Cam — Double double ego trouble

How would you feel if one day you tried to login to your online social media accounts, only to discover that they were locked and your online persona had taken on a life of its own? Pretty scary stuff, eh?

Cam is an obvious commentary on the nature of camming and is based on writer Isa Mazzei’s own experiences as a cam girl, but what I’m most interested in is how this movie reflects the increasingly ego-focused nature of our society, and what happens when the ego is not in balance with the rest of the archetypal self. (spoiler alert: it’s bad.)

Let’s talk about Cam (2018) and its portrayal of the ego run amok.

Mental Health is Horrifying is hosted by Candis Green, Registered Psychotherapist and owner of Many Moons Therapy.

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Sources:

Hey final girls — I’d like to take you on a transcendent journey into your psyche through — you guessed — horror movies! More specifically, horror movie monsters and villains. Join me on a very special dark moon/solar eclipse this April 8 for the Final Girls Club where we’ll be exploring How Monsters Show Us Our Guts. Informed by Jungian exploration of myths and fairy tales as portraits of psychic terrain, in this workshop, we will explore how we project our unconscious shadows onto our favourite horror monsters and villains, and imagine the creation of our own monsters as an act of emotional catharsis and reclamation of self. Early bird final girl rate is in effect until March 1. Register by visiting manymoonstherapy.com/finalgirlsclub.

Order The Horror Concierge: A Mental Health and Horror Tarot Readings + Film Reco. Order yours HERE.

This Horror Screenwriter Subverted Every Shitty Sex Work Trope by Frederick Blichert

Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East by C.G. Jung

The Interpretation of Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz, Kendra Crossen 

Transcript

Welcome ghouls to today’s episode of Mental Health is Horrifying. I’m your Horror Barbie host of darkness — Candis Green— Psychotherapist and all around spooky bitch podcasting from my bat-filled cave in Toronto, Canada. I think we can all agree that we spend A LOT of time online these days, right? And we kind of have these personas online that (let’s be honest) can often be quite different than who we are in our real lives, with real people, who really know us. But what would it be like to imagine a world where all of our online personas, all of our online avatars and egos, whose main source of sustenance are likes and follows broke free from our control, and began to run wild and do exactly as they please? What would they do to survive — or thrive? Pretty terrifying, huh?

On today’s episode, we're going to imagine that world through the 2018 tech horror Cam — the story of how Alice, a camgirl’s identity is like stolen, or possessed, or anthropomorphized or something and begins taking on a terrifying life of her very own. 

I really love this one. It’s beautifully shot and is an obvious commentary on the nature of camming and is based on writer Isa Mazzei’s own experiences as a cam girl, but what I’m most interested in is how this movie reflects the increasingly ego-focused nature of our society, and what happens when the ego is not in balance with the rest of the archetypal self. (spoiler alert: it’s bad.)

Okay — so let’s get right into it. Let’s talk about Cam (2018) and its portrayal of the ego run amok. AMOK AMOK AMOK!

Movie synopsis:

Alice Ackerman works as a camgirl on a website called FreeGirlsLive under the name "Lola_Lola”. Alice is COMMITTED to breaking the top 50 rank on FreeGirlsLive, and has started performing more extra stunts and antics on her platform in order to get viewers and push her rank up. So during one livestream, Alice stages a stunt where she slits her own throat and blood gushes everywhere and it’s gross and it looks super real — but then surprise — she’s fine! — and this greatly increases her rank. Alice has two loyal viewers, Barney and Arnold (also known as "Tinker"), whom she regularly engages in private video calls with. She soon learns that Barney will be in her area next week, and agrees to meet up for a date. Alice also notices Tinker in a local store and looks surprised and uncomfortable, not realizing that he has moved near her.

