These jabs contributed to what James Poniewozik describes as an almost roast-like atmosphere to Gervais’ second hosting gig, wherein the awards and the people who worship them came under attack; while there may be some of us who feel bad for the celebrities who felt the sting of the host’s wrath, it’s hard to feel bad for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. They are Hollywood fetishists rather than Hollywood connoisseurs, enamored with the shiny and new, the star-studded, the zeitgeist-chasing, and whatever else will put together the most attractive, audience-drawing collection of people into the ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

Every year, the Golden Globes give us a large collection of reasons to dismiss them entirely. The Tourist and Burlesque are perhaps the two most prominent examples on the film side this year, and Piper Perabo’s Lead Actress in a Drama Series nomination for USA Network’s Covert Affairs offers a similar bit of lunacy on the television side. While these may lead us to dismiss the awards as a sort of farcical celebration of celebrity excess, the fact remains that the Golden Globes hold considerable power within the industry.

It is a power that is more political than creative, with the Globes serving as a primary election of sorts ahead of the real honors being bestowed at the Academy Awards next month. Despite reports of bribes, and the clear incongruence between the HFPA and prevailing notions of quality and taste in regards to certain nominees, the awards are placed in such a way that they take on importance regardless of their dubious nature. Their legitimacy stems from studios looking for a way to propel themselves to an Oscar, and thus the Golden Globes are provided legitimacy they have not earned so as to help facilitate certain films/performers in their efforts to gain the earned (albeit fallible) legitimacy of the Academy Awards five weeks later – it was here, for example, that Sandra Bullock began her run to Oscar just last year, and The Social Network certainly seems well on its way to Oscar success in light of its victories for Best Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

On the television side, however, there is no such linear notion of legitimacy for the HFPA to hang its hat on. The odd placement at the end of the calendar year differs from the Emmys’ adherence to the traditional September-May television season, and ends up creating races which could be completely different than the Emmys depending on how the Spring unfolds – the Emmys used to be given for the calendar years in the 1950s, but moved to the TV season after controversy surrounding Nanette Fabray winning an award for Caesar’s Hour in 1956 despite having left the show in the Spring of the previous year.

However, the legitimacy of the Golden Globes carries over from film to television thanks to the power of spectacle and their specific value to premium cable networks. In regards to spectacle, the awards offer an opportunity for networks to have their series featured alongside Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, for their “television stars” to share screen time with real, live movie stars – it’s the kind of association that money can’t buy, and so from a purely promotional standpoint there is value in according a certain degree of legitimacy to the awards themselves so that the cast of Glee can all crowd onto the same stage as the cast of The Social Network.

For HBO and Showtime, meanwhile, that value is considerably higher. While broadcast and basic cable networks are looking for eyeballs, the premium cable outlets are looking for paying subscribers, and their substantial presence within the nominations is a key source of promotion. While this goes for all awards shows, with cable’s entry in the Emmys in the late 1980s helping to spark Cable’s expansion into original programming in the decades which followed, the Golden Globes are an outlet for Showtime and HBO to showcase the breadth of their lineups in order to convince viewers that there’s a reason to cough up $15 a month. Two wins for Boardwalk Empire, Best Drama Series and Best Actor in a Drama Series for Steve Buscemi, will certainly not hurt the chances of viewers considering picking up HBO in the near future, and Laura Linney’s victory for The Big C might make Globes viewers more likely to subcribe to Showtime when the series returns later this year.

In the end, though, the value of the Golden Globes very much depends on how we, as viewers, approach it. While it may carry certain weight for the studios and the networks, and the HFPA is not quite self-aware enough to realize that it isn’t just their host who considers them the butt of the joke, so long as viewers are aware of the artificial nature of its legitimacy it seems that there is a perverse pleasure in a celebration of all that is wrong with Hollywood.

And thus, perhaps, pleasure in watching Ricky Gervais call a spade a spade.

Much of the popular press discourse on the film seems to have taken up the notion of a “real” Facebook origin story or the “real” Mark Zuckerberg as the yardstick with which to measure the film. The Wiklevoss twins have claimed on CNN that the film was accurate; Zuckerberg predictably claimed that it wasn’t. A Washington Post story argued that the film’s greatest liberties were not taken with Zuckerberg’s character, although such changes as making him a loner when he has been with the same girlfriend since 2003 were made, but with the realities of Facebook’s innovation which the article argues was not a work of sole genius but part of the more complex nexus of culture that is really behind any invention. Sorkin himself is at least partially culpable for this narrative of truth or fiction that has surrounded the film since he has stoked it in his own press appearances. On the Colbert Report Sorkin insisted that it was a “non-fiction” film that shows multiple perspectives and possible “truths” of the history of Facebook’s origin and the lawsuits brought against its founder.

However, focusing on whether or not The Social Network has the veracity of a documentary or is as “non-fiction” as an Oliver Stone bio-pic largely encourages a focus on the idea of the movie, rather than on the movie itself and the significant influence that authorial imprint has on the final product. A New York Times article on the film claims that viewer response to the film divides generationally. Older people, it claims, will see “a cautionary tale about a callous young man,” while younger viewers “will applaud someone who saw his chance and seized it.” From the generation that not only brought us Gordon Gecko but seized upon his mantra “greed is good,” such a supposed generation gap is astonishing. Ultimately, it also misses the point.

The Zuckerberg of The Social Network is a callous, or at the very least socially oblivious, young innovator who prioritizes the future he sees for his creation over relationships and fairness. He is also an entrepreneur who takes a kernel of an idea and improves on it to create a website whose cultural significance is undeniable. He is other things too: an acerbic wit whose tongue and mind is just a little bit quicker then everyone else’s, making him appear rude and blunt to the point of cruelty. He also, in the film, appears oddly easily influenced by those he perceives as his equals, making it unclear how much the origins of the film’s most heinous acts can be traced to Sean Parker (played here by Justin Timberlake).

This Zuckerberg is, for all protestations to the contrary, an Aaron Sorkin character: morally complex, subject to idealistic passions and personal failures, sharp-tongued, and ultimately ruled by public triumphs and private indignities. One of the film’s most powerful images is Zuckerberg sitting in an empty conference room sending a friend request to the girl whose rejection started it all and pressing refresh again and again to see if she has accepted. This mournful final image can be traced easily to Charlie Wilson staring into his drink or Leo in The West Wing in the hallway of an empty house after he is left by his wife. So too does a look at the other artist that crafted the film fill in some apparent gaps. Zuckerberg in real life may have a long term girlfriend and not live a socially removed life, but this is a David Fincher film. Fincher, with Fight Club and Zodiac to his name, is a master of conflicted, isolated masculinity, and to see these logics inscribed on The Social Network should come as no surprise. Since the film is in part an adaptation of a book, whose primary source was a former Facebook founder, a large number of authorial hands have taken part in the shaping of the narrative in The Social Network.

Perhaps it is here that we finally come to our link to Facebook itself. As a Facebook profile is a carefully crafted version of identity, The Social Network is an authorially crafted version of reality. However, as much as I might like to leave off on such a neat analogy, it remains beside the point. The Social Network is not a great film about Facebook; it’s a great film. There may have been a way for the film’s structure or visual aesthetic to have been put in conversation with the new media on which it was based. However, Aaron Sorkin neither uses or likes Facebook … and it shows. What also shows is the talent and skill of the creative team behind the film. No matter how much we might like for old media texts about new media to demonstrate formal innovation in response to their sources, $#*! My Dad Says and The Social Network have proven that they will rise and fall according to how well they succeed at being well crafted examples of their own forms, not in their relationship to the new forms they mine for inspiration.