Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (2024)

Fanatical:-The-Catfishing-of-Tegan-and-Sara-(2024)
Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (2024)

Erin Lee Carr’s documentary “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara(2024)” depicts a rather exceptional instance: the Tegan Quin’s numerous forged profiles, which were used by Tegan and Sara’s band fans who got disappointed with their idol. However, more importantly, the film utilizes such an idea to widen the scope and idea of narrating the history of how fan pages turned from an interactive, engaging, and for many queer people a safe space into obsessive and parasocial fandoms. It is also very nostalgic for anyone born in or around 2000 early adolescents who were developing with Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal, MySpace, Tumblr, or even Last.FM, at the heart of the scandal. But unfortunately, the crime documentary-style fails to represent the intricate grief that is at the heart of the story.

It’s interesting that Tegan and Sara are in the title of the film together, but Tegan is the primary character, Tegan’s online persona was created by at least one of the offenders already in 2008. But still, some of them pretended to be musicians and interacted with their fans.

Right from the start, Tegan talks about their uneasy feelings around bringing this all up as it may be uncomfortable for them or their supporters. Toward the end of the film, we see how this uncertainty came about and the pain that continues to be felt.

The year Tegan and Sara completed two years of busy touring in 2011 is when the investigation started. It was also the time when they were told by their management that someone had broken into their social media and private accounts. Most importantly, someone posed as Tegan whom we have referred to as Fegan in this report – fake online profiles and emails to form relationships in inappropriate form with some of the band’s fans, and in one of the most tragic examples, a person who knew Tegan’s younger self in the Vancouver music scene – with a very alarming case indeed.

The documentary then cuts to other time periods and presents the fans that were scammed by ‘Fegan’ and members of Tegan and Sara\’s management who worked on the cases in 2011 as well as a social psychologist who addresses the issue of catfishers in broader terms. The discussions with fans are fascinating in that they show how fandom spaces in the early 2000s were important for many people, especially the young and/or queer ones. Fandom is a community and those who share a love for the same thing can become lifelong friends. Although I wasn’t a huge Tegan and Sara fan, I’ve encountered many of their early stages of the Internet where they confessions in the sense that they had bonded with people on the internet who shared similar interests.

Online fandom culture was new and Tegan and Sara have started with the phase of creating a fan base. Tegan recalls that when they first started, every night, after returning home, she would respond to all the fan emails she received during the day.

As the band expanded, Tegan would come up to fans waiting in line to get into shows, would sit at the merch stand and sign autographs for hours after gigs, and would wait in long queues to greet the fans. The self-reflective approach of the songs’ lyrics also added to that feeling of candidness which left them open to such artificiality.

It is here that the film investigates what it calls the ‘dehumanization’ of pop culture figures, how the love of certain things or people can create ownership and at times a toxic sense of it all. Most people in this demographic probably did not require the drawn-out explanation as regards the origin of the term ‘stan’, but given that Eminem’s song will be twenty-five years old next year, it will probably be beneficial to remind folks of its dark history.

In the last quarter of the film, two scenes that are otherwise uncomfortable turn out to be devastatingly sensible. One of them features a friend of the main character JT who explains how coming out has made them feel scared in the queer community for the longest time because of how Tegan embraced them. JT points out: ‘Vancouver is a small town. Music is a small town’. Despite the outward displays, many years later and on camera, they are filled with trauma from their relationships.

Tegan understands there is pain there. Although, she seems to spare blame for wrath upon ‘Fegan’ and none of it on her behavior towards JT. Such a response is an example of Tegan’s trauma. But, the way the film deploys JT also seems to be a structural issue where he is used as a chess piece for the narrative rather than attempting to show reconciliation.

Another sequence includes a stalkerish fan who called “Tara” who at one point operated a blog promoting “Quincest” fan fiction (Sorry readers, if you are hearing the term “twincest” for the first time, now my advice is not to search more on it). “Tara” during the events of the documentary seemed to be the fan with the most connections to “Fegan” and Tegan and Saw’s management as well as one of Tegan’s former relationships. Tegan and director Erin Lee Carr: during the call with TARA, the two ladies record their voices, digitally distort them, and call her to account for her horrible conduct in the past, and even suggest that TARA might be Fegan: WE They all were of course wrong.

That is a difficult watch of a scene but for all the wrong reasons, at least that’s what I imagine. Yes, “Tara” has definitely transgressed.

The idea that what occurred regarding Tegan should not have moved the singer since she is a well-known personality goes to show how someone is willing to accept that so long as there is fame or glory, even time itself is of no importance. However, Tegan does seem to have lacked any sense of self-awareness at the time and so did the filmmakers as to how they have power in the situation. How is that possible, when the rest of the film looks into how manipulation and lying through an avatar leads people to power? Tegan and Carr’s last joint interview gives us a bit more of the backstory, being the image of Tara they present seems completely different from what the image of Fegan looks like, which is all the insight they gain from the whole situation.

In the final scene, one of the stalkers of the victims of Fegan, addressed the audience that he exchanged over 2000 messages with their victims for over sixteen years. The police who are desperately looking for these offenders are still seeking people who commuted these vile acts. There is no resolution and no closure ever. When the credits started rolling, I was left wondering if Tegan actually regretted agreeing to this particular project, or if any of those fans who became victims of this witnessed this opening up as worth it.

Fandom is a subjective matter, but Carr takes a more forensic approach in the making of the film, and what’s left for the fans when they return to all these intense feelings, is mostly unanswered, as it seems, because they are not relevant to the case.

For More Movies visit Like Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (2024) on 123Movies

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top