Man on Film: Catfish

To say there are an inordinate amount of films centered around social networking would be an understatement.  As Jesse, one of Paul Weston's patients on this newest season of In Treatment*, stated this past week:

Our society is becoming increasingly bifurcated... Our lives are now half in real-time and half in virtual-time.

Taking this into consideration, I suppose it only makes sense that more and more of our media will start to focus on this.

*Which I hope to talk about later this week, but we'll see if I get around to it.

Catfish, a relatively new* documentary, follows Yaniv 'Nev' Schulman as a he strikes up a friendship via Facebook with a child prodigy named Abby, who has been reinterpreting his photography through painting. Initially inspired by the story of this small town child artist, the filmmakers, Nev's brother Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, set off to explore Abby through her interaction with Nev.  

*It's nearing the end of its theatrical run.

As he begins to interact with Abby more and more, Nev gets to know her mother, Angela, and her hot older sister, Megan, and it is with Megan that he begins to strike up a relationship.

Where it goes from here is best left undiscussed, as the development of the story is compelling but ultimately subject to spoiling.

What Catfish does serve as is an entertaining and interesting look at the nature of our social lives on the internet and our perceptions of cyber-reality or our sense of virtual selves.  The question of what can we know about these people who we have daily interactions with on the internet is explored deftly, if entirely coincidentally in Catfish; but it is a personal story, so it never feels like it has taken on more than it can chew.