Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara
(USA, 99 min.)
Dir. Erin Lee Carr
Programme: Centrepiece (World Premiere)
At Hot Docs 2023, I hosted a conversation about It’s Only Life After All, a documentary about influential – because they are groundbreaking out queers – folk rock duo The Indigo Girls. Director Alexandria Bombach appeared onstage with Indigo Girl Emily Saliers joining via Zoom. As soon as Saliers’ face appeared on the big screen, a packed house of millennials—note, not teens—went wild, screaming and clapping. And Saliers wasn’t even in the room.
I was reminded of the passion lesbians have for their pop culture heroes. True, queer artists don’t have a monopoly on fan fanaticism. But representation of lesbianism among famous people in 1992, when the duo released their first album was thin. And it wasn’t much heavier when twin sisters Tegan and Sara became major stars with their 2004 mega-release So Jealous.
They were always generous with their fan base, Tegan especially, who even in their earliest days would work the lineup at the clubs they were about to play and met up with fans after the show. But what made them unique was that, unlike the Girls at the time and most bands, actually, Tegan and Sara had an immense online presence that they mined generously, staying in touch with their admirers via chat rooms, keeping them informed of tours and recording schedules.
It came back to haunt them, Tegan especially. She soon became aware that someone had hacked her email, stolen her identity (an activity called catfishing) and had begun to communicate with fans, creating faux friendships, some flirty, and eventually sharing fake stories, often negative, about her. When the perpetrator starting sending the duo’s demo tapes – not available anywhere else – and eventually images of their passports to fan Julia, she thought that was weird and, identifying herself as a friend of Tegan, sent them to Tegan and Sara’s manager Piers Henwood. He thanked her but responded that Tegan had never heard of her, upsetting Julie immensely. At that point Tegan knew she was in trouble, more so when she discovered that there were numerous fans who were the catfisher’s victims.
Erin Lee Carr, director of Fanatical, sets out to find out the identity of this mysterious fake – renames Fegan, a portmanteau of fake and Tegan – not just because Tegan was plainly vulnerable but because the fans drawn in by the fake felt wholly abused by the experience. Many of them were open to the ruse precisely because Tegan and Sara had made them feel a part of something and validated their queerness. The catfisher knew this and exploited it.
Fans will appreciate footage of the duo performing for rapturous audiences, and the use of montage to display the myriad text messages exchanged between the catfisher and victims is effective, but more interesting are the doc’s essential two threads. One features interviews with the victims, which are tender and revealing, especially one with JT who to this day has not fully recovered from the upset and who , once she realized she’d been fooled, wished the real Tegan had reached out to her to express her regret. Later in the movie, the two do reconcile, although strangely, Tegan never apologizes outright.
The second thread involves Carr and band manager Henwood’s attempts to uncover the catfisher, which offers the sole amusing moment in the film when the two think they’ve been successful after searching for maybe 10 minutes. They weren’t. But a year and a half later, they do think they have their prey and convince them to have a phone conversation. Though this communication does not make for a full triumph – this is not a fiction film – the possible culprit does reveal the blinkered thinking of someone who does not sense the harm catfishing can do.
Digital abuse is always a gripping theme, especially given the rise in awareness of online bullying, but what makes Fanatical uniquely compelling is the charismatic presence of Tegan, whom the camera loves, and whose distress at how she and her fans were exploited feels wholly authentic.
Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara premiered at TIFF 2024.
Get more coverage from this year’s festival here.