In an attempt to break the top 50, Alice continues to push her own boundaries with what she feels comfortable doing on platform. Choosing to normally stick to pretty innocent-type content on her platform like eating a steak dinner in a cute outfit, or doing a workout in another cute outfit, Alice begins resorting to more and more extreme stunts — like teaming up with fellow camgirl Fox to do a live show from the Cam Girl Clubhouse will riding the Vibratron — which is a really intense vibrator — while Fox controls its intensity level.  Ouch. The show is a huge success and brings Alice’s rank up to 47. But we quickly find out how fickle these rankings are — with rival cam girl Princess, who has a strict no nude policy, promising to get naked if Lola/Alice’s rank drops to 60. And as such, Lola/Alice drops out of the top 50.

One morning, Alice finds that she cannot access her FreeGirlsLive account, but that her channel is actually live and currently streaming somehow. Lola_Lola is still active and currently streaming. Curious, she logs into a spare account to watch the stream to find that the channel has been taken over by someone with her exact appearance and mannerisms – even the studio is an exact replica of Alice's studio in her home. Alice contacts the site's customer service, believing that they are replaying old shows, but they assure her that this is impossible. When Alice messages the channel, the "Lola" on-screen responds to her and addresses her directly, proving that the stream is in fact live. Alice confides in her fellow camgirls about the situation, and accuses rival camgirl Princess_X of being responsible, but Princess swears her innocence.

Alice continues to try and access her FGL account, as well as create a new one, but all her attempts fail. At Jordan's birthday party, a fight breaks out between him and his friends after they happen across one of Alice's streams and ridicule her, which causes her mother to inadvertently find out what Alice does for a living, which she had been hiding from her. A humiliated Alice panics and leaves. That night, the fake Lola hosts a show in which she stages her own suicide by shooting herself in the mouth. Upon seeing this, Alice understandably loses it and she contacts the police, who are completely unhelpful and judgemental and just ask her gross questions about her work and leer at her. When the fake Lola announces an upcoming joint show with BabyGirl, Alice unsuccessfully attempts to get in contact with Baby, though she grows suspicious when Baby uses the same phrases in her stream that the fake Lola did.

During her date with Barney, Alice cleverly manages to get him to reveal Baby's hometown. She excuses herself to the bathroom to further investigate on her phone, but "Lola" goes live right at that moment. Alice uses the information provided by Barney to find Baby's real name, which is Hannah Darin, and discovers that the real Hannah had passed away in a car crash six months prior. How can that be possible if she is online streaming like right now though? Just like fake Lola? What is going on?! She searches for other camgirls that she assumes to be doppelgängers and notices that each of the fake girls have Tinker as their top friend. She seeks him out at a motel he mentioned he was staying at earlier, tearfully begging for his help. He offers to let her stay the night at his motel. Alice wakes up in the middle of the night to find Tinker in the bathroom, masturbating while in a private cam session with fake Lola. An enraged Alice demands answers from him, who reveals that he knows about the replicas, but insists that he is not behind them. Alice then talks to the fake Lola from Tinker's computer, who appears to be oblivious to the fact that they are identical. She angrily leaves, ignoring Tinker's pleas with her to stay.

Alice goes home and sets up her vanity mirror, camera, and television in a position that creates an illusion showing multiples of her. She joins a private cam session with the fake Lola (who once again doesn't recognize her) and suggests that they go live together. The fake Lola enthusiastically agrees and viewers chalk up the two Lolas to special effects. Alice challenges Lola to a game – they must imitate each other; whoever the viewers think does the best wins. If Alice wins, she gets to ask anything of Lola. They start off my doing little things — who blows a kiss better? Who does this dance better? But then things escalate real quick — Alice dramatically smashes her own face into her table, breaking her nose and subsequently that of the fake Lola who stole her face anyway so now she broker hers… theirs. The online voters declare real Lola to be the winner of this weird game and as a prize, fake Lola has to give her the password to her account. She does, and quickly delete the entire account just as fake Lola’s account reaches the #1 rank.

