Dysphorroria, coined within a Letterboxd list curated by user Sarah (dselwyns), is “horror built around a disconnect between the body, mind, and world,” which can be “centered around feelings of change without control, metamorphosis, and derealization.” Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is the first film listed, and it’s the ideal contender, as the horror element is not tangible; instead, it lingers and evades the atmosphere with purpose. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair follows Casey (Anna Cobb) as she participates in a role-playing game called the World’s Fair Challenge and subsequently undergoes a journey of self-realization stemming from dysphoria.
An ineffable sensation encapsulated me for hours after finishing We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. I wasn’t quite sure where exactly this feeling came from — nor could I, as a matter of fact, put a name to it — but it crept up occasionally like a reminder. This sensation for Casey manifests as dysphoria and feelings of derealization. In an interview, Schoenbrun explains that dysphoria, for them, mirrored the phenomenon of avoiding an important email in your inbox, and instead you are constantly reminded of it by the notification, except that notification happens to be your entire life. Translated almost identically, Casey undergoes this same internal struggle, as many of her feelings and tribulations are masked and thrown aside by the World’s Fair Challenge and an eerie online encounter.
The film opens with an approximately eight-minute sequence filmed entirely from the perspective of Casey’s webcam. This uninterrupted sequence pulls you into the world and the psyche of Casey, as you are promptly transfixed by Casey and her surroundings. Casey’s room is like any other teenager’s room littered with neon luminescence, posters, and other knick-knacks, like her stuffed animal introduced as “Poe.” As Casey sits down to conduct the World’s Fair Challenge, I was met with such familiarity in her facial gestures and composure. The tiredness that marked her face and mannerisms was only something that individuals who grew up in that type of environment — terminally online, as some call it: surrounded by only the mere comforts of the internet — could understand. The silence manifests heavily throughout this scene, echoing the cries of loneliness she’s trying to escape. We are only left with the occasional disquieting creaks of Casey’s chair as she settles in. Schoenbrun’s choice not to include music in the sequence is a deliberate one, as we are forced to sit in the hostile silence with Casey and just be. However, the dreamy score composed by Alex G that soon follows adds another hallucinatory aspect to this already mystifying world. The audience becomes transfixed by the happenings, with the dreamy guitar and synths guiding them further into Casey’s rabbit hole.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is not afraid to utilize horror tropes to make the audience uncomfortable. In the film’s most eldritch moments, a simple pound on the door shakes Casey at around 3 A.M.; in another instance, she encounters a harrowing, late-night neon message projected against the wall, and in an unforgettable scene, Casey unleashes a blood-curdling scream at the top of her lungs imbued in frustration. Still, the eeriest aspect of World’s Fair is simply Casey trying to find herself. Casey, like all other teens, is trying to discover herself amidst all the noise, both in her life and online space. Casey tries to conceal that noise with late-night ASMR videos, role-playing games, and vlogging. Often switching from her bed to the kitchen table — and even outside in the frigid, desolate woods — she is never too far away from some type of electronic device that links her to the internet to search for a meaningful connection, something to give her purpose. To Casey, the World’s Fair may be an opportunity to grow into her ideal version of herself. Casey believes that this game will be a different type of noise — a noise that could save her from herself and ultimately transform her. While we are never formally introduced to exactly what Casey is running from, Schoenbrun leaves us with hints. Casey’s family lifestyle at home doesn’t seem like a nurturing environment, and all around her are reminders of the isolation that she tries to muffle. The introduction to the character JLB (Michael J. Rogers) just adds to the noise of Casey’s life, which pushes her further from reality as his character encourages much of the World’s Fair shenanigans and constantly reassures her that she is transforming. At Casey’s age, this is the message that every teen wants to hear: that they are evolving, changing into anything.
