Reconfigurations of the classical hero in the digital age: Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network and Steve Jobs.

Abstract

The movies The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010) and Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015) are biographies of two outstanding figures in the digital revolution: the young multimillionaire Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and CEO, and the famous co-founder and executive chairman of Apple, Steve Jobs. Written by the renowned screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, what these two movies have in common is that they present different orders or layers of meaning, allowing us to see beyond the life of the protagonists in the interpretation. Sorkin, in both stories, delves deeply into the psychological characteristics of the geniuses. In addition, in both cases, he creates a dramatic character, which can be identified with archetypes and familiar figures from western narrative, the tragic hero and the narcissist. But additionally, he shows these characters as icons of our times and through them presents a reflection on nowadays and the impact the digital revolution has had in the last few decades.