Fishbook

Catfish - a diverse group of ray-finned fish.

During our last class, I was entertained and quite frankly disturbed by a movie called, “Catfish”. Catfish was basically about a talented photographer from New York City who begins a friendship with a talented, young painter from a small town in Michigan. The photographer was in his mid twenties and the girl was 8 years old. The friendship began through the popular social network, Facebook. This friendship may seem extremely odd to you but the 8 year old girl, Abby sent the photographer messages on Facebook about one of his photos in the New York Times for which she decided to paint. The photographer was so intrigued and interested by the little girl’s artwork. After communicating back and forth with Abby and the rest of her family, they all grew a strong bond for each other. Megan, Abby’s older sister and the photographer made a strong connection and developed an online relationship.  But this strong bond quickly dissolves when the photographer discovers a path of lies especially from Megan. When the lies become too much for the photographer to handle, he visits Abby’s small town for answers. The answers that he discovers are way more than he could have ever expected.

Although the film was very entertaining and caught my attention, I questioned the authenticity of the film as a whole. By that I mean, how many grown professional men have conversations on Facebook with eight year old girls? Not many at all because it is inappropriate and simply creepy. Then I felt that a man would have to have a low self-esteem or feel really lonely to begin a relationship with someone without ever meeting in person. I remember when I first started my Facebook profile; they asked whether I was looking for friendships, relationships or all of the above. I clicked on the friendship box because I couldn’t imagine myself beginning a relationship through my computer screen even in this mediated world. In this mediated world, people are changing their personality and image but it still doesn’t give anyone the right to manipulate anyone else for their own personal security or pleasure. The woman who played Angela which was Abby’s mother in the film portrayed as 15 people on Facebook. All of these people had different personalities and gender and were all friends on Facebook with the main character, the photographer. Even though this is the most interesting part of the film, I felt that it couldn’t be completely real because of the amount of effort it takes to keep this separate life intact. If it was indeed real then Angela must have some sort of mental disorder and needs medical help.