Scene Discussionis a bi-weekly feature that breaks down specific scenes from movies or television shows. Sometimes in depth, sometimes not so much.  

Considering that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes out later this month, I’ve taken the liberty to call this officially “Fincher Month.” This, along with the next Scene Discussion, are from David Fincher’s films. Today’s is from 2010’s The Social Network.

There are many scenes to discuss in The Social Network. If I were a betting man, the one I chose here is one of the most memorable scenes where Justin Timberlake’s character Sean Parker says “I’m CEO, bitch” to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg.
An interesting thing to take into account with this scene is the music. The sound, rather. It’s very loud, isn’t it? Almost drowning out the speech that Sean Parker is giving. That’s the point. From the first time Parker was in the movie, he wanted to get Zuckerberg alone so he could get his hand into the Facebook pool. This is his chance to finally do so. Zuckerberg is distracted by the ladies dancing or “the architecture” as he states, and he’s distracted by all the drinks Parker is ordering for his Victoria Secret model girlfriend. These distractions aren’t coincidental because this is Parker’s plan. It’s all a game to get make Zuckerberg impressed enough to let Parker into the Facebook realm.

But back to the sound. The sound is throbbing and loud as fuck just so ol’ Zuck will listen even more intently to Parker’s fantastic speech about missing opportunities. It’s also not a coincidence that the most audible sentence that Parker says is “Look at my face, and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
We as an audience have now shifted to his side, just as Zuckerberg has. We fell for it, we listened to every syllable coming out of his mouth because the music was too damn loud.

Damn.