In the week since writing about “Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma”, I have remedied two wrongs.
Firstly, I am now aware that the prevalence of fried chicken and sweets was not a comment on the “empty calories” of slasher horror film franchises, but more of the human experience, of having something comforting on hand during unsettling experiences. With horror not been a genre I frequent all that much, I guess I haven’t seen enough to make the connection as intended.
Secondly, I have now seen “It Happened at the World’s Fair” - a Blu-ray of the first in Jane Schoenbrun’s “screen” trilogy was on order but hadn’t yet arrived. Given that Schoenbrun was willing to make “Camp Miasma” on a smaller scale if unable to secure its full $10 million budget, “World’s Fair” is an example of what can be achieved on a principal photography budget of only $100,000.
Casey is a teenager shooting a video, announcing she is taking the “World’s Fair Challenge”. In a single seven-minute shot, we are Casey’s screen and camera as she begins the video, starts over, says “I want to go to the World’s Fair” three times, pricks her thumb until it bleeds, watches a video that sends strobes of light across her face, then says she will provide updates if there are any changes - her channel name, “CaseyWorldsFair”, suggests it has been set up as a (public) vlog or journal. These “changes” are shown in videos from other people - one person’s body no longer feels pain, and another feels they are turning into plastic.
Usually, online “challenges” don’t last beyond the video the participant makes, but expecting the challenge to have consequences is an interesting extension. Before online content creation became professionalised, there was a sense of wanting to belong to something in posting videos online, of making your mark, or at least a dent, in the world. It was helpful to be reminded of that vulnerability.
Casey’s videos attract the attention of another poster, “JLB”, who sends out a video on their channel - not one directly - “you are I trouble, I need to talk to you”. When they do, via Skype (2003-25), he claims to be worried, but advises her to keep making videos to record any further developments. Keeping their camera off during the call, we, and only we, then see JLB is a middle-aged man, seemingly obsessed by the “World’s Fair Challenge” and watching other people’s videos about it, as the YouTube-like streaming site plays videos from other people inspired by it to make dramas and video games.
Casey’s own videos are slices of life, like most vlogs, interrupted by sudden actions – sleepwalking, screaming while dancing, and ripping apart a teddy bear. Some videos by others undergoing the “challenge” mainly talk through the experience, although the one time I got the feeling that this was “real” was when one person’s vlog about a skin condition cuts to an angle where we already could see there was no camera, as they pull out a roll of “Admit One” tickets from their arm.
At no point is the “World’s Fair Challenge” explained – we are only shown how it is done, and what “effects” are reported, not what happens there. One video showed arms reaching out from a screen and pulling someone through it – the “World’s Fair” is a stand-in for somewhere you don’t want to go. Ironically, the 1964-65 World’s Fair, held in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York City – one shot of the Unisphere, which remains at the park, made me think they could be referring to this World’s Fair – was notoriously under-attended until its last few weeks, as people suddenly had a fear of missing out.
The real world is difficult, lonely and boring. Casey is never shown interacting with anyone, except with her father shouting from off-screen. JLB, seemingly a rich man with a large, expansive house, is left watching videos either on his phone or in his bedroom. The signs of life are in the videos made by Casey and others, through which we experience them for much of the running time, and our perception of them is therefore moderated by them. Indeed, Casey cuts off contact with JLB when she makes it clear he is taking it too seriously, telling him that “Casey” isn’t even her real name.
A postscript of JLB recounting their meeting Casey in real life in New York City a year later, after she spent time in assisted care living, later starting in a theatre program. JLB suggests that, when Casey said she had re-entered the World’s Fair after cutting off contact with him, it was his prayers that had helped to pull her back from the brink. But, we had just seen a shot of Casey, one year ago, looking at a strobing screen and saying, “I swear, some day soon, I am just going to disappear, and you won’t have any idea what happened to me” – she could easily be speaking to the audience on her channel, as that channel simply stops posting new videos, or is deleted entirely, leaving a mystery for the “lost media community” years later.
I can see how “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” speaks to a dysphoria, an incongruence between a life lived online and the real world. Schoenbrun is on record as saying this was based on their experiences of the internet during the 2000s, being able to exist without a physical form. I didn’t have that same experience using the internet, perhaps because I already knew that everything I saw there was a representation of one thing or another, and I am only on the other side of the screen. It was what I took away most from this film, and I am glad to be reminded of it.
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