(Every month, I choose a horror film to shine a spotlight on and dig into. For the month of May, I selected the Netflix digital thriller Cam.)
In the 1983 cult horror film Videodrome, director and
writer David Cronenberg chose to introduce his film's female lead,
Nicki, as an image through a camera in a way that presents a double
meaning: She is presented as an image through Cronenberg's camera to
Videodrome's
spectators and as an image projected through the technology at the
center of the film's plot to Max, the film's male lead. The purpose
of the decision made here is to demonstrate that Nicki is not a
person, but rather an avatar. Her image has been commodified in order
to both seduce the protagonist into the technology's grasp and to
lure Cronenberg's intended audience further into the film. This is
driven home when you contemplate that Cronenberg cast Deborah Harry,
a musician whose image is well known to the point where I can
(rightfully) refer to her as an icon, to play Nicki. When you put all
of this together, it's clear that Cronenberg used postmodern outlets
to establish that Nicki's role in Videodrome
revolves around using her, to borrow a term coined by film theorist
Laura Mulvey, "to-be-looked-at-ness" to appeal to both the character
Max and to Cronenberg's intended audience.
Actual legend Deborah Harry as Nicki in Videodrome (1983)
So,
what does Videodrome have
to do with the movie Cam?
Well, cut to 2018: Netflix releases Cam,
a horror film written by Isa Mazzei and directed by Daniel Goldhaber.
Cam introduces its
protagonist, Alice, the same way Videodrome introduced
Nicki: As an image shown through a camera. Initially, Alice seems to
be presented in the exact same fashion as Nicki: A commodity presented to be
consumed by both male characters within the film and to an assumed
male audience to hook them into watching the film. The choice by
Mazzei and Goldhaber to make Alice a sex worker, specifically a
camgirl, reinforces certain expectations that Alice could be a direct spiritual
descendant of Nicki. That is, until Alice is seemingly harassed
repeatedly by a "visitor" on her website's chatroom whom
demands with cash that Alice harm herself with a knife. Which leads
Alice to slit her own throat, seemingly killing herself...until it's
revealed that the "suicide" was staged by Alice and one of
her regular customers, Tinker, in order for her to make money and
ascend in popularity on her website. With this twist, the same
postmodernist method that Cronenberg used to establish Nicki's role
in Videodrome as a
passive commodity is used by Mazzei and Goldhaber to establish Alice
as Cam's active
protagonist. The choices that Mazzei and Goldhaber make throughout
the entirety of Cam
combine postmodernism with feminism to birth an effective horror film
that follows in Videodrome's
footsteps while building its own
identity lined with new new flesh.
The amazing Madeline Brewer as Alice in Cam (2018)
One
of the choices that Mazzei and Goldhaber made with Cam that
allows the film to shape its own identity is its use of postmodern
concepts throughout. One such concept is the idea dubbed by film
theorist Fredric Jameson as the waning of affect. The waning
of affect is, in a nutshell, the decline and erasure of an object's
ability to present meaning, something that can be done both
accidentally and purposefully. The waning of affect is present
throughout Cam, including through the character of Lola. To
begin with, Lola is literally an object created by from an algorithm
from the website Alice does her work on and only appears human for
two reasons: One, because Lola is modeled after the very human Alice
and two, for the purposes of the website using this human image to
titillate and seduce male spectators, very similarly to how the
technology in Videodrome makes its avatar a human to entangle
Max in its plans for him. Next, Lola, as an object, initiates the
decline to the meaning of Alice's original work and online persona.
Lola, existing purely as a passive commodity, lacks the humanity of
the woman she is a reproduction of and, as a result, removes the
meaning from Alice's work except for the active titillation of male
spectators. The efforts of Alice to put depth into her online persona
has been replaced by the shallowness that Lola is solely capable of
offering.
In
addition to the waning of affect, the postmodern ideal of radical
difference is another that, like the waning of affect, can be
found in Cam's content. Jameson, in his text Postmodernism, or
the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, discusses that radical
difference is when a "former work of art, in other words, has
now turned out to be a text, whose reading proceeds by differentiation
rather than by unification." This is definitely germane to Cam,
as the plot of the film is dependent on the separation of Alice into
two. Initially, the separation of Alice is symbolic as tries to
separate her lives online and offline. This symbolic separation is
best exemplified in Alice's reactions to Tinker online and offline:
In a scene immediately following the opening sequence described
above, Alice has a short video chat with Tinker in which we see her
making sure to act bubbly and eager to please her customer. Even when
she has to end their chat to talk with a different customer, Alice
makes sure to maintain her performativity towards Tinker. A few
scenes later, when Alice catches Tinker spying on her while she's
shopping at a convenience store and talking to a former classmate of
hers, she reacts in stunned silence and fear and looks none too
pleased to see the customer offline. Alice, online, acts happy and
shameless, while Alice, offline, is guarded and reserved in regards
to her work.
