6B — Thursday, December 5, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

While there’s no cut-and-dry definition of the best film of the 
decade, some measures are better than others. For me, a decade-
defining movie must be more than technically, critically or 
commercially successful. Many films from the 2010s met all of 
these criteria, all competent, some more memorable than others. 
After all, even the most holistic and unambiguous appreciation is no 
guarantee that the product will persist in our collective conscious 
for years to come.
So what makes the difference then? What sets apart the 
momentarily 
great from the 
transcendent? 
In 
a 
word, 
dynamism. How 
can 
art, 
film 
or 
otherwise, 
define its time 
unless it pulls 
off a magic trick 
of transforming 
and 
warping 
right 
before 
our very eyes? 
For a film to 
say 
something 
meaningful 
about its era is 
one thing. To 
still 
have 
an 
incessant voice, 
a 
stamp 
on 
culture several 
years 
after 
its release, is 
another 
thing 
entirely.
With that broad metric in mind, there is a clear winner here. 
It might not even be a close contest — the best movie of the 
decade is David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” As both a wildly 
entertaining tragedy of deteriorating friendships and a diagnosis on 
the impending future of technological communication, “The Social 
Network” perfectly straddles the line between watchability and 
cultural dynamism in a way that no other film from the decade does.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin once admitted, “I’ve heard of 
Facebook, in the same way I’ve heard of a carburetor. But if I opened 
the hood of my car I wouldn’t know how to find it.” This information 
is important; Sorkin explicitly distinguishes his story from reality. 
Not once do the words “Based on a true story” appear across the 
screen. Yet that fact is what makes the film so compelling as an 
artifact of this decade. What Sorkin intended as a human drama 
with Facebook in its periphery ultimately speaks for itself about 
the woes, dangers and evils of the tech conglomerates that rule 
our lives. In this way, “The Social Network” is an unintentionally 
oracular statement more than it is a testament to Sorkin’s predictive 
instincts.
“Gretchen, they’re best friends.”
The collaboration of Fincher and Sorkin is perplexing on its 
surface — Sorkin is most concerned about the depth of his content 
where Fincher prefers a focus on structure and tone. Sorkin’s 
characters are snappy and shrewd where Fincher’s are idiosyncratic 
and futile. And yet the marriage of their work manages not only to 
retain the best qualities of both, but also adds synergy to them. 
Fincher is notorious for being a rigid perfectionist, so Sorkin’s 
esoteric, game-theoretic dialogue plays out with striking clarity. 
“But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you 
because you are a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of 
my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole,” 
Rooney Mara’s (“A Ghost Story”) Erica Albright hisses at the end of 

the first scene. And the precision of those words stings.
Moreover, Fincher’s attention to immaculate set design and 
tendency 
toward 
claustrophobically 
immersive 
camerawork 
never falters. In particular, the Henley 
Royal Regatta race is an adrenaline shot 
of a scene, depicting the athletes as vivid, 
imperfect figures amid blurry, dreamlike 
scenery. While every other scene in the film 
is essentially a conversation, Fincher never 
misses an opportunity to let his characters’ 
violent undertones rudely shift the camera, or 
their positions in the frame tell us something 
new. It’s an easy movie to direct with obvious 
choices. 
But 
Fincher’s direction 
takes 
more 
than 
enough 
risks 
to 
impress.
“What sound is 
he making? Is that 
like a tsk?”
A 
scrawny 
college 
student 
with 
a 
backpack 
and a hoodie is 
sprinting 
across 
campus. He weaves 
through 
arches 
and 
alleyways, 
a 
shortcut 
here, 
a 
sidestep 
there. 
His humility is present; several trios 
of piano notes that seem to float and 
hover in your ears. His rage is palpable 
too — it’s a sinister, soul-shaking hum in 
the background. Together, these sonic 
textures communicate the tender darkness 
of Mark Zuckerberg. I’ve studied to Trent 
Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Oscar-winning 
score more than I’ve studied to anything else. It is a thrumming 
electronic abyss peppered with deeply comforting melodies. The 
industrial-techno beat of “In Motion” is followed promptly by the 
squeaking grittiness of “A Familiar 
Taste.” Hopeful chords can exist, 
if only for a fleeting moment, taken 
over by dissonance. Our characters 
chase their ambitions and only 
falter when those ambitions incite 
sour consequences. Dreams can 
reach only so far, long enough 
until that droning buzzy emptiness 
subsumes all, until friendships are 
only burdens.
While Reznor and Ross have 
identified a style to their score 
compositions, they are probably 
better known for their work in 
Nine Inch Nails. But what I find 
most remarkable about the movie’s 
score is how little of a departure 
it actually is from the industrial 
rock band. Reznor is no stranger to 
writing depraved, lonely music. He 
has an uncanny ability to affirm one 
while dragging them further into 
his dark orbit. And that quality is 
precisely how he gives the score its 
lasting edge. Sometimes, we are all 
the kid behind the computer, fingers clacking furiously away into 
the void.
“We don’t know what it is yet.”
“The Social Network” imagines the beginnings of Facebook as 

