Catfish Final Paper
It was what I thought to be a sunny bright day in Michigan. Nev and his brother Ariel had just arrived at Abby’s house. When they arrived and went to knock on the door, no one answered, so Nev and his brother Ariel walked around the to the back of the red and white house, peaked through the window and yelled “hello, hello, anyone home, anyone here?” Nev, turned to his brother and said, “I see someone moving inside the house.” Then someone answered the door. It was an older lady but, looked nothing like the lady in a recent photo, who supposedly went by the name Angela and was said to be Megan Faccio’s mom, the girl Nev had allegedly been talking to for 8 months on Facebook. Was this really Megan’s mom? Was Megan a real person? What was going on?
The name of the movie is called Catfish. It is directed by acted out by, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, and Nev Schulman (main character). This movie was filmed in 2007 in New York and Ishpeming and Gladstone Michigan, and was released to the public eye on September 17, 2010. The movie Catfish is mainly about the disturbing relationship between Nev, “Megan” and Angela. It’s a must see about today’s world and the eye on social networking.
The main characters in the movie Catfish include, Nev (main character), Ariel (Nev’s brother), Henry (Nev’s friend) Abby, (Angela’s daughter), Megan, Angela (the mom), Angela’s husband and his twin sons who were both mentally handicapped. Nev, is a 24 year old photographer who lived and worked in New York and would receive paintings in the mail from an 8 year old girl named Abby you lived in Ishpeming, Michigan, she would get pictures off line that Nev had posted and she would paint them and then send them in the mail to Nev, in New York. Abby, is an 8 year old girl from Ishpeming, Michigan, who was interested in Nev’s pictures and would paint him pictures of his photographs. Ariel is Nev’s older brother who traveled with him in hopes to find out what was going on and who these people Nev was associating with were. Angela is Abby’s mom, and also “Megan’s” mom. Henry is a friend of Nev’s. Megan is the girl that Nev was talking to over the internet and over text messages for 8 months until the pieces started to come together.
The movie Catfish I thought overall was a very interesting movie to watch. It was relatively strange but very interesting. I think when someone goes out of their way to film a real life documentary like this it’s neat, especially about something that is becoming more and more popular Facebook. Social networking sites are becoming further and further more popular whether it’d be, Facebook alone, Twitter, Linkedin, flickr, Myspace, or blogspot and many, many others, it’s what people are doing now days to stay in the “loop”, to stay connected. I just really liked how this movie fit right in with the most popular social networking site now days, Facebook. It shows a real life model of what can happen if the people you are “asking” or “accepting” others to be your friend when you really have no information about them, and in reality you don’t know them at all for that matter. This movie illustrated just exactly what can happen. Someone you would meet on a site like Facebook, and decide to get to know more based off of their profile picture and other information when actuality hits, they’re not a real person! The whole profile is just a sham, either it is someone else or just completely made up all together. I think our society needs to be more careful about what they are publicizing, to others over online sources. Not everyone out there wants to just be you’re “friend.” People need to be more careful.
To finish, I would recommend this movie for generally all ages, but for the mature individual. It has some parts that may not be suitable for the younger generation, but only for the mature eye and ear. I think though that it is a very good documentary and provides a good lesson to all, making sure that we know what we broadcast over social networking sites and just really anywhere in general. People need to be more aware of their surroundings, like I mentioned before not everyone out there just wants to be a mutual friend with you or just your friend in general. There are going to be those people in life that are going to be keeping others on their toes, be constantly exploring, keeping others in check. We as mature social networking users just need to be careful.
