CATFISH

Throughout the semester, the topic of web 2.0 and democratized media has has been talked about greatly in almost every class, so wrapping up the semester with the documentary "Catfish", was only seemed approriate.  Catfish sums up just how connected the internet has made us.  It shows how creativity can be transported at a click, how relationships can be established, but it also shows how easy it is to steal ones identity, lie and steal.  The interent, as we have spoke about, can be a fabulous thing, but also am awful thing...depending on how it is used.  In Catfish, Nev, the main character, seeks out a relationship with a young girl named Abby, who is a talented painter who saw one of his photos in an article. His brother, filmmaker Ariel Schulman who had already been making a documentary about Yaniv, basically kept cameras rolling to document their relationship, hoping to find something interesting about it, since an 8 year old painter is pretty intruiging. She sent him a painting of his photo, and they later began talking on facebook.  Through this, he then developed a relationship with her mother, and later a romantic one with his older sister, Megan.  Megan appears to be an extremely fun and attractive young woman, and Nev is immediately attracted to her. The two then embark on a very intimate online relationship which leads to constant texting as well as constant phone conversations. Nev quickly becomes infatuated with Megan, and it seems that Megan feels similarly about Nev.  Nev starts to realize some falsities in what the family is telling him, so he decides to go visit with his filmmaking friends. We later find out that almost everything he has been told by this "family" is false.  There is no older sister Megan, and Abby is not a painter.  Angela, the mother, is actually obsessed with Nev, and IS Megan.  We see a dark, twisted life that Angela was covering up. She has two retarded sons, and deals with the burden of taking care of them 24/7.  She admitted that she used the connection with Nev to escape, and be all the sides of herself that she wishes she had embraced.  She describes her story with a voice full of pain and heartache.  This twist opens eyes to the dangers of the interent, but it also shows a women using the internet to escape from her life full of pain and drama, as we have once talked about. The film Catfish displays and truly defines the basic ideas and values of Web 2.0
      Once the secret is out, Angela admits to everything, and explains how she had to use facebook and retrace the things she said so that they did not come off as lies.  She created over 15 facebook accounts to make it seem legitamet, but once her secret is out, it only makes her seem even more crazy.  Nev interviews her at the end, and the audience gets  a sense of sorrow, or at least i did.  I feel for her, her life was rough.  However, the movie ends with Angela painting a photo of Nev, and saying how hard it is.  It becomes eerie when she keeps referencing his "beautiful smile" and how much more beautiful it is in person.  Nev says he is ready to go home, and it seems as though he started to feel creeped out.  He gets the painting in the mail about a month later, and the movie ends.
      One of the reasons the movie was so intruiging was that the entire first half of the movie, you had NO idea that Angela was Megan...and that Megan did not exist.  Its very unexpected.  Once you find out, you realize that there WAS a real relationship between Angela and Nev, even though he was tricked to believe it was Megan.  At the end of the movie it says that they are still friends on facebook, so Nev did not completely "disown" her in a sense, i think he felt for her and her awful life too. 
       We still do not know WHY Angela seeked out Nev.  There was no indication of her doing this with anyone else.  SHE initiated it by sending the photo to Nev...but even the first encounter was a lie...which confused me.  She started the entire thing saying she was "Abby" the 8 year old painting prodegy.  So this makes me question her intentions.  Did she plan this sick,twisted relationship from the start? Or did she start off thinking she would make money if an 8 year old was the artist?  There are many unanswered questions that this movie has evoked in me. 

        The film Catfish basically uncovers the world’s fears of Web 2.0, and how easy it is to decieve others using the internet.  It made me think i need to be a little more private, and alert when talking to others online, because you really NEVER know who is on the other side of the computer screen.  It made me question for the first time how safe my pictures ar being up on the internet. Angela used a collection of photos of a random model who is married with children to form the identity of Megan Faccio and trick Nev into falling in love with this fake person.  I just imagined what would've happened if he ever saw that girl in the photos on the street.  She would've had NO CLUE who he was, and he wouldve been baffled.  The dangers and falsities of the internet are quite disturbing! All in all, i really really enjoyed this movie, and it was emotional, informational, and kept you watching.  The fact that it was not "based on a true story" , it wasn't "inspired" by a true story, it was TRUE, 100%, is what makes it so intruiging.