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Horror

Smash That Like Button

On Brand Identity, Doppelgängers, and Sex Work

Tom Humberstone

• 5 min read
Smash That Like Button

Cam (2018) Dir. Daniel Goldhaber

Alice, a modestly successful camgirl, breaks into the top 50 before discovering a doppelgänger has gained control of her account. 

“Self-branding is an internal sort of doppelgänging. There is you, and then there is Brand You.” - Naomi Klein
“You stole my face and now I'm going to get it back!” - Alice

Cam was interesting to rewatch recently. While the film is more explicitly about the cam industry, it addresses much larger themes about the ways in which we relate to our online selves and our relationship with social media. Which, in 2023, feels like it’s in such a state of flux.

“We love social media, we love the internet, we love Twitter, we also hate it but we love it and don’t think it’s realistic to say “Stay off the internet”, but it is important to be aware that we are performing when we’re online and that other people are performing for us as well.” - Isa Mezzai

While I think Cam, rightfully, made it very clear that it’s not as simple as “social media/internet bad”, just half a decade later, I think we’re all starting to feel the effects of the enshittification of the internet (that word reeks of 2010s Twitter speak that makes my entire body cringe, but the point stands). As Kyle Chayka notes, The Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore, and I think we’re all trying to adjust how we engage with it in a way that is, hopefully, more mentally healthy for us.

In fact, the ways in which the internet has become worse are largely some of the problems that Cam raises in the first place. Rather than dating it, Cam looks extremely prescient.

“Aren’t so many of us tangled up in versions of this impulse, pouring so much time, energy, and money into perfecting, optimising, and defending our most consumable selves, despite knowing how many more pressing crises deserve our attention?” - Naomi Klein

The idea of the doppelgänger - a loanword from German meaning double-walker - has been around for a long time, with “spirit doubles” and evil twin stories being told in Ancient Egypt, and similar alter-ego concepts appearing in folklore. But there is something about the way in which we behave online that feels perfectly suited to the doppelgänger. As I mentioned in the We’re All Going to the World’s Fair post, we’ve largely accepted that we all have online and offline personas. We expect to give parts of ourselves away. We know that most of what we put on the internet will be used to train AI to better mimic us, and yet we do it anyway.

“A warning recurs often in doppelgänger books and films: Be careful about falling in love with your projection; it could well overtake you.” - Naomi Klein

These are all key to the power and horror of Cam. Alice’s agency and sense of self is completely destroyed with the appearance of “Lola” and yet the  film refuses to present Lola as an inherently malicious presence. There’s a sense that it doesn’t even know what it is doing. That it is in no more control of its actions than Alice. When Alice makes efforts to claim back control of her life, it doesn’t then follow that Alice gives up sex work or the internet. Cam is no puritanical morality play. In fact, she embraces the more performative aspects of camming with her eyes open, creating more helpful boundaries between her online and offline selves.

Because, amongst all this, this is also primarily a film about sex workers. Cam was written by Isa Mazzei who was herself a camgirl, and she explicitly set out to make Cam in an effort to make people relate to sex workers in a more empathetic way.

It’s all shot with a sensitive and considered eye. Mazzei has mentioned that people came up to her to complain about the lack of nudity and sexual content in the film - that it, as a film about sex work, shouldn’t be so coy. But as she points out: there’s a lot of nudity and sexual content - it’s just not framed for the male gaze. 

In the Information Age, I think it’s incredibly important for horror to be asking the questions that Cam does. It not only makes us think about the way we engage with the push to identify as brands, it offers some guidance on how to navigate it without losing ourselves entirely. 

“Confrontations with our doppelgängers raise existentially destabilising questions. Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be? And if enough others start seeing someone else as me, who am I, then? Actual doppelgängers are not the only way we can lose control over ourselves, of course. The carefully constructed self can be undone in any number of ways and in an instant — by a disabling accident, by a psychotic break, or, these days, by a hacked account or deepfake. This is the perennial appeal of doppelgängers in novels and films: The idea that two strangers can be indistinguishable from each other taps into the precariousness at the core of identity — the painful truth that, no matter how deliberately we tend to our personal lives and public personas, the person we think we are is fundamentally vulnerable to forces outside of our control.” - Naomi Klein
Where can I watch it in the UK?

You can stream it for free on Netflix.

Pairs well with

Doppelganger (1993, dir. Avi Nesher, available to rent for £3.99 on Apple) would make for a great double bill I think.

Drew Barrymore plays Holly, a woman who is haunted by a doppelgänger that may or may not be killing members of her family. Part nineties erotic thriller, part gnarly body horror film. You think you know what you’re getting after the first act, but I think even the most seasoned horror fan won’t predict how the final act plays out. 

While I don’t think it’s a great film, I had fun with James Wan’s Malignant, and I think the moments it works is when it leans into the giddy campy excess that Doppelganger achieves.

Further Reading
  • I’ve used a few quotes from Naomi Klein’s new book Doppelganger. All taken from this great excerpt. The book looks like it will be exploring a lot of the themes and issues that Cam was interested in. I can’t wait to read it.
  • Cam writer/producer Isa Mazzei discusses Jennifer’s Body and Cam on Switchblade Sisters.
  • Mazzei has also penned a great essay about The Do’s and Don’ts of Sex Worker Representation in Cinema.
  • Anatomy of a Scream has a good piece about whether comparing Cam to Black Mirror is fair and whether or not Cam has a good or bad relationship with technology.
  • Isa Mazzei went on to write a memoir - Camgirl - after Cam which details more of her experiences within the industry.
  • An interesting interview with Isa Mazzei and director Danny Goldhaber.
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