Extremely Online: ‘The Circle’

Extremely Online looks back at films of the internet era, from the 1990s to the present, that tried to grapple with our new and rapidly changing digital world. 

The Circle (2017) 

Freaking out about: Massive Silicon Valley companies and their messianic leaders. Mass surveillance. Groupthink. The death of privacy. The freedom to go kayaking in the San Francisco Bay without getting hassled by phone messages and drones. 
Panic level (out of 10): 8. The only reason the dystopian utopia signaled by The Circle doesn’t play like a five-alarm fire is that its tone is more hostile than freaked out. In other words, you’re left more inclined to reach for pitchforks than to dive into the nearest fallout shelter. 
Reason for optimism: The comments section. No matter how diabolical the company’s initiatives get, the on-screen comments from users suggest that tyranny can expect a mixed reception at best. 
Tech gizmo du jour: Small, marble-shaped cameras that offer high-definition wireless images and crystal-clear sound while collecting biometric data and other scary metrics. (You may not be able to get it in stores, however, because it’s going to be used to monitor you surreptitiously.) 
Most 2017 things: Aside from the late Steve Jobs remaining the model of Silicon Valley cults of personality, The Circle looks like a movie that could have been made yesterday. 

There’s one moment deep into The Circle, a misbegotten adaptation of Dave Eggers’ novel, when all of the small missteps that drifted the film toward catastrophe fall away and we catch a glimpse of what might have been. At this point in the story, Mae Holland (Emma Watson), a customer support functionary on a Google-sized corporate campus, has opted to go “fully transparent,” meaning that her every waking and un-waking moment (sans timed bathroom breaks) will be broadcast to users worldwide. (Think of it like The Truman Show if Truman knowingly consented to the project.) As the host of her own life, Mae proves charismatic enough to bring millions of viewers along on her daily adventures and likes to act as a tour guide to a tech campus that presents itself as an open, progressive utopia. 

On her way to the office, as she collects the smiles and greetings of employees who probably stiffen in terror any time she comes near, Mae arrives at a metallic sculpture with handcuffs extending from it like tree branches. Though she doesn’t make specific reference to its global origins, it’s the type of political art that resembles something you might see from Ai Weiwei, the Chinese multimedia artist who’d often run afoul of the authorities. 

Here’s how Mae frames it for her followers:  

“This was made by an artist who’s frequently been in trouble in his own country. I want to thank all the watchers who sent frowns to the government there, both for their persecution of the artist and for their restriction on internet freedoms. We have sent 180 million frowns from the U.S. alone. You can bet that’s gonna have an effect on the regime.” 

There’s so much to unpack in this one satirical nugget: The presence of dissident art on the campus of a company hellbent on mass surveillance and world domination. The “smiles” and “frowns” that are the currency of social media and personal worth on the internet. The fiction that online slacktivism could ever have the power to wrest control from a repressive regime. And that’s to say nothing about the technologies that create and sustain influencer types like Mae herself, who proselytizes for a Silicon Valley outfit that supplies dopamine hits of “smiles,” stickers and ratings like street-corner dealers in $500 pullover sweaters. Mae is the perfect user—bright, young, attractive, personable, and enthralled with the (phony) mission that makes the (diabolical) project possible. Through her, we can see how other perfect users are created and integrated as smoothly as a Bluetooth connection.