
Really, I'd been waiting something like four-and-a-half
years to use that Ayn Rand joke I dreamt up. Four and a half years for that
moment.
Conclusion: My life blows. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll turn
out to be just a FaceBook hoax, so the dumb Cleveland existence won't have to
hurts so much.
Of course, the alleged FaceBook hoax everyone is talking
about isn't me, alas, but that supposedly perpetrated on Heisman Trophy winner
Manti Te'o, whom I am given to understand is an athlete in some kind of game
called football. Loses most of my interest right there (this town is Browns
Town, yeah, right), except that the name of the trick sprung on the
jock-in-trouble-du-jour is called "catfishing."
Where that reference derives seems to be the only thing not
discussed at length in the cyber-drama. Catfishing, as a social-media
imposture, derives from a 2010 Universal Picture release that was really big
about three years ago at the Sundance Film Festival (which I sometimes wish
were a social-media hoax itself). Even with the buzz it generated at the time,
I'll still bet that more people have been following the Te'o catfishing than have
seen CATFISH. Fortunately I got a look at it, and here's the report.
It's a fairly suspenseful, if misrepresented,
"reality thriller" that I did have to wonder if it would not have endeared
itself to Universal so much if its premise hadn't approached some of the
raunch-fulfillment of that same studio's loathesome AMERICAN PIE franchise before
suggesting a steamy-erotic-stalker-genre vibe. In the feature, handsome young
NYC photographer Nev Schulman is being lensed by his filmmaker-brother Ariel
and their fellow roommate Henry Joost. If the backstory is to be believed, the
Schulmans and Joost were doing a DIY documentary on the life of a pro
photographer when what happened proceeded to transpire.
Nev becomes an online crush for what looks like an entire
family of successful and desirable females in Michigan (hence my AMERICAN PIE
conspiracy theory). The hunky shutterbug is enticed by e-mails, phone calls and
gifts from one daughter who seems to be Lolita-esque art prodigy, and from
suggestive entreaties by the mom, who is model-gorgeous in her FaceBook pix.
This goes on despite - or because of - foreboding clues
that not everything about these ladies is what it seems ("They are
complete psychopaths!" says Nev, detecting one falsehood). So the trio of New
York City males do what any trio of New
York City males would do (I guess), which is trek to Michigan
to check the online facts and unravel the truth.
[SPOILER ALERT] Sure enough, a swanky regional art
gallery the mother supposedly runs is a vacant storefront. A horse farm
connected to the household is just a mailbox. While there are some elements of
truth, the family of high-achieving sex bombs turns out to be an elaborate
World Wide Web fantasy, concocted by a stoutish, middle-aged, tragedy-burdened
housewife, whose husband is on disability and whose son was born with birth
defects. Naturally, she wasn't expecting Nev
and his entourage to turn up on her porch.
But nobody gets hurt in the end by all the no-sex, lies
and digital-video. And one has respect for the filmmakers, who forgive the ruse
and philosophically accept the object lesson in social-media fakery and deceit
like real gentlemen. Or...is that just what they want you to think?
The title "catfish" comes from a throwaway line uttered by the husband (who seems to take the whole thing with enormous good humor). So, should "catfishing" enter the Oxford
English Dictionary, this is the film what done it, and you might want to check out CATFISH yourself. As for ATLAS SHRUGGED, parts 1 or two, I have no experience, and shouldn't you Objectivists just read the novel anyway? Seriously, my Ayn Rand bit
was terribly clever, don't you think? Still, my life blows.
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