Fictional Reality, Wham City, and Audience Participation
I really like the dynamic between a fictional person interacting with a real person, the merge of their realities with their fictions, the unpredictability from both sides, and how it becomes really hard for the viewer to tell them apart. I'm always seeking media and artists that play with the lines between reality and fiction, and the endless ways that can be done and explored. (Am always open for recommendations as well, wink, wink)
In that realm of media about "people playing characters and interacting with real people" – which, to avoid the mouthful, I will now refer to as “fictional reality” – the projects by the art collective Wham City, namely the videogame talk show Electronic Game Information with Robby Rackleff, or EGI for shorts, and the soap opera duology The Cry of Mann and The Call of Warr, stand in a pretty interesting position.
With fictional reality, there's always a bit of an ethical concern involved with filming people without their explicit consent and/or under false pretenses. From big things like Sasha Baron Cohen playing a prejudiced character and making real people express prejudiced views in Borat, without them knowing they’re talking to a character; and Nathan Fielder in Nathan For You making small business think he’s there to help them and not make a satire out of them, to small things like Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol simply confusing strangers by telling them about their ridiculous troubles in Nirvanna the Band the Show or Diogo Defante goofing around during street interviews and making a mockery out of mainstream media in Reporter Doidão, people don’t know they’re being filmed or played with, and if they do, they don’t know the real reason as to why nor how the footage is going to be used, and they often also don’t know they’re dealing with characters, not real, serious people.
There’s also the matter of the very idea of being on camera to consider, and how it can be used to coerce, pressure or influence people into agreeing to doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Some people end up enjoying the experience, others don’t, some probably don’t even know they were being filmed, it’s a very grey, messy area, but, based on the creators I know, I consider it less harmful compared to full on prank shows, since the joke tends to be on the performers first and foremost.
But none of this is a problem with Wham City's live projects 'cuz people always known it's fictional, they're watching a show live streamed online, that they gotta call in to participate. It's all informed and consensual. The only real risk it’s getting stage fright and making a fool out of yourself, but even then, that’s completely on you and the only thing you're exposing is your voice. Even if someone doesn’t know who Wham City is or what is the nature of their shows — they used to be hosted on the Adult Swim live section (R.I.P) — it’s still clear that, even if you don’t know these are characters, this is a show, that you can participate in if you want to.
And that showcases a different issue because the performers/characters are also in a difficult position. While an (un)willing participant can just say and do whatever, it’s up to the performer to make something out of the material they’re given and turn it into something relevant to their project. And that while also dealing with the possibility of an exchange turning bad or off the rails, nobody knows who people are after all.
That’s an issue present in the “genre” in general, but Wham City is in a specially tricky situation. The shows I mentioned before are all edited, the narrative morphed later on to better fit whatever footage they managed to get, previous scenes re-shot or reorganized, reactions and interactions handpicked to best achieve maximum comedy, and clever editing to get the perfect final cut. Meanwhile, Wham City’s projects are not only live, meaning they have to work with what they’re given on the spot, but also fairly narrative, meaning they have to incorporate whatever they’re given into the story they got going, making it make sense to the characters and their universe.
And that can lead to some amazing moments, like the finale for the first Season of EGI, that relied entirely on the callers creating a messy situation and then fixing it, or some very frustrating ones, like how many of the interactions on The Call of Warr were spent with people thinking they needed to solve a puzzle and say the right things instead of just participating in the story and improvising with the cast. (Which, in fairness, is somewhat understandable. If you’re not familiar with Wham City, maybe you heard about their ARG-like projects This house has people in it and Unedited Footage of a Bear)
I don’t want to give an erroneous image of these shows, though. The audience calling in are segments clearly defined in the show, the callers aren't simply barging in, and since Wham City is a comedy collective first, the main goal of these calls is to create humour and be entertaining. There’s a clear structure and, in the soaps’ case, even the unpredictability and interruption of the callers is considered thematically. There’s still an overarching narrative that essentially will occur regardless of the audience input, but the callers can still make or break the show.
For better or worse, the participants build the work alongside the artists. That’s a true thing for any type of fictional reality media, I feel like, but it’s specially so for these shows by Wham City. To open your creation to be changed by someone else, someone you don’t even known, and to have to work around the uncertainty of other's input and to incorporate that interruption into a story where you’re both influencing each other is just very interesting and creatively brave to me.
If you’re interested, you can watch EGI officially on their youtube channel, I talked a tiny bit more what I love about it in this mastodon post; and archived versions of their soaps The Cry of Mann and The Call of Warr are on the Internet Archive. Outside of their fictional realityness, these are just plain fun and great shows.