Interpersonal Communication Concepts on Display in Catfish

Upon watching the film, Catfish, so many different emotions are felt. Whether you were watching it for the first time with zero expectations, or if you already knew the premises, it is still a roller coaster ride of expectations and feelings for the people involved. To sum the film up, a man named Nev gets involved with a family online and builds a relationship with the mother, father, oldest daughter, and youngest daughter through common interests. Nev begins to develop romantic feelings for the oldest daughter who is around his age and the feeling is shared. Through a series of events, Nev learns that the oldest daughter, Megan, whom he is interested in, along with all the mutual friends and family members he has been communicating with are all a fabrication. In all actuality Nev has only been communicating with one person and that person is Angela, the mother, posing as herself, Megan, Angela’s husband Vince, her other daughter Abby, and several other people. Despite the lies and deceptions, real communication concepts are observed, and several different examples of each are displayed. The movie Catfish highlights the importance and relevance of interpersonal communications concepts of listening types, nonverbal communication, and language between Nev and Angela.

In Catfish, listening skills and types are displayed throughout. Nev and Angela (as Megan) communicated strictly through digital means whether it was Facebook, Instant Messenger, email, and phone calls throughout their relationship. Everything they knew of each other was through listening to what the other person had to say. They did not know each other physically or in person. Several types of listening were displayed in the movie, and Nev transitioned from one type to the next at certain points in the film. When Nev first began speaking to this family, he was primarily displaying informational listening. Informational listening can be defined as listening to take in new information and a passive process. Nev at first took everything this family told him to be true and believed what they were telling him without critically analyzing it. When “Abby” sent him paintings and said she painted them he believed it, he listened to Angela say that “Abby” painted it and he took it as fact. Once Nev started to become suspicious of this incredibly talented family, he began to display critical listening. With critical listening, the goal becomes to evaluate and analyze the speaker’s message rather than passively take it all in. Nev began to suspect that this family was not being entirely honest with him, so he began to be very careful with what questions and statements he made so that he could gauge their responses and analyze the validity. When Nev discovered the song that “Megan” wrote for him was stolen from another artist and presented as hers, he played dumb and asked “Megan” about it so that he could criticize and evaluate her response. When Nev began to display critical listening, he started to realize all the gaps in the stories he had been hearing and saw the signs that what he was hearing was not truthful or realistic. He would not have come to these conclusions with informational listening only. The last type of listening shown in the movie, was empathetic listening. Empathetic listening is considered the most challenging form of listening because the listener attempts to identify with what the speaker is saying and to “put themselves in their shoes.” Once Angela had been exposed as a liar and fraud, Nev genuinely wanted to understand why she did what she did and not simply point the finger and embarrass this woman. Nev learned through empathetic listening that the real Angela had a difficult life and had to put a lot of her dreams and interests on hold because of her family. Nev learned that Angela posing as her other family members was a way of escaping from her reality. While Nev may not have agreed with her methods, through empathetic listening he understood why she did what she did.

The next interpersonal communication principle seen in the movie was the importance and subtleties of nonverbal communication. While one may wonder how nonverbal communication is relevant in a movie about digital communication; it highlights how deeply rooted nonverbal communication is ingrained in society. It shows the shortfalls in what can happen when nonverbal communication is removed from a situation. Nev may have never been fooled in the first place if all his correspondences had been in person because nonverbal communication examples like kinesics, proxemics, eye contact, emblems, and facial expressions may have tipped him off that something was a lie or being hidden from him. When all those things are removed from a conversation, it becomes impossible to augment what one is hearing with what they are seeing as well. The only nonverbal cues Nev could rely on during his phone calls with this family were vocal characteristics such as tone, pitch, rate of talking, etc. There is still a lot that can be learned from those vocal cues, but people rely more heavily on nonverbal communication as opposed to verbal communication so when one removes all the visual effects of nonverbal communication, it becomes a handicap.

Lastly, one can see how language can help and or hinder one’s credibility in a movie about relationships real and fake. Initially, Nev had no reason to doubt the credibility of anything he had been told by Angela, “Abby”, and “Megan”. At first their relationship was purely platonic and based on mutual interests of art and photography. It was not until Nev started developing romantic feelings for “Megan” that it upped the level of importance language had on their relationship. Once Nev had become suspicious and started analyzing everything that was being exchanged, Angela whether as herself or one of her personas began to start utilizing equivocations to avoid talking about things that would expose her. When Nev questioned “Megan” on the validity of her actually singing and performing “original” songs, she dismissed it as it’s a cover of a song and that its basically the same thing. Most importantly with how language was utilized in Catfish was how it conveyed comfort and affection for Nev and Angela. While their relationships were a deception and fake, the feelings they felt for each other were real and the relationships provided them both with something they were missing in their real lives. You could see real pain in both their eyes once the lies were exposed and nothing was left but the real Angela and Nev, there was still a connection there. The words may not have been true, but the feelings were and it really highlighted how important language is for people and how it can connect and disconnect us from one another.

In summary, Catfish was not just a movie about a guy who got lied to on the internet, stories like that happen everyday. What Catfish is really about is the importance of interpersonal communication and how it affects people in big and small ways. Catfish shows us that there are several ways to listen and there is a difference between hearing someone and listening to someone and that listening can be done through texts and emails the same was as it can be done audibly. The film also shows how vital nonverbal communication can be and how without it, one can be led to believe things they may have otherwise doubted had they had all nonverbal tools at their disposal. Lastly, the movie showed how language connects people and how language can be used with so many different intentions whether it is to build a connection, seek comfort, deceive, or expose. There is a lot that can be learned about interpersonal communication and see the relevancy and importance of many concepts by watching Catfish.

References
Floyd, K. (2017). Communication Matters (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Joost, H. & Schulman, A. (Directors). (2010) Catfish, Universal Pictures