a youthful, enterprising endeavor. “The Facebook is cool,” Justin 
Timberlake’s (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) Sean Parker says. “You don’t 
want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.” And for all the 
things that the real life 
Facebook has become since 
the movie’s release, “cool” 
and “ad-free” are certainly 
not accurate descriptors. 
In 
Sorkin’s 
optimistic 
imagination, the company 
was created by people who 
didn’t understand what it 
was. If anything, reality 
has affirmed this narrative; 
only 
since 
the 
Brexit 
vote and the Cambridge 
Analytica scandal has the 
world woken up to the 
actual extent of political 
and social power the site 
has.
Actual 
events 
affect 
how 
we 
rewatch 
the 
film, but interaction goes 
both 
ways. 
Watching 
Jesse 
Eisenberg’s 
(“The 
Hummingbird 
Project”) 
real-life counterpart and 
his blabbering testimony on 
Capitol Hill is fascinating. 
He carries all the high-
strung, geeky energy, but without the ease or the nonchalance of 
the character. He in every way has become the worst version of a 
lonesome coder who got dumped in a bar; more accurately, lonesome 
coder with his tendrils in control of global communication. It doesn’t 
matter that Facebook wasn’t started over a breakup at a Harvard 
bar. Whether we like it or not, Jesse Eisenberg’s performance has 
irreversibly shaped our perception of one of the biggest figures in 
tech today.
***
What better way for this decade to end then for Sorkin himself to 
pen a New York Times opinion lambasting Mark Zuckerberg? “The 
Social Network” 
is a movie that 
has dramatically 
changed 
since 
its 
release. 
Its 
interaction 
with 
culture 
is 
a 
conversation, not 
a statement. How 
its 
impact 
will 
shift in the future 
is impossible to 
tell, so we need to 
keep watching it.
But the actual 
experience 
of 
watching it isn’t 
boring, or a chore. 
It’s a delightful 
example 
of 
talented 
craftspeople 
working 
at 
the 
peak 
of 
their 
respective 
potentials. 
Our 
need for communication will never end. And, unfortunately, the 
deluge of creepy hacker tech figures might not either. “The Social 
Network” is a half-open window into the kind of loneliness that 
drives our desire to stay connected with each other.

Sorry! My Prada’s at the cleaners: “The Social Network”

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

Bro-country, a word that sends shivers down the spines of genre 
traditionalists, brings smiles to the faces of millions of loyal listeners and 
sounds like money to industry insiders. Coined in 2013 by Jody Rosen in 
New York Magazine, he pins down the subgenre as being “music by and of 
the tatted, gym-
toned, 
party-
hearty American 
white 
dude.” 
Whether 
you 
like it or not, this 
character 
(and 
his 
infatuation 
with trucks, beer 
and girls) defines 
the past decade 
of 
mainstream 
country 
music. 
Popular 
but 
polarizing, 
it’s 
worth 
acknowledging 
the best, or at 
least the most 
memorable, 
bro-country 
hits of the 2010s 
— if not for 
sentimentality’s 
sake, 
than 
to 
help us figure 
out 
where 
mainstream 
country music is 
headed in 2020.
“Dirt Road Anthem” was recorded twice before it became the highest-
selling record by a solo male country artist, so it’s significant that its success 
came with Jason Aldean. It was a glimpse into the future. In 2011, a rap-
influenced country song had never broken into the mainstream before, that is 
until the mash-up was endorsed by Aldean, an already established artist. The 
popularity of “Dirt Road Anthem” offered just an inkling of the potential that 
its kind of sound and shallow themes might hold when given the opportunity 
to reach a bigger audience. Soon enough, everyone was trying to rap about 

