It doesn’t matter how old you are, chances are you’ve heard the term “catfish” before. We’re not talking about the whiskered marine species. We actually mean the term used for the deceptive practice often used in online dating and other forms of contact via social networks. Someone sends you a photo, you start chatting. When it comes time to meet, if you actually get to this stage, you realize that the person in front of you is nothing like the entity you’ve been talking to. Disappointment is the result. That person is a catfish.
But have you ever wondered where it comes from? In case you don’t know, called a movie Catfish was released in 2010. It was a “documentary” about a photographer who starts a relationship with someone online. Things get tense and heavy between Nev and Megan, but when it’s time to meet, things take a weird turn. Megan isn’t who she says she is, and if you haven’t seen the movie, let’s leave it at that. The term catfish comes from a metaphor used by one of the individuals to describe a situation where cod was kept active by catfish during transportation. Megan kept her family’s world active and interesting by trying to be someone she really wasn’t.
Back in the day, people couldn’t stop talking about the movie. It had crossed the line of what was amusing and emerged as an in-depth exploration of individualism and intimacy through the eyes of a generation that thrived only in virtual channels. The problem was that not everyone believed it to be true. It was certainly hard to digest that this highly cinematic arc wasn’t manipulated by savvy filmmakers. Will we ever know? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fascinating take on the “reality is stranger than fiction” dilemma we sometimes face at cinéma vérité style of filming.
It doesn’t matter if Catfish is true or fake
Following the film’s success, this led to MTV capitalizing on it through its reality TV format, and the performance Catfish was created. It conformed to MTV’s reality show rules, and quite frankly, it’s not that good. It’s mainly based on people getting crushed upon finding out they’ve been catfished. Pure exploitation, if you ask us.
What actually had the movie going for it was how it portrayed cheating in a down-to-earth way. It never makes fun of Megan’s huge reveal, and Nev is left caught up in the conflict and largely away from the film’s true essence. The third act isn’t Shyamalan-esque shocking with spoilers. We slowly walk into the world of a smart woman who had the ability to fool a young man, his partners and the entire public. Her universe is strange, but mostly it is the result of the human pursuit of reason in the midst of unhappiness and the inability to self-realization.
Angela, the real person behind Megan, is a human whose truth isn’t thoroughly explored in the movie, but you get a glimpse into her life and you start to jump to conclusions. Months after the film’s release, she said during an interview that she was aware of her actions to outsmart three young men. Why did she do it? Watch the last 15 minutes of Catfish and you decide.
Henry Joost And Ariel Schulman made Catfish in 2010 and people are still wondering why they did it and if it’s real or fake. The question is: how important is that for a film whose effectiveness does not depend on it? We can’t think of a scenario where someone makes a huge amount of money off this movie. So why would they have created a fake world with strange subjects if the reality is already bizarre enough?
And yet we still watch
Nevertheless, it is difficult to agree with the accidental aspect of the plot. Not everyone “catfished” at the time, and it’s hard to believe there weren’t some first attempts. Again, we’ll never know how it transcended from the very beginning to the end in such an anticlimactic but interesting conclusion.
Catfish woke us up. To look closer and be thorough. To question what seemed ideal and felt innocent. Megan and Nev’s “relationship” is like millions of other relationships these days, and we don’t question whether our other half is real or not, even though we still haven’t met them.
The film felt exploitative as it sparked an inner dread and unnerved us with its deep and understanding dive into the reality of “Megan” without criticizing or condemning Angela’s actions. That in itself is fascinating, because it’s proof of the power that an average has over everyone when they decide to open up. When similar cases happen around us, we are fascinated to think not how they did it (it’s relatively easy these days), but why. How far would they go in creating a fictional entity to interact with someone else? That border, often crossed, is a fascinating area that Catfish well portrayed almost 10 years ago.
Catfish is available to rent or buy on Prime Video and other services.