown noses, and bulging cheeks. His tendency to fuse the absurd with the mundane, the tragic with the comical, and the tame with the horrifying has led to his work being described as Picasso meets Looney Tunes (with a good measure of Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ thrown in).

            It’s a bit disorienting to come face to face with such grotesque work that gives arise to so many contradictory emotions. How is the viewer supposed to feel when gazing upon a painting aimed to capture a demonic, maimed Elliot Spitzer enjoying a call girl in a graphically explicit manner? Horrified? Sympathetic? Affronted by the invasion of privacy shamelessly splayed on the canvas? This viewer couldn’t help but find himself in a suspended state of discomfort while viewing many of these works, though I must admit I felt an intense attraction to them. It was very difficult to turn away. These incongruous reactions of revulsion in almost the same measure as fascination bewildered me. If something is disturbing and ostensibly harmful, shouldn’t it be avoided rather than studied?

            I guess I don’t really think the above question carries that much weight. Some of the more alluring components of art are those that secretly horrify and repel us. I’ve enjoyed my fair share of gory horror films that have disgusted me while being totally entertaining. I love roller coasters, a prime example of the marriage between the queasy and ecstatically enjoyable. And I am totally going through a Kanye phase right now, even though I was convinced upon firstlisten that his shamelessly explicit lyrics were doing irreparable damage to mysoul. There’s definitely a strong appeal to that kind of artistic exploration that explores the shocking and potentially uncomfortable in order to reach expressive avenues that lead to some sort of elusive understanding. But there’s got to be a line. I remember trying to watch the violent abuse Ellen Page was battered with in the nauseating An American Crime only to find myself sick to my stomach, unable to sleep.  The line between grotesquely appealing and downright revolting can be a tricky one to navigate.

            But back to Condo’s maniacal grins. While wandering through the two floors of the exhibit (connected by an awesome, semi-hidden narrow set of side stairs), I couldn’t help but wonder how to react to his work. My friend pointed out the difference in her appreciation of his work depending on whether she’d choose to read it as lightly poking fun at stale societal stereotypes or as a virulent attack highlighting ills within the general populace. I found her distinction fascinating, but what I think I found more striking was her expressed option to choose how to interpret his work. Thinking more about it, I realized that at the beginning of the exhibit I was totally preoccupied with trying to understand what Condo was communicating to me via his abstract, swirling charcoal and ink sketches, rather than allowing myself to just get swept away by the molded images in front of me. I think the painting that finally broke through to me in this way was a mesmerizing portrait called ‘The Chinese Woman.’ While viewing this odd representation of an inhibited-looking, cartoon-eyed woman with a bulldog’s mouth and extra rows of bared teeth, I found myself completely absorbed, incapable of escape. It might have been that it reminded me of Munch’s ‘Madonna’ (a favorite of mine), but I like to think the reason this particular painting resonated with me so was because I became less focused on what I thought the artist might have been trying to communicate and more drawn to what it meant to me, what it did for me.

            And through this newfound ability to let the art come and speak to me (rather than digging through it in a desperate search for meaning), I found myself peering through the grotesqueness of the portraits to the underlying emotions captured beneath. And suddenly the paintings were no longer grotesque, but rather raw and vulnerable, presented in a shocking manner to create a distance between the artist and his audience, to keep something hidden. Here I saw anger, there I saw confusion. I watched the inability to communicate unfold before me in one portrait. I observed the sad, inevitable collapse of a marriage in another. I came to understand that art deemed terrifying or upsetting when viewed in a certain light need not be shunned or discarded, but rather just approached differently. What I saw in Condo’s work as being unsettlingly awkward from one angle I found to be quietly beautiful from another. It’s an old idea, yes, but I discovered that art has less to do with what’s actually presented to you and more with how you choose to perceive it. 

Welcome to Heartbreak

A music fan’s attempt to reconcile the different facets of Kanye West

            Almost a year ago, on November 22, 2010, Kanye West released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to near universal acclaim.  The album’s loud, brash numbers full of articulately fashioned put-downs, bombastic identity crises, and expansive glorifications of a recklessly hedonistic lifestyle debuted matter-of-factly at number one on the charts, solidifying Kanye’s presence as a top act in the current popular music horizon. The album has been cited as being innovative as much for its musically idiosyncratic song structures and opulent production methods as for its lyrical content, exploring certain aspects of life few artists have been exposed to and/or expressed quite as effectively.  His reputation precedes him in almost everything he does – coverage is doled out as much, if not more, to his eccentric lifestyle, his scatterbrained ramblings on Twitter, and his absurd, tactless onstage/onscreen outbursts, than to his music. The question I find myself facing in light of all of the mist swirling around him is how to reconcile his off-putting antics with his musical output. Can I really like Kanye West the artist in light of Kanye West the caricature?

            In phrasing the above question, my focus is on the music he creates. Forget about the sycophantic sideshow that accompanies most if not all successful artists in our modern celebrity-crazed world. I don’t care how many rows of teeth Kanye has replaced with studded diamonds, or how unintelligent and thoughtless he looks when trying to explain his motives for doing so. I care little about his infamous Taylor Swift incident or his uncomfortable appearance on Matt Lauer’s show. When I wonder aloud if I can ever come to appreciate Kanye, my ponderings are aimed at the tunes he churns out. Kanye is an artist of that wonderfully direct, personally-charged kind, writing from a place that – at least to this listener – emerges directly from the wounded reservoirs of his emotional core. And that should be enough to pull me in. Right?

