Catfish and some thoughts that came from it

Once again, warning, if you have not seen Catfish, the documentary, but intend to do so, skip reading this blog because although it doesn't go into the plot, the ideas do come out of it. Catfish spoiler ahead on the other side of the ocean photo which has absolutely no relationship to the movie but serves to save someone from reading something they wouldn't want to see before the film.


One of the big questions I sometimes have when watching any film is how they came up with that title. Where in this case, I knew the story because of Angela, the woman who lied, being on 20/20 and the film being shown at Sundance last year. Also I had read of the younger woman whose photos had been misused because she had them posted somewhere online. What I didn't know is how the filmmakers came up with the title.

The title is important to the meaning of this film. It goes way beyond deception on the internet, or watching out where you post your photos (in fact one sexy photo online is too many if you don't want it showing up elsewhere). The title is why this film has so much life meaning. You find out how it came to be at the end of the film in one of the last scenes filmed at Angela's home and with her husband, Vince. At this point, the three young men know the whole story of what Angela did and maybe Vince, her husband, only partly grasps it but he's sympathetic to the wife who has so lovingly tended her stepsons. He himself seems a little mentally challenged right up until this moment.

He tells them a story of how years ago they used to ship cod alive in big tanks to Japan from the United States. There was a problem. By the time the cod arrived, they were mushy and not the quality of meat that would have been desired. Then the shippers discovered if they put catfish in the tank, it kept the cod challenged and active. They arrived in good shape for eating.

He said that some people are like catfish in our lives. They might not seem beneficial, but they are the ones that challenge us, that make us more than we might've been otherwise.

The easy people in our lives don't do that. It's the others-- the ones who are difficult in various ways. Those aren't the ones we think we want. We like the atta-boys but which ones help us grow? that was his point.

I really like how this fits into that word I got in a dream-- entropy. Entropy is what seems to have gone astray, been not helping us do what we want but entropy might be like the catfish for how beneficial it can be. The unintended accidents take us directions we'd never have gone but that lead us to becoming someone we'd never have been. We don't ask for such but we can use it.

When the filmmakers got close to showing the film at Sundance, they were still undecided on a title as they didn't want one that gave it all away. A filmmaker who had seen it told them there could only be one title-- Catfish which eventually they saw also. It tells it all but it doesn't give away anything.

The interaction between Angela and Nev pretty well says it all for the complexity of relationships-- on both sides. She was looking for a different life that she couldn’t have and wouldn’t have gone to if she could have with her responsibilities and love for her family, but she wasn’t the only one in that situation.

Nev also wanted something more. As daring as she was to create this life that was so complex to please him, he also did whatever it took, once he got into it, to reveal the truth of who she was. He didn't stop with the lie but he wanted to show the real Angela, who he knew so well but as many different people, not the one extremely complex person she was. Behind a smiling sweet facade was another woman, the one she was inside but would never be outside.

For Angela, although her being revealed as a liar was humiliating, it also was a door that opened to her changing her own life, being more who she wanted to be and promoting the paintings as her own.

Part of the reason Angela had created Abby as being the artist was that her work wasn't respected when it was hers but when it was a child protege, she thought it would be seen as of more interest.

Getting art (and art means all of them including writing) out to the public, finding a market for it is one of the problems of anyone who does it hoping for it to at least pay for itself if not go further and provide a living. There is no logic to why one painter/writer can sell and another is sneered at. You go into any art gallery and you will see work there that you can see just as good in someone's attic gathering dust.

Selling art is complicated as they are not just selling the painting but the artist behind it. It's not as though everyone buys a painting with the idea of having a big investment to grow in value, but after a certain dollar figure, I think that does play into purchases. Angela had found she couldn't meet the criteria as herself. Should her work have been able to stand on its own merits if it wasn't being done by a child protege?

The truth is there would not be those openings where the artists schmooze the potential buyers if the artist wasn't part of the sale. Angela as herself had nothing to offer at least she didn't until after this documentary came out.

In a lot of ways she was a strong woman. She faced her problems and chose unorthodox methods to find solutions. We don't like that because we don't like being fooled and yet I think the viewer finds an understanding that comes as she discusses what she did. The viewer sees it as the wrong way to go at it but sympathizes with the why.

Angela had a gift but where she lived and looking like she did, it was going nowhere fast. If she had had someone marketing her work, maybe she could have done it without fitting the image, but she didn't. She knew the ropes though which is why she had sent the painting to Nev with the hope it would open a door. Her lie, of having bought an old Penney's building as a gallery for Abby's painting, was part of a dream that was beyond her reach.

So the film makes the viewer think about their own dreams, about the impact of lies, and most of all about fooling ourselves. It also illustrates the ease with which the Internet can defraud and steal from us. It also shows it for the powerful tool it is. It can create a world.

If there is ever a place entropy can go off many unexpected directions, I'd say the internet would be a biggie, not only the radiation that we get from all those wireless devices, but the information/misinformation that does things to our mind and life that we might find very surprising if we looked at it analytically.

As a side note, it is also a lesson to any who have their photos, especially family ones, online anywhere. They can be so easily taken and put under another name. When I first read about the film last fall, it was from the end of the young woman who Nev thought was Megan but in reality only existed in that little internet world Angela had created. The photos were of a model with two children who wanted to promote herself online and ended up being part of other people's stories. They did say she received some compensation for using her images in the film. Hard to say if that was enough given the invasion of privacy that was involved. On the other hand, she apparently had some near nude photos online which Angela used to entice Nev further into her world. If people put nude photos online, maybe publicity is exactly what they want. Who knows. (Incidentally, for anyone who thinks those might be in the film, they were not."