SPOILERS inevitable.
Despite promising an aptitude of commentary on the burgeoning omniscience of social media and surveillance, The Circle turned out to be unequipped with its handful of ideas. While the chain of ideas—from shrewd to thought provoking—did interest me in the original Dave Eggers novel (likely to be a “book is better than movie” case) this movie adaptation did not deliver in execution and rotates around believability and implausibility.
At times, the movie checks off brilliant and real life-nudging relatable concepts without threading them together in a cohesive fabric. A tone of paranoia over the destruction of privacy? Check. Rapid-fire immediacy of social media responses? Check. How seductive absolute transparency can seem at first in a nation of corrupted politics? Check. (Yeah, I concede it would be nice if politicians showed all their tax returns.)
For starters, the plot: An average millennial-aged Mae, played by Emma Watson, lands a dream job customer service position at The Circle, a blatant stand-in for Amazon/Google/Facebook, and inadvertently becomes a PR puppet for their extreme surveillance and transparency methods.
In a rather predictable fashion, the corporate masters, especially the not-Steve Jobs Tom Hanks character, are held accountable at the end of the movie for nondescript corruption practices. Right on stage in front of public eyes and millennial wielding their cell phones, Mae corners the executives in a presentation situation on the live broadcasted stage and invites them into absolute transparency. The film’s outcome is tepidly predictable.
The element of corporate higher-ups and leaders held accountable are not without needed relevancy. Yet, I have observed the limited exploration of users’ accountability, especially in regards to how the users of the Circle program have taken to malicious slander toward one of Mae’s friends, Mercer, and it literally drives him into a precarious situation, with flying drones and overzealous social media users in hot pursuit—and then eventual death into a chasm (just go with it).
In this world, you have to stretch your suspension of disbelief to believe that virtually no one at the Circle respects anyone’s right to opt out of public eye or finds the probing of Mercer as particularly vicious. In one of the film’s few ingenious nuanced scenes, two experienced co-workers approach the occupied Mae to incite her into sociability. The scene plays out like an introvert’s professional nightmare. Despite all savvy insistence that social points are not “popularity points” and playing up the whole “oh, it’s optional but very recommended” charades, they impede upon her introverted nature by being pushy about the incentives about sociability—to hide how mandatory it is to level up to company’s high expectations and involve oneself in society.
This pervasive condescension toward the desire for privacy cumulates into the aggressive probing into Mercer’s deliberately selective low-profile life. In an on-the-nose scene, Mercer approaches Mae at work to inform her that her well-intended posting of his chandelier has escalated into rumor-mongering accusations (“deer-killer!”) and death threats. While the “tell don’t show” scripting cheapens the tension, it does at least address the velocity of toxic internet rumors and their consequences on a person’s mental well-being and job prospects.
What happens next—or rather, what didn’t really happen—was a headscratcher. Mae promises to mitigate Mercer’s situation. Somehow. Yet, for all of her commitment in the dialogue, the plot progression never fulfills on Mae’s verbal promise, whether or not she thinks over a solution. Mae does not think to pass input to the executives or seek feedback from experienced co-workers. For a film that seeks to cover the relevant areas of social media, there are glaringly no proposed deterrents of the harassment inflicted.
What’s fascinating too is that the people harassing Mercer are not anonymous trolls, but people who have their Circle profile public, and yes, even people call Mercer “deer-killer” in public right in front of Mae. For the Circle, I suppose that making someone’s life miserable is professionally and socially acceptance. For a fictional company that boasts effective accountability through widespread social media, it does not ever unveil an anti-harassment policy.
Now I could argue that the Circle’s hypocritical negligence on civilian accountability is the point and part of the film’s commentary. After all, society has a lot of work to do in accepting that something can be done about online harassment rather than dismiss it as commonplace. But the film doesn’t develop a satisfactory examination on harassment and instead marches straight toward the predictable overthrown-corporate-giants ending.
Certainly, leaders of social media sites should utilize their power and influence to set boundaries through rules and take more action in banning harassers. But even before rules, there should be human decency in practice. It should go without saying that spreading misinformation, posting revenge porn, and spewing racist comments out in the open are not victimless crimes. And both corporate leaders and civilians should assist in identifying what constitutes as harassment, without dismissing the victim’s problem as, “oh, it just happens, it’s part of life, suck it up.”
Even if the film did expand on that missed opportunity, it certainly wouldn’t improve the film’s pace and James Ponsoldt’s directorial clunkiness. But at least it would invoke something that calls for examination. Got one more thing off the Checklist of Social Media Relevant Stuff to check off.
Caroline Cao is a Houstonian Earthling surviving under the fickle weather of Texas. When not angsting over her first poetry manuscript or a pilot screenplay about space samurais, she enjoys acting cheesy improv for BETA Theater and experimenting with ramen noodles. Her columns and poems have popped up on The Cougar, Mosaics: The Independent Women Anthology, and Glass Mountain. She has her own blog and lends her voice to Birth.Movies. Death. She’s also lurking in the shadows waiting for you to follow her on Twitter.
On a less remarkable note, she engages in Star Wars fanfiction.
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