Catfish (2010) is an excellent example of what I consider to be the technophilic tendency of Internet movies. The film does not bear an antagonistic relationship with new media, though it is interested in replicating the broad impact of those emergent digital technologies which have made one fundamental condition of film viewing, looking at a screen, a pervasive activity in daily American life. How to interpret the value of a digital life is up to the spectator; the film, however, presents it to the viewer with affection.
In its obsession with digital screens, including laptop and desktop computers, cell phones, and gps navigators, Catfish poses interesting questions for those interested in the ontology of cinema. According to Baizan, the innate power of film was the automatic capture of impressions of light reflected off of the world it looks upon. What happens, then, when the cinema's gaze turns towards a virtual space?
One thing that happens is an aesthetic shift towards the values of an amateur camera. Another is that the film often adapts to the interface of the new technology. We see the former in the lack of depth or consistent color values, the off-center framing and unsteady hand of the documentary filmmakers, each of which connotes both the democratizing power computer digital technology has wielded over the arts and a (faux)authenticity, the honest there-ness of the naive camera. When at the end of the film the image is sucked away into the lower-right hand corner of the frame, it is a nod to the computer interface, a minimized window that has similar dual connotations. Other instances of interfacing appear when the film allows a cursor, in the form of a hand (!) or an arrow, linger on the image, a signal that the film has given itself up, adopting the aesthetics of the computer screen as its own. The mise-en-abyme is only accentuated by the fact that I watched my copy of the film on my computer. When the thought occurs to check whether it is the film's cursor or my own, I am instantly made aware of the digital essence of Catfish, a film created with and about technology similar to that which I possess and with which I access and review the film. Again, the film forces the question upon ontologists: Is this the appropriately ontological capture of a digital cinema? I can't help but think of Vertov's anthropomorphic dancing camera, itself depicted in Man With a Movie Camera (1929) as a projection viewed by the guests of the Proletariat Theater, an historical antecedent to the interfacing I am describing here.
Interestingly, Catfish doesn't merely interface, as do many earlier internet films. Rather, Catfish depicts the computer screen through cinematic techniques of panning (across Google Maps screens, themselves apparently digitally enhanced), and point-of-view shots that allow for close-up (so as to magnify and reveal the pulsing pixels of a monitor) and shots of
the technologies themselves as an element of mise-en-scene (on the dashboard of the car or across the laps of the characters). The point-of-view shots are interesting because their subjectivity extends to the audience. Motivated by a character's look, the mise-en-abyme makes the point of view belong all the more to the spectator. Screened in a theater, I imagine recognition of the cursor has a similar effect to that of the Lumiere train, causing audience members to instinctually move their right hands to point the arrow off-screen. I find this close-up technique disappointing, however. After all, the nature of looking at a digital screen is not one of deep, penetrating gazes. Instead our eyes are constantly searching, skimming, easily distracted and quick to move on. A truly realistic interfacing would have to acknowledge the competition for attention inherent in all of our digital activities.
It may be the case in other internet films that the investigation of technology is designed as exposé or admonition, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Catfish. The narrative logic of the film implies that the steady, close gaze is not meant to register a concern about the ubiquity of the digital in contemporary American life. It might seem so at first, especially given that the film works to embody all the suggestive anonymity of a Facebook contact. The filmmakers and their friend, Nev, seem to spend every waking moment in front of a screen. It is hinted that Nev is a professional photographer, but the ballet he photographs reaches the viewer primarily through the digital photos he uploads to his computer. The majority of the film takes place in enclosed spaces, and indeed Lev’s bicycle is a sad object, hanging far above the ground in the background of his well-wired garage. In the world of the film riding a bike seems analog, backward; the kind of thing that might happen along the driveway of the Pierce family, who in the film represent the stereotype of America unplugged.
The emphasis on a technological divide, especially in developing the character of the Pierces, emphasizes that the film calls not for a resolution to or recognition of the saturation of technology it depicts, but rather it suggests the necessity of "appropriate" absorption. Catfish presents an updated (and presumably real-life) incarnation of the archetype of the internet film: a young, computer-savvy male whose familiarity with new technologies is empowering. In his trip to Ishpeming Lev seems to embody the necessity of face-to-face relationships, but the humanity of the film is technophilic, too. His confrontation with Angela is about correcting her online behavior more than it is about bringing friendship into her life. The lesson of Lev's compassion is that life without technology is difficult, filled with delusions, self-flagellation, the tragedy of mental retardation, failed dreams, sorrow and interpersonal disconnection. Not only does the film depict an analog existence as traumatic, but it presents Lev's response as digital- Messianic: if you reach out through technology you will be found and saved by technology. The epilogue reassures the viewer that Angela has deleted the Facebook accounts of her various personas and replaced her own profile picture with an image of herself; she even represents herself as an artist online (as the video artists behind Supermache surely did and do), and has thereby made it possible to earn hundreds of real virtual friends, though she will likely never eclipse the virtual popularity of the handsome star of the picture. Indeed, Lev is portrayed as every bit her superior in the modern world.
No, the gaze Catfish casts towards the digital world, towards the technology through which it was born and through which it will be distributed and viewed, is a reverential one. It is no surprise, then, that the most interesting sequence of the film is a travel montage composed primarily through interfacing. The sequence depicts the filmmaker’s trip to Michigan where they plan to use the Pierce family Sunday breakfast tradition as an opportunity to pay a surprise visit to Angela. Their flight to Chicago is captured in the Casablanca ('42) / Indiana Jones ('81,4) illustrated map style rendered through a Google Maps interface. After landing they take a car from Chicago to Michigan and their drive is depicted through an interface with Google Maps Street View function. The camera-as-computer screen presents a jolting advance across Highway 94, a crude animation of sequential still shots digitally photographed, uploaded, and brought into a blurred approximation of motion by the mouse clicks of the filmmakers. Intercut between the plane ride and the Street View animation are a few moments of live footage, including the only human interaction the filmmakers have outside of the Pierce family and themselves. (Interestingly, this meeting is arguably the most impersonal in the film. The waitress interviewed briefly relates the story of her sister’s experience of a online relationship, but there is no dialogue between her and Nev or the cameramen, nor is she named. The camera cuts to the three men in the car, and here, too, is an absence of communication. The men are not speaking and indeed not moving, as a camera pans to ascribe all movement to the vehicle they are in, closing in on the spinning hubcap before giving way to the aforementioned map interface.)
The montage sequence is a beautiful moment in the film, a celebration of the filmic potential of digital media. It is worth noting here the pride the film takes in its computer origination, as on my copy it is preceded by a digital reproduction of a countdown leader, with the smiling Macintosh symbol appearing for an instant in the bottom right-hand of the number 6, both a wink and a salute. Catfish utilizes digital production techniques to depict increasing presence of technology in American life. Its method is perfectly matched to its subject, as if recognizing that, as the world changes, the art must too. It is a call for a new conception of ontology in the digital cinema, one which allows the camera to retain its ability to “affect us like a phenomenon in [digital] nature” (Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image").
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