Alice & Tinker online vs. offline in Cam
Then,
once Lola is created later in the film, the separation of Alice
becomes literal and has a radical effect on her: Alice's online self
has been split into its own entity that becomes an exaggerated
version of Alice's performativeness. Alice, herself, then becomes a
(justifiably) exaggerated version of her offline self: She becomes
more fearful as the predicament escalates and forces her into more
unwanted situations, and tries to maintain her reservedness in
regards to her work until she can't conceal it anymore in her offline
life when Lola's performances get bootlegged and her brother's
friends expose Lola to Alice's family, whom assume its
Alice they're seeing. The radicalness of the difference between Alice
and Lola comes to a head in the climax when Alice and Lola are
engaging in a battle via webcam. To be precise, it comes to a head when
Alice breaks her nose on camera, something that is shown in bloody detail. When Lola has to repeat per the rules of their battle, her
repeating of Alice's action is shown by the camera glitching and
distorting until Lola has the same wounds as Alice. It is by this
radical difference that we see the full extent of the difference
between Alice and Lola, and it is also by this radical difference
that Alice is able to defeat and delete Lola as the audience
witnessing the battle crowns Alice the winner for actually breaking
her nose in full detail. However, the film ends by showing that Alice
has changed to the extent where the film ends with her restarting her
career under the guise of a new persona, Eve. One of the meanings of
this ending is to show us that Alice has embraced radical difference
and is now proceeding by accepting difference over unification by
totally separating herself into two selves: Alice and Eve.
Finally,
Mazzei and Goldhaber apply postmodernism to Cam on a meta
level: Specifically, through their decision in casting Madeline
Brewer in the main roles of Alice and Lola. Jameson discusses in
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism that
"Postmodernisms have in fact been fascinated precisely by this
whole 'degraded' schlock and kistch, of TV series [...] and the
grade-B Hollywood film." This reflects their decision to cast
Brewer whom, before Cam's release, was known for her work in
TV series. Although interestingly, despite Jameson trying to claim
that postmodernists consider television to be "schlock",
Brewer has worked in multiple series that are considered the
opposite, including Orange is the New Black, The Handmaid's
Tale and Black Mirror. In fact, Goldhaber has discussed in
interviews that he and Mazzei were inspired to approach Brewer about
acting in Cam after Goldhaber's father saw her performance in
Black Mirror and singled her out to them. So, while Cam
definitely has a fascination with TV series that checks off a
postmodern box, it is of note that it is not the type of series that
Jameson claims, but rather the "prestige TV" that has
cropped up in the years since Jameson published his writing on
postmodernism. It is also worth noting that the casting decision of
a "prestige TV" actress like Brewer in Cam echoes
the decision to cast Deborah Harry in Videodrome: As mentioned
at the beginning, the casting of an iconic celebrity like Harry as
the avatar of technology looking to lure a man for devious purposes
is no coincidence. It can be argued that the casting of Brewer, who
appears regularly on TV screens in popular TV series, as one
character who makes her living performing on camera and another
character who is used as the avatar of technology luring men for
capitalistic purposes, is also not a coincidence.
Now that we have established that Mazzei and Goldhaber's choice
to utilize postmodern techniques in Cam that allow it to begin
to establish its own identity apart from Videodrome, we can
now explore another choice that allows Cam to fully craft its
new new flesh: The decision Mazzei and Goldhaber made to incorporate
feminist film techniques. This includes the film's playing with
gender roles: Traditionally, it has been observed in film that men
and women tend to have specific parts in the story to play, precisely
that male roles are active and female roles as passive. As already
stated, Cam defies those roles from the first scene by
establishing Alice as the film's active protagonist, giving her
control of the technology she uses for her career and, thus, control
of the narrative. With Alice in charge of the narrative, her control
pushes the men within the film into passive roles. Tinker, who is the
closest the film has to a male lead, tries to break out of the
passive role Alice has assigned for him by attempting to stalk her in
real life. Alice demonstrates her hold over the narrative by refusing to meet with him outside of the internet.
The playing with gender roles is to the extent that Alice's active
control is only threatened by other women whom inhibit the same or a
similar space to Alice: In one scene, Alice is performing a show in the vein
of a romantic dinner, everything goes as planned until another
camgirl orders the male customers to leave Alice's show to attend
hers with the promise of nudity. Alice's active role is temporarily
stolen by this rival, until she swiftly makes the decision to upstage
this rival by performing a live sex show with a friend. With that,
Alice restores her active control, although it is ultimately temporary as
Alice's decision to ride a painful sybian-esque sex toy is the
inciting incident that results in the birth of the film's actual
antagonist for Alice: Lola.