Some time later, Alice's mother does her makeup for her in preparation for an upcoming livestream. Her mother asks Alice what she will do if the same thing happens again, to which Alice responds that she will simply continue to recreate her accounts. It is revealed that Alice has gotten a fake ID containing the name "Emily Ramsay." She creates a new account under the name "EveBot." The movie ends just as "Eve" begins her first ever stream.

Movie background info:

Cam is a 2018 psychological/tech horror film directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by Isa Mazzei, with the writing largely inspired by Mazzei’s own work as a camgirl. And for those who aren’t familiar — caming is a type of work where a performer performs and streams via an online medium adult content including modelling, play-acting, or those of a sexual nature for a paying audience of one or many.

It stars Madeline Brewer, Patch Darragh, Melora Walters, Devin Druid and Michael Dempsey. It is a co-production between Divide/Conquer, Blumhouse Productions and Gunpowder & Sky. 

Much of the story was drawn from Mazzei's own experience as a cam girl. The story element of Lola having her image stolen came from Mazzei having her camming videos pirated and reposted without crediting her. Alice's interactions with the police officers are taken from Mazzei and other sex workers' experiences of being dismissed and hit on when reaching out for help. According to Mazzei, the question one of the police officers asks her, "What's the weirdest thing you've ever had to do?", was actually asked of her by several Hollywood executives in meetings once they learned that she had previously worked as a cam model.

This is of course a very important lens with which to view the movie through — that is, the commentary that is being made about the experiences of online sex workers having their images pirated and reposted, the lack of safety and regard provided by law enforcement and powers that be, the precocity of the gig economy and of course — the whole Black Mirror-ness of it all when we think about AI’s very real ability to deepfake, copy, and reproduce likenesses online in perpetuity forever.

And if that’s the world that we live in, one where only the most industrious, the ones who hustle and break themselves at the altar of the machine the most survive— of course it makes sense that we find ourselves in a reality where we create personas that are willing to do exactly that for us. 

There are clear references and inspirations drawn from horror directing royalty Dario Argento with the use of colour and light that washes over entire scenes to denote emotion throughout the film. And it’s interesting to notice how Argento’s use of colour from the 70s and 80s intersects very well with the sort of online Tumblr aesthetic of the 2000s in a lot of the more current tech or social media horror films like Cam that have become more prevalent within the genre like Host (which I did my last episode on), Sissy, or Influencer. 

Our online personas:

*background music*

How would you feel if one day you tried to login to your online social media accounts, only to discover that they were locked and your online persona had taken on a life of her own? What would you be most worried about? What would she do? How does she threaten you — I mean the real you, the lives in 3D and not just the online persona that you have created for yourself?

Perhaps she would stop at nothing to get likes and follows, endorsements, views, and shares, and to achieve this, she would transgress your boundaries, use people, use you, because she is so hungry for more of what she wants — know me, love me, exalt me. 

Would this online persona even recognize you? You, her creator? Or would you become meaningless? Would she have become the perfect image of what everyone wants her to be, and would she be able to tell the difference between what they want, and what she wants? Would it be like how Lola’s doppelgänger cannot even recognize Alice staring back at her, having become the alien Other and the persona has become Narcissus — so enraptured by his own image that he drowned in it. 

The persona/ego:

The ego, or the conscious realm, is all about how you see and understand yourself in relation to the world. It’s who we present ourselves as in society. Within this, we find the persona. This is the version of ourselves that we share with the world and it’s the one that knows how to follow the rules that society has laid out. The persona develops as a social mask to contain all of the primitive urges, impulses, and emotions that are not considered socially acceptable. 

The primary goal of the ego is to make one’s presence known and admired. This in itself, like most things, has a light and shadow side. Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be known and admired — this is how we make our way through the world, relate to one another, and create meaning. However, the shadow side to this is one that achieves the desire for being known and admired through what psychologist Irvin Yalom refers to as false meaning — referring to myths without any healing or sustaining power. This type of meaning is typically fleeting. At times, they may help people copy and maybe survive (like, no shade here), but false meanings have no power to address or transcend the deeper, more existential concerns of the human condition. Examples of false meaning include money, power, or status. 