Though it’s nighttime in the opening sequence, Casey wears the same outfit throughout the film — a simple black shirt and pink pajama bottoms — which introduces elements of dysphoria and her struggle with her identity. The Creepypasta videos she stumbles across either exhibit extreme performances of masculinity or femininity — i.e., a man running on a treadmill while excessively smacking himself labeled as “I can’t feel my body” and a woman illuminated in pink fluorescent lighting while applying makeup titled as “I am turning into plastic.” In another scene, Casey seemingly transfigures herself by slapping on neon makeup that completely morphs her face into an otherworldly being, further hinting at her detachment from her own body. The awkward transitory period of adolescence is hauntingly halted when Casey’s beloved stuffed animal meets his demise later in the most unsettling scene in the film. All around her are reminders of her constant struggle with who she is and what she is going to become.
Schoenbrun explains, in the press notes for Sundance Film Festival, that the film is an attempt “to use the language of cinema to articulate the hard-to-describe feeling of dysphoria.” They explain how, growing up, they didn’t know the terms “gender dysphoria,” “transgender,” or “non-binary,” as those terms barely existed. The internet is a channel for many things, like relationships and fear, but most importantly freedom. Individuals have the ability to find their voices in spaces made for them that they could have never been able to achieve in real life. Schoenbrun conveys this potential by using an RPG game and YouTube videos as the outlets for these individuals to express and subsequently find their identities. Casey undergoes this derealization-depersonalization and dysphoric journey with the help of the World’s Fair Challenge. However, once she begins to lose grip with reality, due to the physical and digital worlds blurring, she loses her sense of self on the road to self-actualization. Casey’s naivety clouds her judgment as to whether the challenge’s promise of transformation into something greater is best suited for her. This then further detaches her from her surroundings, thoughts, and actions; in a frantic daze, she films herself dancing and suddenly screaming to an upbeat pop song then vlogging in below-freezing temperatures because her mind and body are no longer in sync with one another. Casey desperately wants to shed her old skin in order to disappear into a stronger one that is in tune with her identity. Schoenbrun expounds that dysphoria for them was this sort of desire to disappear from themselves and to hide in fiction and not look any further inside themselves. In a sense, the World’s Fair Challenge is the perfect noise insulator, as Casey has the ability to hide out in this world and become the quintessential version of herself. But much like pricking her finger to donate blood for the challenge, there’s a price Casey has to pay as she loses touch with herself for the sake of trying to find out who she really is.
Casey recounts a derealization episode in one of her vlogging videos: “It was like watching myself on a TV all the way across the room…I was aware of my actions, yes, granted, I was aware, but I couldn’t control myself.” Casey describes how she always had these feelings of being outside of her own body and how the World’s Fair Challenge awoke something that was already teeming within her. Delusions rapidly fuel her descent into derealization, as she believes her existence is fake and that she’s finally transforming. At times, the audience witnesses Casey trying to ground herself with, of course, the help of the internet; ASMR videos quietly lull her away from her nightmares, and JLB attempts to push her closer to reality — although his intentions seem maladaptive. Woefully, Casey’s helpless fall into derealization is inevitable. In her daily life, she is already so far detached from society: she lives in a quiet area, and she is never around any friends or family. She is so far into isolation and discomfort that the internet is the only place that has offered her solace. This impalpable community reassures her and allows for her to have an outlet to express herself and talk to a curated audience, even though at this point it exists as a double-edged sword. Instead of the World’s Fair Challenge aiding her to truth and change, it instead propels her into dysphoria and derealization as she becomes out of touch with reality and begins to question her own existence. In Casey’s point of view, there’s an interconnectedness that exists between the digital and physical world and how, in turn, the human body becomes vessels of both torment and humanity. In other words, the World’s Fair Challenge itself is a conduit for dysphoria, derealization, and potential metamorphosis. At one point Casey says, “I swear, someday soon, I’m going to just disappear. You won’t have any idea what happened to me.” Kafka wrote in The Metamorphosis: “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” Similarly, Casey undergoes a metamorphosis, mentally and emotionally, that will forever impact her identity.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a delicate film that understands its targeted audience — internet-aged individuals — and doesn’t belittle them, but instead consoles them and explains that it understands where they are coming from. This film marks a start for the new generation to tell their story properly. Schoenbrun sympathetically crafts dialogue on self-identity and gender dysphoria for horror fanatics and internet-raised individuals to find representation and to, in part, articulate their experiences.