As mentioned above, Lola usurps Alice's active control and forces her into
a passive role for a large portion of the rest of the film. There are
several interesting things to pick with regards to Lola and Cam's feminist film techniques: The first is
that her creation comes right after the aforementioned sex show Alice
does in which she rides a sex toy to try to boost herself on the
website. Lola is created after Alice uses a phallic sex toy on
herself, which allows for an argument that Lola is born out of
Alice filling the void that a lack of phallus caused. Thus, to paraphrase a concept that Laura Mulvey wrote about in her text Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Lola could be considered
Alice's child and, now that Lola has been created, it means that the website has considered Alice's use to it to have ceased now that she is
a "mother" of sorts. The second is that when Alice is
riding the sex toy, the camera focuses mostly on her face as she moves in pain from the sex toy while trying to appear turned on for
her audience. Mulvey also wrote in the above text that women sometimes are "no longer the bearer
of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylised and fragmented
by close-ups, is the content of the film, and the direct recipient of
the spectator's look." Is that not what is being done to Alice?
She is being fragmented into pained close-ups of her face as she
tries to perform for her spectators, which results in her being
robbed of her active control of the narrative by Lola. Finally, it
interesting to note that although Lola has gained the active control
that Alice had, Lola uses that control to give the active role back
to her male spectators and put herself in a passive role. While Alice
is shown to have restraint and structure with her presentation, Lola
is created to be an object purely for the male gaze alone. Lola has
no restraint, performing shows that Alice would not.
The "birth" of Lola in Cam
With
Lola now having control over the narrative, the central conflict of
the film becomes Alice's race to defeat Lola and regain her power
within the film's narrative. There are several set pieces where Alice
is put into the role of the passive spectator that she formerly put
her male customers into. To paraphrase Mulvey, Lola's enforced
inactivity for Alice has bound her to her computer as another of
Lola's spectators. This is best demonstrated in a set piece where
Alice watches Lola perform a work out-themed show and spends a large
amount of money to get Lola to spank and hit herself with a cat
o'nine tails. This sequence is interesting as it causes another
contradiction: Lola is the one with control, yet she is passive in
her performance. Alice is bound to a passive voyeuristic role, yet is
active in paying Lola to hurt herself. A similar contradiction occurs when Alice
eventually seeks help from Tinker and another male customer, Barney,
to figure out what exactly Lola is and how not only she, but multiple
other camgirls, have been duplicated by this technology. Technically,
Alice seeking help from two of her male spectators is giving them the
active role in being the helpers and is putting herself in the
passive role of needing their help. Yet, with Alice being the one to
seek answers and trying to solve the mystery behind Lola, she is
still the protagonist of the film and Tinker and Barney are in
passive supporting roles to her active lead.
This
directly leads into the climax where Alice goes live on camera to
fight Lola with a Simon Says-type game where Lola has to copy Alice's
exact action. The climatic battle escalates until Alice breaks her
nose: Lola does not mimic Alice's action exactly, thereby giving
Alice the victory and restoring her active control which she uses to
delete Lola's account, which also deletes Lola for good. As with
everything else in Cam, this climax has much to unpack: First,
it is interesting that Alice defeats Lola with the decision to break
her nose. After Alice and Lola both perform staged suicides, it is a
genuine act of violence Alice enacts upon herself that allows her to
defeat Lola. While the performative suicides still pandered to the
voyeuristic gazes of their male spectators, Alice committing a genuine
act of her violence that could potentially impact her "to-be-looked-at-ness" is what rejuvenates her active control.
The second item of interest is Alice's use of the video camera as her
weapon to defeat Lola. While some could argue that a video camera
mounted on a tripod can be considered a phallic symbol of power that
Alice must use to defeat her antagonist, one could also argue that
the video camera on its own is a vaginal symbol. While the phallic sex
toy she used on herself resulted in the birth of Lola gave Lola
power, it is the vaginal video camera that Alice must use to regain
her power and destroy what she has helped create. Finally, it is of note
that after Alice has deleted Lola, Alice chooses to completely reboot
her online persona. This results in Alice birthing the new Eve
persona. However, unlike Lola who was created by technology, Eve is
born entirely out of Alice's restored active control. The film ends
with Alice/Eve beginning their first show, in total control of the
film and their to-be-looked-at-ness.
Alice wins back control from Lola in Cam
To
reiterate, when David Cronenberg made Videodrome back in 1983,
he made the choice to introduce the film's female lead, Nicki through
a camera as a double entendre: To present her as an image to the
audiences of the film and to the male lead, Max, as an image created
to represent the technology at the center of the film in its attempt
to seduce him to its side. Cronenberg uses postmodern techniques to
demonstrate that Nicki's role revolves around using her "to-be-looked-at-ness" to appeal to both Max and to the audience of
Videodrome. When Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber made Cam
in 2018, they introduce the film's protagonist, Alice, in the
same way Videodrome introduced Nicki. However, Mazzei and
Goldhaber quickly subvert expectations some may place on Alice by
having Alice perform a staged suicide on camera with the aid of one
of her male customers. With this twist, Alice is granted an active
role within Cam that contrasts with the passive role Nicki
plays within Videodrome. Mazzei and Goldhaber use this to set
the stage for their film to build off of Videodrome's
postmodernism by combining postmodernism with feminism, thereby
transforming Videodrome's new flesh into Cam's own new
new flesh.
Long live the new new flesh of Cam
No comments:
Post a Comment