            I’ve always been the kind of music fan who fishes around with many different artists, until something jumps out and completely hooks me. I remember the first time I heard Bob Dylan’s ‘I Want You,’ how I just simply refused to believe my ears and had to listen to it again and again; six months later, I was a staunch Dylan devotee, swearing by his brilliant expressive powers and more than familiar with all of the significant work he’s produced. When artists speak to me, and I mean really communicate with me (to those readers who can’t relate, I am so sorry), I respond by immersing myself in their entire back catalogue, attempting to gain a perspective of their general contribution to popular music, and, more importantly for me, the reason their work effects me so. But with Kanye I have some trouble.

            Let me attempt to explain what stands in the way of my embracing Kanye with folded arms that badly want to open. It has less to do with his reported egocentrism and outlandish arrogance – what do I care about his own spiraling conceptions of himself? – and more with the sheer debauchery that I find pervading so much of his music, a debauchery of all imaginable shades. I think this decadence is conveniently highlighted in his video for the single ‘Monster.’ The goriness of this video, with its multitude of mutilated, motionless models, foraging zombies guzzling blood out of a mangled, opened chest of a corpse –  among other such freakishly unsettling images and hissing creatures – is only matched by its implicit sexual component, which rages throughout. The monsters and zombies are mostly scantily-clad women, several of whom are placed in a proximity to Kanye that overtly suggests necrophiliac activities on his part. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds such images – accompanied by equally edgy, debasing lyrical content (which I will not quote here for decency’s sake) a little off-putting. Yet……..at the same time, I find myself just so drawn to his music.

            There is something alluring and even charming about a self-centered artist such as Kanye attempting to create work that reflects the scope of his outlandish, lascivious lifestyle. In order to succeed, his work will surely need to be as gory, vivid, and uncomfortably graphic as his day-to-day routine. The fact that Kanye’s work is so revolting, in its own warped way, appears to make it more real – genuine work that stems from the smoking remains of his mangled mind and heart. And I think that’s why I feel so drawn to him. To me, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy seems to be a collection of broken, hounded, raw emotion cowering behind the shaky façade of a transparently turgid exterior. Kanye’s album is great because it’s just so real. The barrier I face is that his reality is vastly different from my own, infinitely more lurid and perverse. But my awareness of his work as a reflection of his reality allows me to cross that chasm, at least auditorily. Kanye’s work speaks to me because it feels so gritty and real, so full of powerful emotion and sweeping pain, like all good art must be. My project now is to dive into his back catalog and see what else emerges.

Which Berg Are You?

An exploration of the different ways users navigate Facebook

            I was intrigued to see Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who portrayed Zuckerberg in ‘The Social Network,’ standingside by side on the January 29 episode of Saturday Night Live. The historic meeting of these two bergs was quite the spectacle. Both men seemed a tad uncomfortable in front of the camera, but whereas with Eisenberg it seemed to be merely common, expected pre-show nerves, Zuckerberg just appeared completely out of place. Zuckerberg, alleged to be somewhat socially awkward and stiff, reputedly appeared on the show to try and do away with said perception. However, in the eyes of this viewer, he merely succeeded in enhancing it. After the monologue ended and the show got underway (without any additional appearances from the Zuck), Eisenberg really settled into his own. His comfort in front of the camera was palpable, emanating a smoothness and ease that I’m sure has been perfected through the nineteen films he’s done to date. Zuck never found his feet. The two different levels of social grace that emanated from the respective bergs got me thinking about two separate modes of conduct Facebook users generally adopt on the website, modes that I will respectfully refer to as the Eisen and the Zuck.

            The relaxed, comfortable approach to using Facebook, the approach that favors its safer and more innocent sides, is what I would like to call the Eisen aspect. We are Eisen-ing when we post on each other’s walls cool links to wacky YouTube videos we’ve stumbled upon, when we like comments and pictures that speak to us, when we create events to go hang out with friends, and when we peruse through the photos later on to relive and enjoy the experience once more. These are all kinds of behavior I would place in the Eisen category. Breezy, fun, light, enjoyable – all types of behavior we might associate with the glossy smile of Jesse Eisenberg. 

            Conduct that I would deem worthy to place in the Zuck category is what happens on the less wholesome, seedier side of the network. I’m talking about the creepy, nerdy, obsessive, stalker-y side to it (please forgive me, Mark). You all know the type of Facebook etiquette I’m referring to; it’s the zoning in on the pages of girls/guy we find attractive and interesting, the repeated click, click, clicking through image after image long after what's acceptable. I remember there was a Facebook group a few years back called ‘BodyBook’ which basically existed to show the large number of girls who seemed to use the site solely to post risqué photos of themselves in compromising situations. Such behavior might make a person wary of putting themselves out there on the site. Using the site for these seedy sort of activities is perhaps exemplified best by Eisenberg (portraying Zuckerberg) in one of the earliest scenes in ‘The Social Network:’ The character Zuckerberg, drunk in front of his dorm room computer, hastily assembles an impressive site he calls Facemash, which basically rates pictures of girls side by side to determine which one is ‘hotter.’  These modes of behavior are neither graceful nor cool, nor are they something we would necessarily want to place in front of a camera (much like Mr. Zuckerberg, smirk).

            Of course it’s unfair of me to equate Zuckerberg with that sort of voyeuristic creepiness. Uncomfortable though he appeared in front of the red light on SNL, there is absolutely no basis to associate him with the sort of anti-social behavior I’m lending his name to. Which is why I would like to once more reference that colorful episode of SNL. The Digital Short of that week was a horrifyingly creepy song/video appropriately called 'The Creep'. This amusingly uncomfortable video highlighted the three members of The Lonely Island slinking as if upheld by marionettes towards attractive women. I would presume that these kind of socially challenged oddballs with their pencil mustaches and oversized 70s-style glasses are the kind of men who'd engage in the kind of obsessive, socially graceless behavior I had been unfairly plugging as Zuck conduct. So as to not insult a man I’ve never met, I’m going to redact two modes of Facebook conduct to be the Eisen approach and the Creep approach.