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A short essay analysing Catfish...

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Catfish (2010) Catfish is a documentary/indie film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. It follows Nev Shulman who was a New York photographer at the time and his virtual romance with a woman named Megan. The story takes place in real time happenings, they filmed everything as soon as Nev, his brother Ariel and Henry, whom it’s important to note is a close friend of both Nev and Ariel, decided to document Nev and the “facebook family” without any suspicion of the upcoming twists. At this point, they summarise everything that happened before the camera started rolling, which surprisingly is not much, just how Nev came in contact with this family.! Sean Axmaker (2015) explains that documentary filmmaking takes full responsibility of the ongrowing art of cinema. From the very beginning, filmmaking grew around the idea of documenting people, events and places. The direct Cinema movement progressed from the French term Cinéma vérité (“truthful cinema”). It was led by D.A Pennbaker, an American filmmaker whose desire was to capture reality and actuality. As time progressed, documentary filmmaking begun to ditch the “real” meaning of documenting; truth. ! The documentary itself is filmed on a basic handheld pocket camera, with very little well executed compositions of cinematic footage. This promotes the film’s intended atmosphere of “realism” by clearly expressing that the directors of Catfish are not so much professional directors, just amateur story telling enthusiasts that filmed a true heartbreaking story in their friend Nev’s life. Furthermore, they support the conventions of realism and truth by involving themselves in the film a little more than just as silent directors and camera men; they will often appear in front of the camera talking to Nev and adding an emotional value to their characters.! Catfish would classify as an observational documentary due to its codes and conventions. As mentioned earlier, the technology used during the shoots of this film are very minimal, a classic code in the observational genre ever since Cinéma vérité or Direct Cinema. Technical upgrades in cameras started from the 1960s, allowing filmmakers to carry much smaller equipment, resulting to the rise of observational film (Stella Bruzzi, 2006). Catfish supports this genre throughout the film by allowing the audience to observe and come to a conclusion regarding the subject themselves. Ofcourse, the audience is led by Nev’s side of the story up until the end when Angela gets a chance to explain her actions.! “The voice-over, the visuals combine in a way that a story is told.”(Megan Cunningham, 2005 pg, 60). The film begins with a short scene where Nev is eating and the camera man films him while Nev makes it clear that he does not want to talk about it “right now”. The narrative at the beginning of the film is very important to reinforcing the idea of reality. Additionally the hand held mid-shot of Nev in that scene makes the audience feel oddly intruding, personal and close within 2 minutes of the film starting. A very simple yet effective opening to the documentary indeed. However from the very beginning, whilst some may believe that these codes and conventions were completely unintentional and that the film is in fact representing the Observational style of realism, some theorists would argue against it and go as far as saying that Catfish does not follow Bill Nichols’ (2017) meaning of Observational at all but more so following the Performative and Poetic mode.! One among many reviewers of Catfish touched upon the overall idea of the film seeming deceptive. “At what point would any filmmaker say ‘oh you know what, my brother got some paintings of his portraits from an 8 year old, that are mediocre at best, perhaps we should start documenting this’?” (Hutcheson, 2010). By deceptive, not meaning the misleading factual information of ones story but misleading the whole representation of the film. It seems that the filmmakers started telling this story without any foreknowledge of what is about to be, or so we are made to believe. On the other hand, this does not prove other theories stating that the story was not at a documentary, but a fiction film, a whole hoax. In any type of filmmaking, fiction or nonfiction there must always be a point of preparation. Explaining to the character what the outcome of a certain action should be. Even in interviews, the questions are planed so that the interviewee comes to the conclusion the directors wanted. So it is true that Ariel and Henry, even Nev, might have been a little deceptive about the order the footage was displayed and their foreknowledge of events, to create a spectacle. John Grieson himself referred to documentaries as “the creative

