The world paints a portrait of online communication to be meaningless and inauthentic because of the distance between us and lack of face to face conversation. What we struggle to realize is that now, with the constantly improving technology we have, people have found new ways to interact with those who they possibly wouldn’t have been able to connect with before. This relates to the film Face2Face on Netflix, which centers around the rekindling of a relationship between two former friends in kindergarten.
Everyday high school students Madison and Teel video chat with each other. They formerly knew each other as children when they both lived in Michigan, but since then Madison moved to Los Angeles and they lost contact. As they continue to talk the audience learns that Madison acts very strange towards her father, she loves to party, and is very open to adventure. This contrasts Teel who has zero friends, doesn’t tend to leave his room very often, and is very introverted. A large part of the movie follows Madison trying to help Teel gain at least one hundred friends on Facebook. Despite their differences however they can build the friendship they once had. It is also pretty inspiring that they could develop this relationship so quickly after their separation from each other.
Even though the movie is only largely set through their computer screens, this allows us to see their conversation in the same way they do. We develop feelings for these characters even though we can only see them through a screen. As time passes they start to expose each other to their secrets. While watching, you could get the impression that Teel had feelings for Madison as he complimented her frequently and did not take advantage of her sexual advances towards him. Because of this Madison starts to fall for Teel, trying to strip tease for him to get her point across. Teel completely opposes because he admits that he is gay. Madison is taken back but accepts him for who he is. However, not too many other people are as accepting.
Through their screen to screen relationship, Teel tries to record a message for Madison where he approaches his crush after he refused to speak to Teel after they kissed. Tragically Madison had to watch Teel get beat up by his crush’s friends as he watched. Madison consoled him and tried to influence him to start a gay straight alliance at his school, but when she shared the link to the website on his Facebook page he spazzed. He cried that everyone would know he was gay and stopped talking to her for weeks.
After some convincing and persistent calling she was able to get him to forgive her. This leads us then to Madison’s turn as her secret is far more intense than Teel’s. This is important to mention because what he does in response is the entire basis of how they fully became best friends in the end, despite the fact that their main interaction was online. WARNING: THERE IS A SPOILER AHEAD, PROCEED WITH CAUTION. ALSO, MAY BE A TRIGGER FOR SOME.
One-night Madison asks Teel to watch her sleep at night. He felt weird about it but did not protest. After a while we see Madison’s father come into her room and molest her. Teel is horrified and calls the police, but her father clears it up.
Madison is told that she can no longer speak to Teel because she feared what her father might do. Despite the distance Teel decides to travel all the way to California to help her. In the end he convinces her to run away with him back to Michigan to escape the brutality from her father.
This film is important because it shows how connected two people can become online. They were only previously friends when they were in kindergarten, but they were still able to connect on a deeper level. In the end, Madison helps Teel gain new friends and Teel helps Madison escape abuse, all of this done on social media. So, with this film in mind, the idea that social media is inauthentic and meaningless can be directly challenged as there are many people who can relate to the relationship Teel and Madison have in this film.
