There’s a kind of collective fantasy that lies at the centre of live-streaming. A bargain between the streamer and the viewer not to break the illusion, but the power dynamics between the two are vague and shifting. The viewers give “stickers” to express their appreciation or try to manipulate the streamer, while the streaming tries to fulfil the viewer’s wishes in the hope of getting more stickers without being too obvious that they’re letting the viewers lead them by the nose.
What Cho Jang-ho’s Streaming (스트리밍) suggests is that the snake is eating its own tail and the desire for streaming success has led the streamers to make ever more questionable decisions and the viewers to demand increasingly extreme action which may cause harm to the streamer or others. There are several points at which we might wonder why Woo Sang (Kang Ha-neul) does not appear to have alerted the police nor do his viewers do so for him. They sit and watch passively while another streamer apparently gets up and takes her own life, some wondering if what’s just happened is for real and they ought to try calling someone or if it’s just another bit.
We might even wonder if any of this is “real” or just a game being played for the benefit of the viewers who each join in with what amounts to a kind of scavenger hunt as Woo Sang tries to track down a missing streamer, Matilda (Ha Seo-yoon), who went missing after he recruited her to help him investigate a series of murders. In his interactions with Matilda, we can see Woo Sang’s own insecurity. He’s clearly brought her on as a glamorous assistant, but she keeps upstaging him and he’s finding it increasingly hard to hide his irritation. When they role play what they think might have happened between the killer and his victim after they snuck out of a nightclub, he takes things too far and shows a dangerous capacity for misogynistic violence. Some of the viewer’s concerns that he may have harmed Matilda in some way in revenge for her taking the lucrative top spot on the streaming charts away from him may be understandable.
But at the same time, Matilda doesn’t quite seem to be on the level either and may, in fact, be using Woo Sang to further boost her popularity and stay number one which would allow her to keep 100% of takings rather than pay the 50% commission to the streaming service. Despite his critiques of other streamers, Woo Sang too is shown to be an amateur detective exploiting the serial killer case for his own gain while somewhat cavalier about Matilda’s safety after using her in his video. In truth, solving the serial killer case might be quite bad for his business because without it Woo Sang wouldn’t have any more material for his show. But then, while shows like this exist, content may also rise to meet them and the film almost implies that true crime gives rise to a kind of bloodlust that simultaneously glorifies the host and the killer who are profiting in terms of notoriety even if the streamer is taking all the money.
“When interest becomes excessive, it turns into an obsession,” Woo Sang tells his viewers somewhat disdainfully of a man who may have become fixated on the public image of “Matilda”, though it might as well apply to himself and his audience of armchair detectives. “Staging means death,” he intones, though there’s no way to know he hasn’t made all this up himself and it wouldn’t really be surprising given the streamers’ obsession with being number one. Some of the viewers maybe be sceptical, but the truth is they’re all playing this game too and it’s all good fun until it’s not, leaving Woo Sang and his audience in way over their heads. Or then again, maybe his old-fashioned battle of wits with a Moriarty-like killer is just that, which would explain Woo Sang’s strange conviction that he will honour the terms of their agreement not to kill Matilda until the deadline expires even though Woo Sang thinks he’s seen through his attempt to throw him off the tracks. A little muddy in its messaging, the film nevertheless makes plain that it’s Woo Sang that has become dangerously obsessed and deluded by the persona he’s crafted for himself into believing that he alone can bring a killer to justice.
Trailer (Korean subtitles only)
Windows on Worlds 