Playback / The Social Network
The Social Network · 2010
The Bar
Two people have entirely different conversations at the same table, at speed, and only one of them notices.
Watch for
- The speed and overlap — they talk across each other, changing subject mid-sentence.
- Subtext: he is arguing about status and clubs; she is telling him how he makes people feel.
- How register marks them out — his rapid, technical, competitive speech against her plainer, more direct language.
A worked reading · COCA
CContention
Sorkin and Fincher use overlapping, mismatched dialogue to show two people failing to have the same conversation.
OObservation
Mark leaps between topics — final clubs, SATs, rowing — while Erica repeatedly tries to return to how he is speaking to her, until she ends the exchange outright.
CConnotation
Speech that races and refuses to answer reads as a mind that treats people as problems, and her refusal to keep up reads as the only sane response.
AAudience
We learn his character entirely from how he talks rather than from what happens, and the whole film's motive is set in four minutes of conversation.
Your turn
- Count how many times the subject changes. Who is steering, and who is trying to?
- What is Erica actually talking about, and what is Mark actually talking about?
- How does the way each character speaks tell you about their status and their values?
For teachers
The best available lesson in subtext and register, and students find it gripping. Note one mild profanity in the final line, which is the point of the scene — preview and decide.
