The movie, Catfish, tackles the issue of using different personalities to hide your true self. In the film, Nev Schulman becomes friends with Abby Pierce, a child prodigy artist, on Facebook. This then leads to his becoming friends with her mother and sister, Angela and Megan respectively. In the beginning of the film, Nev begins a relationship with Megan and things get serious between them; Nev even falls in love with her. However, he soon finds that she has been sending him other people's music and is passing it off as her own; this leads him to begin to doubt other things that she and her family have told him. Eventually, he decides to pay Megan and Abby a visit.
First, he visits Megan's alleged farm but finds it abandoned. Afterwards, he goes to Abby's house in Ishpeming, Michigan. When he gets there he meets Angela, but she looks nothing like she did on her Facebook profile. He then goes on to meet Vince, who also looks nothing like the man on his profile, and their two disabled children. After a they have a short talk, in which Angela briefly mentions that she has uterine cancer, she takes him to meet Abby. When the two are alone, he asks her about Megan and how often she paints. He then learns that Abby has only seen Megan on some occasions and doesn't even know what she looks like anymore; he also learns that Abby rarely paints and that she isn't the prodigy that she seems to be on Facebook. All of Angela's lies continue to unravel until Nev finally gets her to admit to having created 15 different Facebook profiles.
In the film, Angela creates different Facebook profiles and runs them all in relation with each other in order to keep her fake internet presence. After Angela confesses about having lied, she tells Nev that she had grown tired of her mundane life, and that she sacrificed a lot when she married Vince. She then says that each of her profiles encompassed a different one of the dreams that she once had. However, every time she mentions having given up on her dreams, she claims that she doesn't regret having chosen to marry Vince.
On another note, in class we discussed whether or not it could be considered cheating when she began her online relationship with Nev. In my opinion, it was cheating. The reason that I consider it cheating is because she talked to him on a deep, emotional level; they actually fell in love, or rather Megan and Nev fell in love. They even began to sext each other at a certain point. Another red flag is the fact that her husband, Vince, didn't know about what Angela did online and thought that Nev was actually a client of Angela's.
Perhaps, however, the worst thing that Angela did was involve her daughter, Abby, into her web of lies (pun intended). Abby, like her father, had no idea what her mother was doing while she was online. Angela exploited her daughter and made her seem like a prodigy just so that she could lure people into her web.
In the end, however, Angela says that she feels bad about having lied to Nev and led him on. She also says that things had just gotten out of hand. I believe that she was actually being honest when she said this because it's likely that she failed pressured to continue the lies because of the repercussions she would face if she told the truth now.
In the afterward of the movie, it is revealed that Angela had lied about having cancer and about having a daughter in rehab. It's also revealed that she didn't know the woman who she made out to be Angela. However, they also mention that, after filming concluded, Angela closed all of her fake accounts and changed her profile picture to an actual picture of her. This shows that Angela has seen the error of her ways and is willing to move on with her life and not make the same mistakes again.
4 comments:
I agree with you on your thoughts about her feeling remorseful, but I do not think you can say that the worst thing Angela did was to drag Abby into this. The thing about Abby is that she is young. She will not remember most of this in a year. She will not be as emotionally traumatized as Nev or her husband. I think that dragging anyone into a dramafest like this one is a bad idea. She risked her entire marriage, everything she had, in order to ultimately negatively impact someone else’s life. I do agree that she felt remorseful, but that does not allow her to take back what has already been done.
I agree with your view of how Angela was feeling remorse and that what she did was cheating. I do agree that using Abby as a means to gain publicity and commissions for "Abby's" artwork was absolutely immoral, but I can sympathize with her, as a fellow artist, on why she did it. Despite this, my sympathy level is very low due to using the child as an instrumental good, but thankfully the child is, as Samuel pointed out, young enough to not be affected by her mother's schemes.
Angela seemed slightly brokem by her shortcomings and i agree that her inclusiom of all these different people was wrong, especially because one was her own daughter. On an unrelated note parts of the documentary seemed fake. Vince seemed like a character and i domt think anyone as dumb as he appears to be could be so profound. I believe it was slightly romanticized or exaggerated.
Yes, Angela was definitely cheating. Also a good point by mentioning her husband being unaware of her actions. I do not have much sympathy for Angela and I think her actions were wrong. Based on my understanding of your ideas, you would probably agree.
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