“cornbread and biscuits.” 
“Baby you a song / You make me wanna roll my windows down / and 
cruise.” In the summer of 2013, with an added verse from Nelly, “Cruise” 
by Florida Georgia Line was inescapable. And let’s be honest, the hook is 
probably in your head right now. But what is it even about? Literally, it’s about 
getting a girl to ride in your truck with you. But really, as the first country song 
to ever go diamond, it’s about country songs not needing to be about anything. 
That’s key. If the genre’s best-selling song was a heartfelt, acoustic story-song, 
then that’s what country radio would have been playing the past few years. 
But it wasn’t. Instead, we have hundreds of “long, tanned legs” copycats. 
Later that year, Zac Brown infamously called this song “the worst song 
(he’s) ever heard” and for good reason: “That’s My Kinda Night” by Luke 
Bryan can sound painfully cringe-y. “Little Conway a little T-Pain / Might just 
make it rain,” Bryan croons, which feels more like a threat than a welcome 
suggestion. If that wasn’t bad enough, an auto-tuned voice echoes the “make 
it rain” verse unironically. But as hard as it is to admit, I like it. I understand the 
song’s appeal. It’s insanely catchy, and, for a young woman from the suburbs, 
it’s fun to play pretend, to embody the swagger of a cocky, hypermasculine 
bro, if only for three minutes. 
“It’s gettin’ kinda cold in these painted on cut off jeans” Maddie & Tae 
sigh on their refreshing first single, giving country listeners a much-needed 
reality check. Even though 
“Girl In a Country Song,” 
released in 2014, is anti-
bro-country, it absolutely is 
worth acknowledging as it 
proves that bro-country’s 
domination was met with 
some pushback from fellow 
artists. The song takes the 
perspective of the one-
dimensional props used in 
all of the songs mentioned 
above, the girl, and finds out 
that being the bro’s muse isn’t 
as fun as they make it sound. 
It’s chock full of references 
to the songs it got played 
alongside on the radio, but 
twists their lyrics into funny 
one-liners to prove a point. 
“Can I put on some real 
clothes now?” they wonder. 
Although the song hit #1 and 
got the duo plenty of interviews, bro-country continued answering no.
After bashing Bryan’s hip hop-infused country, Zac Brown decided to 

give the style a try himself on his 2016 album Jekyll + Hyde. “Beautiful Drug” 
is one of its standouts, exemplary of the way country can blend with EDM 
relatively seamlessly. It’s a glossy, highly produced, extended metaphor with 
a beat drop as irresistible as Brown finds his love interest. Because of Brown’s 
initial resistance to this kind of genre-bending, the song’s existence also 
demonstrates the overwhelming wave of experimentation country started 
going through in the latter half of the decade, something that sprouted from 
bro-country. If Zac Brown got on board, rest assured nearly everyone else in 
mainstream country music did too. 
Released in 2017, “Body Like a Back Road” is “Dirt Road Anthem” 2.0 
which makes the genre’s dramatic evolution all the more evident. Unlike 
Aldean, Sam Hunt is open about his rapping influences. Instead of real drums, 
Hunt opts to rhyme against a snap track. And the narrative itself is different. 
The singer no longer meets the girl on the dirt road — in Hunt’s version, her 
agency has been cut down to the point that she is the dirt road. Hunt’s style 
had already struck up a conversation about the boundaries of country music, 
what’s borrowing and what’s appropriating, but ultimately the success of the 
song pushes all of those questions aside. “Body Like a Back Road” and Hunt 
himself suggest that anything can be country, so long as that’s what the artist 
calls themself. 
Throughout the past 10 years, country radio has been playing women 
less 
and 
less, 
bringing in sounds 
and 
artists 
from 
different 
genres 
more and more, and 
finding new ways to 
compare women to 
inanimate objects. 
But it wasn’t all bad.
As 
Kacey 
Musgraves 
gets 
recognized for her 
instrumentally rich 
and witty style and 
traditional-leaning 
and Luke Combs 
starts to dominate 
the 
charts, 
it’s 
clear 
that 
the 
genre is preparing 
to 
start 
a 
new 
chapter. The 2010s 
raised 
questions 
fundamental to the essence of what country music is. For better or for worse, 
the next decade holds the answers.

Bikinis, Bud Lights and the brazen rise of bro-country

KATIE BEEKMAN
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: MUSIC NOTEBOOK

B-SIDE: FILM NOTEBOOK

US AIR FORCE

SONY MOTION PICTURES / YOUTUBE

SONY MOTION PICTURES / YOUTUBE

As both a wildly entertaining 
tragedy of deteriorating 
frienships and a diagnosis 
on the impending future of 
technological communication, 
“The Social Network” perfectly 
straddles the line betwen 
watchability and cultural 
dynamism in a way that no other 
film from the decade does.

The popularity of 
“Dirt Road Anthem” 
offered just an inkling 
of the potential that 
its kind of sound and 
shallow themes might 
hold when given the 
opportunty to reach a 
bigger audience. Soon 
enough, everyone 
was trying to rap 
about “cornbread and 
biscuits.”

