On Saturday, February 13th, Anni Hi’s 90-minute one woman play, Scandalishious: Behind the Camwhore, premiered at Open Lot Nashville, a collaborative studio, venue, and exhibition space on the East side. Scandalishious dramatizes the real-life experiences of performance artist Anni Hi (a.k.a. Ann Hirsch), who delved into the realm of YouTube in 2008 to attain status as a “cewebrity slut.” Hi crafted an alternate persona, “Caroline,” who uploaded more than 50 videos of herself dancing provocatively to songs by Boyz II Men, Fiona Apple, Britney Spears, Kate Bush, Lil Wayne. There are also frighteningly shallow videos of Caroline discussing “what I like, like who I am and stuff,” in which she, speaking in an unnaturally high-pitched voice as she catalogs belongings she thinks shed light on her personality. Caroline, sitting before her webcam in pajamas, says “I like scrunchies,” in one of these “more personal” video diary-like entries.
Now, after more than a year of performing as Caroline, Anni Hi has “killed” the alternate persona. “SCANDALISHIOUS IS DEAD,” the tagline to Caroline’s “official goodbye video” on her YouTube Channelreads, “I AM SORRY TO ALL MY FANS.” Now that Caroline is “DEAD,” as her Gmail status continually reads for all her fans who try to contact her, Anni Hi is free to expose the reality behind Scandalishious’ internet presence. “In 2008 I began vlogging on YouTube as eighteen-year-old college freshman Caroline, aka Scandalishious. Through dance, song, emo whining, and copious ass shaking, I, as Caroline, found myself at the center of a viral movement, filled with dedicated fans and cynical haters,” Hi says. The dramatized recollection of particular moments in her vapid digital journey are played out live in SCANDALISHIOUS: Behind the Camwhore. The show “chronicles [her] journey through this space of anonymity, desire, and personal expression,” Hi says.
During the performance, Hi, as Scandalishious, dances provocatively in front of her webcam in short dresses, in leopard print spandex pants and bikini top, in scanty bra and panties. A projected live feed of her desktop documents everything—including audience presence—as Caroline talks annoyingly to her internet audience, dances for them. The audience is privy to private videos submitted by fans to her—men dancing in skin-tight unitards, men dancing in suit and tie, men offering erect penises to her, the goddess of their YouTube existence. Caroline gchats with fans and enemies. Suddenly, a narrative is established and the real-life audience finds Caroline caught up in a cyber affair with a married man-fan. This affair weirdly bleeds into Caroline/Scandalishious’ “real” life as “Ann.” Simultaneously, Caroline is the victim of attempted blackmail by a fan-turned-predator “thegunshow69” who threatens her with real-life consequences for acts performed via webcam in the seeming privacy of cyber-life.
Sitting directly behind Hi/Caroline throughout the entire performance, my face is often projected onto the large screen of her desktop. My face is there, suppressing laughter and an eyebrow raise as Caroline humps the floor manically in cherry print boy shorts and lace push up bra. The faces of others appear around mine, privy to the scene as Caroline engages half-heartedly in a dirty conversation with a middle-aged cyber suitor. The multiple levels of audience involvement in the production reinforce the idea of the internet as being an unsafe, overcrowded environment that passively allows exploitation of women to the tenth power. That is the point, Hi says. “The play explores female sexual and emotional web presence, how it can be beneficial and how it can be harmful for the women involved.” Similarly, the show probes another major problem that the internet has caused—disconnect between the “real” space and “cyber” space. On this, Anni Hi says, “It questions the existence of performativity itself as well as power structures as they exist on the internet. The performance plays with the idea of my ‘real’ identity as it intersects with my own vulnerability and culpability."
Currently traveling the country to show Scandalishious, Hi can also be seen on VH1’s Frank the Entertainer in A Basement Affair. Her participation in the show can perhaps be considered an extension of the Camwhore work. Like all reality dating show participants, she didn’t originally go on to actually woo a 32-year-old I Love New York 2 castoff. Unlike other participants, however, she wasn’t necessarily looking for fame per se-- she wanted to explore the social construct of the famewhore by becoming one. “…I went on the show to do a wacky performance piece, attempting to play up the ridiculousness that is reality television reality television and the characters it produces, a satire on a genre that is already a satire of itself,” Anni Hi says, “I was interested in the way reality television is reproducing female stereotypes at an alarming rate—using ’real’ people to validate these stereotypes’ existence. But ultimately, I wanted to become a Famewhore. My writings to come about my experience on the show will further explore not only my own performance on the show but also how production casts Famewhores and then shames them for their innate and reasonable desires. By placing the blame of any potential disingenuousness of the show onto the female contestants, production is able to obscure their own presence and give the show a more believable illusion of “reality.” It is precisely this "reality", which obfuscates production's hand in the show, that works to continually perpetuate negative stereotypes of women.” A Basement Affair appears on Sunday nights at 8:00 PM ET.
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