The Circle: Was the 2017 Movie Made to Push the Technocratic State Forward?

A review of the 2017 film and its major themes starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.

I remember hearing about The Circle when it first came out in 2017. I’ve had a deep distrust for social media for some time, so it should’ve been something right up my alley. But I think it was the presence of Emma Watson and Tom Hanks that made me hesitate to watch it. Something just didn’t feel right.

And, so, I waited seven years and finally got around to watching it last night.

I’m not gonna lie, I was feeling optimistic. I figured the movie would be about some newbie who gets sucked into how awesome it is to work at a big tech/social media company, but then realizes how evil it is and burns it all down. So I stuck with it. I figured the end would be the payoff I was looking for.

I should’ve known better. I should’ve known this movie would be a propaganda vehicle for the technocratic state. Ugh.

Why does everything have to be either so dumbed down and unoriginal that it’s not worth watching? Or so purposely pushing propaganda (right or left leaning) that it’s not worth watching?

That said, it wasn’t a total waste of time. I think it’s good to see what the technocrats and bureaucrats have in store for us from different angles, even if it’s hard to stomach.

So, here’s what I got from this movie:

The Setup

Mae is your quintessential 20-something with an art history degree who is temping and can barely pay her bills. To make matters worse, her father has MS and can’t afford the $40,000 surgery that would improve his condition and make his life better.

If only she could get a job at The Circle, the world’s largest social media network and technology company! And she does with the help of her friend Annie.

The movie follows Mae as she starts out as a lowly customer support tech. She’s stressed out by the scores she’s receiving, seems super skeptical of the “optional” activities and socialization they want her to get involved in, and dresses like a slovenly, low-level tech worker.

But that all quickly changes once she embraces the company culture and innovative new tech they’re sharing with the public. After a scary incident while out kayaking, she’s invited to take part in an experiment where she wears a camera 24/7.

Social Credit Scores Are There to Help Us

Mae is introduced to two social credit scores she receives at The Circle.

The first is her performance rating given to her by customers. She receives a number on a scale of 1 to 100. Even though she averages around 80/85 on her first day, her boss and others keep assuring her that it’s okay, she’ll improve someday.

The second score she receives is given to her by coworkers. It’s based on her “performance” within the community. She learns about this score when two team leaders point out how she missed some events over the prior weekend — a weekend where she was at her parents’ home, celebrating with family and caring for her ailing father.

They don’t seem to care so much that her father had an episode, but that Mae didn’t reach out to tell anyone at The Circle that he pissed his pants in the middle of the party.

They also seem gravely concerned that she never updated her Circle profile to show an interest in kayaking. And, my god, how dare she go out kayaking alone! There are so many people at The Circle who could’ve gone and ruined that serene and solo activity for her! Plus, doing stuff alone is scary. No one should feel safe enough to go kayaking or do anything else alone.

It’s a really strange scene and one that left me rooting for Mae as she looked at her coworkers with shock and confusion.

The Collective Is Where You’ll Find Happiness

So, what does she do? Does she eschew the pressure put upon her by the social credit scores and focus on what she’s there to do — i.e. her work?

Nope. She starts to participate more.

And you know what? She loves it. She has friends, she smiles all the time, and she starts to put some effort into the way she looks. Her social credit scores are also outstanding now.

Of course, this all comes at the expense of seeing her parents as well as one of her best friends named Mercer. But that’s okay because she was poor and unhappy when she wasn’t part of the collective. And now she’s making money and loving life!

Oh, and she gets to live on campus in a really cool smart dorm. Everything she needs is within walking distance. Her job. After work socials and parties. Dining. Fitness facilities. All her friends. Everything.

Kind of reminded me of a 15-minute city.

Fuck Our Privacy

Mae is an avid kayaker. When she’s feeling down one evening, she decides to break into the kayaking facility she goes to, steals a kayak, and heads out on choppy, fog-filled waters. Her kayak capsizes and she seems to be in real danger until a rescue helicopter appears above her a minute later.

But how did they know she was there?

Well, there were these tiny orbs called SeeChange all over the place.

Tom Hanks’s Steve Jobs-type character introduces us to them earlier in the film. They’re super tiny balls that you can stick to anything and they capture everything before them in perfect clarity. The best part? They come in different colors so they’re easy to camouflage.

It’s okay, guys, because he only uses them to scope out the surf conditions at his favorite beach. Just kidding. They’re all over The Circle offices, watching and listening to everyone. And apparently they’ve made it all over the San Francisco Bay area as Mae’s illegal entry and capsizing was caught on them.

Thank goodness for that surveillance though! Right? Right.

So when Tom Hanks and his minion call her into their office the next day, she apologizes and asks not to be fired. (For doing what, I’m not sure.)

I really expected them to blackmail her at this point. Like, “If you don’t want to go to jail for breaking and entering, then you must do this thing for us.”

Nnnnnnnope. The next thing we know, Mae is on stage at one of the big televised company presentations where she admits that “Secrets are lies”. In the book, this and two other 1984-ish phrases are also repeated: “Sharing is caring” and “Privacy is theft”.

They ultimately amount to the same outcome. Mae decides that she can no longer lead this selfish, reckless, and criminal life. She must go “transparent”. And so she agrees to wear a newly built camera 24/7.

At this point, she morphs into this well-coifed, well-poised super influencer type. She’s constantly speaking to her “followers”, showing them around the campus, letting them watch her work, etc. She’s given a 3-minute break to use the bathroom, but that’s about all the privacy she’s allowed. And she loves it.

One evening, she gives her followers a glimpse into her parents’ sex life as she attempts to do a video call through the SeeChanges in their home. Her reaction is, “Ohmigod, guys, I can’t believe that just happened.” Not “Oh shit, I just broadcasted a sex act to billions of people (and likely children) around the globe.”

