Of heroes and anti-heroes

2010 was the year of the Zuckerbergs and the Assanges

When Time magazine started naming its ‘Man of the Year’, called ‘Person of the Year’ in these gender-neutral times, it made it clear that the person chosen was one who had dominated the year’s news ‘for good or bad’. In other words, unlike most of the year-end heroes normally honoured by the media in India, Time’s Man/Person of the Year was not necessarily a force for good. Many villains have made it to the slot too. So, both the admirers and the critics of Mark Zuckerberg, the originator of the social networking internet site Facebook, can continue to stick to their view of the man, despite Time naming him ‘Person of the Year 2010’. Mr Zuckerberg’s fans will cheer him as their hero, and his critics will continue to jeer him as the anti-hero, if not a villain.

Many have commented that the ‘Person of the Year 2010’ ought to have been that other man who dominated the internet in 2010, Julian Assange, described as a journalist, publisher and, a new concept of our times, ‘internet activist’. Mr Assange too has his followers, who regard him as a hero, and his critics who regard him worse than a villain, a subversive. It’s a tough call choosing between Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Assange. Both have used the Net in an innovative and subversive way to impact people’s lives. Mr Zuckerberg has, of course, a more benign intent. He lists his own personal interests on his Facebook page as “openness, making things that help people connect and share what’s important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism.”

If Mr Zuckerberg is the modern-day conjurer who makes people connect magically through cyberspace, linking them virtually through space and time, Mr Assange has already been proclaimed a latter-day Robin Hood, a man on the edge of the law, slipping out just enough to challenge authority but slipping back just enough to claim immunity from punishment. Should the laws of the land protect those who seek to challenge lawfully established institutions? It is a question that has been asked in India this past year when India’s own hero/anti-hero types like Arundhati Roy and Subramaniam Swamy have been challenging the system, using the means it offers to subvert/ reform it. It is a debate that was triggered worldwide by the choice of this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Is Mr Liu Xiaobo a hero or a villain? His admirers certainly regard him as a hero, but his detractors don’t quite see him as an anti-hero in the league of an Assange, a Zuckerberg or even an Arundhati Roy, because they in fact regard him as a villain, an ‘enemy of the state’.

Time’s Man/Person of the Year in the past have in fact been either heroes or villains, while this year even the critics of Mr Zuckerberg will view him as more an anti-hero than a villain. Not surprisingly, therefore, the makers of the movie The Social Network, on the life and times of Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed him as both a hero and an anti-hero. Interestingly, Mr Zuckerberg reacted to the negative portrayal by saying that he wanted to be seen as “a good guy”! Good or bad, Mr Zuckerberg has made a difference to our lives.