Catfish: the TV Show e a atualidade da comédia dos sexos

Abstract

Reality shows are one of the main products of the entertainment age. Beyond the television frame, such programs move the social imaginary on social networks and, consequently, outside of them, gaining a continental scope from what happens throughout each broadcast episode. This study does an investigation based on an episode of the reality show called “Catfish: The TV Show” that shows the fraud in digital relationships. From the suspicion that dating a fake profile, the people contact the presenters to find the profile user. In this investigation path through the meeting of the digital partner, a question is asked: Is the profile of this person I'm in love with is fake or true? Question that addresses the research work of this study. Thus, the actuality of love is investigated with an emphasis on what this program shows about the comedy of the sexes in digital relationships. Based on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and studies on the status of the contemporary image, the anamorphosis of the researcher's gaze was used as a methodological operator in the treatment of the research object. The comedy of the sexes that links the love experience in Catfish questions the relationship between technology and the subject of the unconscious, placing the effect that technological objects produce on the experience of contingency as an ethical dilemma. The promises of digital life are intertwined with the experience of love, making it not only the result of a common malaise in the relationship with the other, but a hole in the logic that the digital space partially realizes. Thus, Catfish shows that the dance of love is linked as an experience that chouse the promises of digitalized life.