treatment of actuality”. With that being understood, so far Ariel and Henry did nothing unusual when compared to many other Documentaries claiming complete actuality, visually and audibly. Whilst referring to the scene where Nev and the filmmakers find out that Megan’s singing audio files which she claimed to have written and performed herself are actually fake, the above theory becomes more clear. This is the first spectacle in the film which supports Hutcheson’s review even further. The scene may leave some viewers wondering why they bothered looking for different song covers if they believed that Megan was real in that exact moment? Up to this point they have not exposed any suspicions regarding Megan’s existence, therefore their action of looking for other covers of the song are definitely questionable. “Observational documentaries require documentary realism. It is somewhat like color.” (Moon, 2017 pg,46 ). The film yet again starts to disprove worthy of the Observational mode. Cunningham talked about how audio and visuals are used differently to create a false representation of what is happening. This idea links in the scene discussed above very well because what we hear is the filmmakers insisting they carry on with what they are doing with the excuse of “ we will never get to the bottom of it if we stop now”, sounding insisting and pushing as if they do in fact have some sort of foreknowledge. However, visually we are led to believe the realism of the story as we see the camera man, from a second camera, being shown filming Nev and talking to him. Again, connoting the idea that these two filmmakers have nothing to hide and they are not bothered by the “professionalism’ of filmmaking. Another debate that could be argued against this film’s portrait of the story and it’s realism is the fact that Nev never mentioned to Megan or Angela that his friends were making a documentary on him just for fun, before any of the twists started occurring. Since his whole relationship with Angela and later, Megan, was about friendship and talking quite frequently, one could say that your friends making a documentary about you, would come up in a conversation, yet it didn’t. Unless the filmmakers already knew something wasn’t right which would make sense as to why they hid it from Angela and Megan. As another reviewer put it: “But when you tell a story that’s about false identity and self delusion and shape-shifting magic of modern media - a story that strongly evokes both real-life hoaxes and works of fiction - and you do not command the boundaries of your story with confidence, you can’t be shocked when people think you are bullshiting.” (O’Hehir 2010)! Contradicting these debates and reviews on Catfish’s documentation of the truth, there are plenty of arguing points coming from review articles. “Personally, I definitely thought that Catfish was real. I’m sure some scenes, especially the ones that were just the guys at home or going on the computer, would have been re-enacted. But according to the definition above that is what a documentary is?!” (Kir→, 2010). This article argues that people are just over-viewing the point of a documentary which is to expose certain issues in our society. They continue by writing : “I thought it was such a strong and necessary issue to bring to our generations view point that I couldn’t really care less if it was real or fake (although I do believe it was real) whether that specific instance was real or not, the issues in Catfish are most certainly relevant.” A very important point that links to the originality of documentary filmmaking. From the very beginning, “documenting” started via painting. The 1860s was the prime time when Victorian painters started expressing societal problems within their art, beginning the “social realist” era which as years went by the moving image art of documenting was born. The point of these paintings from the start were not about wether the artist painted a real life person or an imaginative one, it was about wether the meaning behind was true and real. Which is what what some reviewers are trying to explain about Catfish; that nevertheless the problem with fake accounts in our society is real and actually happening to thousands if not, millions of people around the world.! Near to the end of the film, Angela and Nev are sitting down while Angela draws Nev, he asks her questions about the whole fake family. They are in a mid shot together with certain cuts of closeups of their faces when talking. This scene definitely comes across as raw, pure and emotional. Close to the end of this scene, Nev asks Angela to talk to him in Megan’s voice. This could be seen as the exploitation of Angela due to the fact that it is clear she was very emotional and already felt bad enough. It takes away the feeling of pureness from the scene as it becomes

obvious this was another ‘spectacle’ lined up by the filmmakers, making the situation morally wrong if what Angelas and Nev went through was completely real.! Catfish was submitted to MTV after the release which was the perfect channel to screen it. The reality TV conventions remained strong through out the whole film which made it very successful on MTV. With all theoretical debate aside, Catfish used cinematography perfectly to reinforce codes and conventions of the Observational mode. The narrative however, definitely sent some theorists questioning if the representation was real and viewers, if the story was real.!

Bibliography Axmaker, V., 2015. Cinema Verite: The Movement Of Truth. [online] Independent Lens. Available at: [Accessed 8 April 2020].

Bruzzi, S, & Bruzzi, S 2006, New Documentary : A Critical Introduction, Taylor & Francis Group, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [10 April 2020]. Conley, T., 2005. Cinema and its Discontents: Jacques Ranciere and Film Theory. SubStance, 34(3), pp.96-106. [10 April 2020]. Cunningham, M., 2005. The Art Of The Documentary. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, p.60. [Accessed 8 April 2020]. Definitives, T., Choice, R., Eggert, 2010. Catfish (2010) – Deep Focus Review – Movie Reviews, Critical Essays, And Film Analysis. [online] Deep Focus Review. Available at: [Accessed 9 April 2020]. Friedlander, J., 2016. Documentary REAL-ism: Catfish!and This Is Not a Film. Cinémas, 26(1), pp.69-91. [10 April 2020]. Hutcheson, S., 2010. “CATFISH: Real Or Fake? It’S A Fake . . . Sort Of.”. [online] Very Aware. Available at: [Accessed 9 April 2020]. Kir→, V., 2010. Catfish- Documentary Analysis. [online] Movie Madness!. Available at: [Accessed 9 April 2020]. Mertz, E., Macaulay, S., Mitchell, T., Klug, H. and Merry, S., 2016. The New Legal Realism. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.244-265.

Milzoff, R., 2020. Can You Believe This? That's What You'll Be Asking After Seeing The Mind-Blowing Twists In The New Documentary Catfish. [online] Link.gale.com. Available at: [Accessed 10 April 2020]. Moon, W., 2017. Documentary and its realism. Studies in Documentary Film, 12(1), pp.43-50.

Nichols, B 2017, Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [10 April 2020]. O'Hehir, A., 2010. Untangling The "Catfish" Hoax Rumors. [online] Salon. Available at: [Accessed 10 April 2020]. Tate. 2016. ‘Le Repas Des Pauvres’, Alphonse Legros, 1877 | Tate. [online] Available at: [Accessed 10 April 2020]....