I personally enjoyed watching the documentary Catfish in class. It seemed to really capture a major problem with social networking and that is that people may not necessarily be who they say they are. The film starts out with a guy named Ariel Shulman and his friend Henry Joost who decide to film a documentary of Ariel’s younger brother Nev’s life relationship with an extremely young artist. It all began when Abby an eight- year old painter mailed Nev a painting of one of his photographs. (Nev was a dance photographer.) Nev was blown away at how someone so young could paint so well. Abby continued to mail Nev boxes of her work and he continued to be amazed. Before long Nev facebook friended Abby’s mother, Angela and a few other family members including Meghan, Abby’s gorgeous older half sister.
Through all kinds of modern technology the relationship between Nev and Abby’s family increased. Angela often spoke on the phone to Nev about how Abby had sold her paintings for large sums of money, and how they were featured in an art studio. Meghan and Nev began communicating often through texting, phone call, and facebook and even began to have romantic feelings towards each other. Meaghan claimed to be an aspiring musician but when she sent Nev her songs he quickly grew suspicious. Turns out when he went on youtube he found the same song being song by the same voice…and it was NOT Meaghan. The documentary took an unexpected turn when Nev, Ariel and Henry drove all the way to Michigan to see what the real story was. What they discovered was that Angela, a middle-aged women made the whole thing up! She was a painter and although she did have an eight-year-old daughter named Abby, Abby was not a painter. Meaghan was a real person but the photos of her were not real and the family had not seen her in years. Angela was living with a man named Vince and his two severely disabled sons’. She was depressed and created all of the character’s to simply attract Nev’s attention. Needless to say he was quite embarrassed that she was the one pretending to be Meaghan. Although Nev could have grown angry he simply felt sorry for the women and did not hold a grudge. She appeared to come clean about the situation by saying she had bone cancer, made up the character’s, Meaghan was actually in a rehab for alcohol abuse, the pictures of her were of a family friend and Abby was not a painter. Later it is learned that she did not have cancer, the pictures were not of a family friends and Meaghan was not in rehab.
Who Nev thought Meaghan was...
This documentary really examines relationships based in modern communication. Film critique Don Simpson said, “It is all enough to give Marshall McLuhan a virtual post-mortem orgasm.”
(Click here to see Review) When Nev falls in love with Meaghan it is actually quite sad. He is not following in love with a real person, yet he thinks he knows enough about her through her online profile and phone conversations. I think it shows how we are too wired. Instead of going out and meeting someone and falling in love the old fashion way, Nev falls in love via the Internet. This did not work out in the end because the Meaghan whom Nev fell for was not real. It is scary to think that the person he had deep feelings for was actually an older, unattractive, crazy, women. That makes me hesitant to trust people’s online profiles.
The Internet was used greatly in this film. Nev always seemed to be wired in. He and Meg shared facebook messages, videos, and chats. He even discovered the truth by using youtube another form of social networking where anyone can upload a video of literally anything that they want. He even used Google maps to find where the family supposedly lived. Overall I thought this was an excellent documentary that kept me on the edge of my seat and it truly did show how society as a whole is overly dependant on the internet.
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