So, it’s no surprise that she’s astounded that her parents have disconnected their cameras and want nothing to do with her public broadcasts. After all, it wasn’t that big of a deal. We’re all better off sharing every waking moment with one another. Otherwise, we’re no better than criminals in jail.

Privacy is theft. Period.

Digitized Voting! Yay!

As Mae makes her way up the ranks, she’s invited to a big insider meeting to discuss new ideas. Because she’s wearing her neat little surveillance tool, the world is privy to this particular meeting where, get this, she suggests that every registered voter in the U.S. be required to create a Circle account. And, not only that, to cast their vote through it as well.

When asked why the government can’t just come up with its own digitized system, she says it’s because it’s too costly and difficult to manage. But The Circle already has the technology and wherewithal to make it happen, so we should totally trust them to manage the process.

You guys know how I feel about voting and, in particular, this latest selection. So I guess it wouldn’t really matter if they digitized voting and moved to a social media platform because it’s all pre-determined anyway.

That said, I couldn’t help but watch this scene and draw parallels to Elon Musk, the owner of social media goliath X, being tapped to co-head the Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy.

Makes you wonder, huh? Especially since Trump said the following:

“In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.”

Wouldn’t it be funny if, in a move to make the government more efficient, voting moved to X, the soon-to-be everything app (i.e. surveillance and social control app)?

Sorry for breaking the fourth wall. I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity to bring our real world into this discussion.

Let’s Weaponize the Mob

At one point, Mae takes a photo of a deer antler chandelier that Mercer made for her parents’ home. She shares the pic on The Circle.

She finds out shortly thereafter that the mob has come for Mercer. They call him “a deer killer”, even though he’s done no such thing. No one wants to hear him out though.

Mae makes a half-hearted gesture to clear things up, but never does. As a result, Mercer tells her to leave him alone and he goes off the grid. (Yay, Mercer!)

We don’t hear from Mercer again until Mae is on stage showing off this new surveillance and facial recognition software. She demonstrates how everyday people can be empowered to hunt down a dangerous criminal. And they do — in a matter of 10 minutes. We watch as the selected criminal’s coworkers turn on her, holding their phones up in her face as they chase her down.

In the second test, Mae decides to track down a regular person and the crowd calls for it to be Mercer. You see Mae struggle with this and you think, “Okay, she’s gonna be a good decent human again”. Ultimately, she goes forward with the test, calling for people to find Mercer.

They track him down at a cabin in the middle of the woods. He runs from his home and gets in his truck, only to be pursued by a bunch of vehicles and drones. And when one drone flies directly at his windshield, he veers in the other direction and drives off a bridge in front of billions of people watching the broadcast.

Mae disconnects her camera and heads home to grieve, for all of like three days. What is the conclusion she comes to? Oh, it’s not that it’s her fault and the fault of everyone cheering on the surveillance state and empowering the mob.

Nope, it’s really no one’s fault as the technology that could’ve saved him hasn’t been built yet. But some day it will. Some day these amazingly heroic tech companies will have the ability to put sensors in everyone’s cars that stop them from driving off bridges.

Connection Is Everything

As Mae is leaving her parents’ home, she tells them she’s going back to work. They express serious concerns about this, but she says it’s okay. She was up at 4 a.m. the night before chatting with her followers. She realized that connection is what will help her heal from this heartbreak, not privacy and introspection.

So, she heads back to work where she meets up with Ty, the innocuous black dude who had popped up a few times throughout the movie.

He always appeared as a bit of an outsider, somewhat sardonic, standing away from the crowd, drinking on his own. He eventually reveals to Mae that he’s actually the co-founder of TrueYou, the social networking component of The Circle. But he warns her that what the company is doing now is nefarious and that they’ve taken his invention in the wrong direction.

Mae doesn’t believe him at first. After all, she’s Influencer #1 at the company. She not only has so many friends at work, but a legion of online fans around the world.

It’s not until Mercer’s death is televised that she has a come-to-Jesus moment. This was what I was waiting for.

She returns to work and is invited by Tom Hanks to attend the company meeting on Friday. She’s hesitant at first, but then relinquishes. And she burns that fucker down.

Just kidding.

She gets up on the stage and gives a heartfelt speech about how connection is the key to everything. And that privacy has been standing in everyone’s way. In an effort to show how powerful transparency is, she invites Tom Hanks and his minion to wear their own 24/7 surveillance cameras and to let the world into everything they’re doing behind the scenes.

In addition, Ty has given her and everyone else at the company access to all of Tom Hanks’s private emails. So now they could go see how evil they are, doing things like setting up a senator trying to investigate The Circle.

But that’s about as far as the burning down went.

Basically, Mae never woke up. All she did was show us that only some technocrats are evil. Not all of them, though, so we should totally trust the ones who act like outsiders. Because they’re one of us. And all they’ve ever wanted was to do good and to make it so that everyone is fully transparent 24/7 about what’s going on in their lives.

In the very final scene, we see Mae head out on a kayak where she’s followed by three drones. She grins from ear-to-ear as she’s followed, knowing that she has such a strong safety net in case her boat capsizes again. Because being alone is super dangerous. Or something like that.

Final Thoughts

Although I haven’t read the book, what I gathered about it online is that it follows a similar storyline. However, it’s clear that it’s meant to be a warning about the technocratic takeover and the constant encroachment on our privacy and rights as citizens.

I wish I were more surprised that Hollywood went in this direction with the story. But I’m not at all. They couldn’t leave us hating on social media and questioning all of this surveillance technology and biometric tracking (which plays a very small part in the movie). They needed to address the doubts and concerns that I think many people have raised at one point, but then find a way to be like, “See! You had no reason to worry!”

Sharing is caring, after all.