DVD - Catfish

The advent of digital video recording has forever changed the field of documentary filmmaking. For twenty years, or more, people have been making docs on Beta Cams, Digi-Betas, Mini-DV's, and, now, High Def camcorders. Digital video has made documentary more open and easier to capture, and though there are now amazing doc's that would not have existed twenty or thirty years ago (because shooting them on film would have been too expensive), there is also a ridiculous increase in boring and self serving material. While the documentary, Catfish, can come off this way early on, it eventually develops into an extremely fascinating commentary on the online age, where identity is no longer something that can be controlled, but rather something that can be used fluidly, or flat out stolen.

Catfish follows Nev Schulman, a New York City photographer, who strikes up a relationship with a young prodigy painter, and, eventually, her whole family. As time passes, he begins to explore an online romance with the little girls much older sister. Things never seem quite right, though, and Nev's suspicions lead him, and the filmmakers to travel to Michigan to meet the family he's been involved with, online and over the phone, for the last several months.

Catfish is a really interesting film, but one must go into it expecting to figure out the "twist" early on, in order to not be disappointed. In fact, I would go so fa as to say that there really isn't a twist at all, but simply a roll out of reality as the doc progresses. The fact that the doc was marketed as a mystery, I think, caused a lot of people to be pissed off, but doc's are rarely mysteries, and they'll never give you the kind of rush or satisfaction that a carefully crafted fictional story has the capability of giving you. Catfish is absolutely worth your time, just don't expect it to be mind bending.

"Catfish" and social media

I watched Catfish last night. I liked it. It wasn’t anything amazing, and, I think as long as you go into it expecting to know what’s happening by a quarter of the way through the film, you can enjoy it. But the film brings up something interesting. I was talking to a co-worker about this today. First, we both agreed that, while The Social Network is a much better film, Catfish better captures the realities and pitfalls of social media than the multi-award winner directed by genius and veteran filmmaker David Fincher.

Catfish really captures the idea that a person can, literally, be anything they want to be online. In an online relationship, its easy to be the perfect you, because the other person only see’s the you that you choose to show. The real you, the you that comes out in the worst times, or the boring times, or the middle times, you never have to really show those. Granted, your building a relationship on a lie, and it will crash and burn should you ever get together in real life, but you can get what you want out of it for the time being (which is exactly what one of the individuals in Catfish does).

The other thing we talked about was how social media (like Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr) is supposed to bring out the personal and transparent, but often times brings out the fake or the shallow or the judgmental. If you are transparent about what goes on in your life, there are people who become offended, even when they are not directly related to anything you say. There are people who think things you post are offensive, or inane, or pretentious (although, let’s face it, sometimes they are). There are those that use social media for the sole purpose of making themselves look as cool as possible (when, in reality, they are a lot more like you and I, but they only show their “exciting side”). Some people treat social media as a photograph that they are the model for. Their posts become a snapshot, a moment, by which you are to judge them by, forgetting, of course, that it’s very possible that they are different, in real life, than they publicize themselves to be.

I’ve been involved in various aspects of social media for years. It has been a release for me, and a way to TRY to be more transparent about what is going on in my life. Never the less, it always comes about that someone (or sometimes several people) disparage something that I do or say or post. You can’t win them all, but, if you are lying, if you are making yourself out to be someone you’re not, who are you really hurting? I feel like that was whatCatfish was about - The fact that, so often we use these tools to make ourselves look better than what we are, but, in the end, we are only letting ourselves and others down. We are only lying, or being lied to, unless we are telling the truth, and our “friends” are doing the same.

In the end, you are who you are. Some of the things you do or say will be wrong, some of them will help people, some will hurt people, but don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid of transparency, because, in the end, throwing something out there may be detrimental in the moment, but you may learn something. You may just learn that someone loves you for who you are.