The conscious realm — the one that we tend to live in every day — makes up only a very small fraction of what we experience as humans; with the unconscious holding even deeper layers of meaning, and parts of self. Our unconscious realm is vast, and it is constantly experiencing and storing things within its layers. Whereas the collective unconscious refers to universal symbols and knowledge that represent common human experiences and emotions (things like “death is scary” and “rainbows are happy”), the personal unconscious is just that — specific to the experiences of the individual. It contains a large variety of emotions and memories that the person has rejected or repressed.

When we become too ego-focused or are too much in service to the ego, we tend towards the familiar and we don’t want to “do the work” so to speak of tending to our messy and mysterious humanity and shy away from matters of the unconscious.

There are numerous ways we see the elevation of the ego in Cam. Firstly is one of Lola biggest fans — Tinker. He is completely obsessed with the idea of her — this online persona that she has created — and even takes the opportunity to participate in that persona when he helps her to stage the stunt where she slits of her own throat live on her channel. But when Tinker and Lola actually meet in person for the first time, he is awkward and sweaty, and doesn’t really know what to do or how to relate to this full, real woman standing in front of him. 

Alice/Lola (it’s even confusing to know how to refer to this dopplegangered girl!) ’s obsession with her own ego is really shown in her desire to break the top 50. Achieving this rank will confer a few things to her ego — status among her peers in a general sense, but also more specifically above her nemesis Princess. This rank, presumably, will also make her more money which is certainly something that is important to her as a single gal trying to make it out here in the world. And again — nothing wrong with wanting to make money and live a comfortable life. Alice/Lola enjoys being able to shop online for items for her home, and buy nice gifts for her brother on his birthday, but there’s a cost to all these things too — and not just monetary. 

Transcending the ego:

I would argue that societally, we live entirely too much in our egos. And to a certain extend this makes sense right — the ego can be looked at as a sort of “command centre” for the psyche — carrying out how we relate to the world on a day to day level, making selections, choices, and judgements, and at the forefront of that the persona is putting forth who we want to be known as in that world we are a part of. These are all necessary and relevant functions of the ego, HOWEVER, you throw social media in there, and technology, and human disconnection, and world class levels of human avoidance of well… basically everything… and we are left with a society that is so ego focused and driven, that the rest of the psyche — parts like our archetypes, our shadow, and the unification of the self — are sidelined. What did Carl Jung say about ignoring the unconscious? “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate.”

We need healthy, balanced, well-integrated egos or else we cannot be whole. This is why Lola begins to spiral. Once Alice/Lola realizes that a doppelgänger of her persona has been created and is running wild online, the real her — let’s definitively call her Alice — realizes she cannot exist as a whole Self without this important part of her. She cannot live without her ego — none of us can. She makes numerous attempts to try to reclaim it — by reaching out for help, by trying to bargain with it online, by breaking the barriers between her online and offline selves and revealing her true identity to her family — and ultimately when none of that works, Alice resorts to annihilation — saying “you stole my face and now now i’m going to get it back” and violently smashes her face, resulting in the smashing of the ego doppleganger’s face, as a way to blot out the self and start over again with her new persona — Eve, a name chosen in reference to the first woman. The beginning. With full control of this new persona, Alice can begin rebuilding her sense of self in relation to the world and, in time, to herself. 

Transcendent Functions

So there’s this idea of transcendence, or a transcendent function, which is where the Self is achieved through the unification of the conscious and personal unconscious. It is a process and a method at the same time. The production of unconscious materials of the psychic terrain are referred to as spontaneous process — these are things like our dreams or daydreams, spontaneous emotions or facial expressions, or reflexive responses, whereas ; the conscious realization is a method. The function is called ‘transcendent’ because it facilitates the transition from one psychic condition to another by means of the mutual confrontation of opposites.

The cooperation of conscious reasoning with the data of the unconscious is called the ‘transcendent function…. This function progressively unites the opposites. Psychotherapy is an example of a transcendent function that makes use of the method to to heal dissociations between the conscious and unconscious self. This is why your therapist will often ask you annoying questions like “how did that make you feel?… no… how did that really make you feel??” because the psychotherapeutic realm is one that seeks to penetrate through the egoic and protective self that may be like YEAH I’M TOTALLY FINE WHATEVS and get to the heart of what’s really going on, which often lays deeper in the personal sub or unconscious. 

Dreamwork is another example of a transcendent function because while dreams themselves are spontaneous processes of the unconscious, the work with and being with a dream using the conscious mind is what bridges the space between, and creates a meeting of the Self. And we make sense of dreams in a collective and personal way — we may look to universal symbols or understanding to give something context, and then we move it into the personal — as dream elements are often symbolic of one’s emotions. 

Stories, myths, and fairytales are also wonderful examples of transcendent functions and really interesting ones too because in addition to working with materials from the personal unconscious, they include another layer or the human psyche while is the collective unconscious, as they are processed through the culture and time in which they are created. The characters contained within are universal and archetypal figures we all carry within us and have encountered — like the Hero, the Innocent, the Magician, or the Outlaw.

Just look at horror movies for example — they are reflective of the collective experience of the the time in which they were created. Sorta like Cam — this is a 2018 movie that is part of a cannon of tech horror that is reflective of our terminally online, social media obsessed culture that filmmakers quite naturally were able to find the horror in. 

Stories, myths, and fairytales are spontaneous and dynamic processes of the psyche, and serve as clues as to what’s going on in the collective as well as the personal. They then get processed through the culture and passed through the screens the consciousness — just like dreamwork. In this sense, it can be interested to consider stories, myths and fairytales as collective dreams. 

We dream and we create stories because our psyche is always trying to find balance between the conscious and the unconscious, the ego and the shadow. This is an act of emotional compensation. So when this function is removed and all we are left with is ego? The self — represented by Alice in this film — panics! And flips all the way out! And tries to resolve this disconnect by any means necessary including smashing her beautiful face into a desk! Not great!… not. Great. 



Final Girls Club — Dream Walk With Me Ad:

Hey final girls — I’d like to take you on a transcendent journey into your psyche through — you guessed — horror movies! More specifically, horror movie monsters and villains. Join me on a very special dark moon/solar eclipse this April 8 for the Final Girls Club where we’ll be exploring How Monsters Show Us Our Guts. Informed by Jungian exploration of myths and fairy tales as portraits of psychic terrain, in this workshop, we will explore how we project our unconscious shadows onto our favourite horror monsters and villains, and imagine the creation of our own monsters as an act of emotional catharsis and reclamation of self. Early bird final girl rate is in effect until March 1. Register by visiting manymoonstherapy.com/finalgirlsclub. 


Conclusion: 

We all live in our egos. We cannot access the full unconscious realities of who we are — of our infinite potential and not just for the good or the great, but for horror and darkness — lest we be crushed under the largeness of it. We cannot exist in our truth and vulnerability at all times, so we create personas to protect us so we can function and get by. We all do it — I’m doing it right now. I’m showing you who I want you to see. You don’t really know me, not really. Who really knows you? Do you know you?

Outro:

And that my ghouls is the story of Cam. Not sure about you but I’m checking all my accounts to make sure I have two factor authentication turned on — right?! Or maybe we all just need to throw our phones down a well and talk to a graveyard instead. Whose with me? Thank you for journeying into the depths with me and I hope to find you in the darkness again soon. 

Visit my website manymoonstherapy.com to register for the the April edition of the Final Girls Club — How Monsters Show Us Our Guts — where we will explore how we project our unconscious shadows onto our favourite horror monsters and villains and make up our own monsters! You can follow me on Instagram at @manymoonstherapy and you can also learn more about me and my services through my website manymoonstherapy.com. 

OR you can also howl at the moon and I will hear your call.

Bright blessings.