'Kayfabe: What Wrestling Can Teach Us About Hyperreality' (July 2020)

This 14 minute film, originally published on YouTube in July 2020, explores the concept of 'kayfabe', a term which originated as carny slang indicating a deception being run on an audience. By 2020 we thought it had become a useful way of understanding why no-one trusts politicians any more, and held the key to understanding the massive popularity of larger-than-life characters like President Donald Trump.

We are still locked inside a strange cycle of simulation and willing self-deception: one that has amplified itself to extraordinary levels. The insistence that Donald Trump is a liar and a fraud continues to be hopelessly undermined by the fact that politicians are liars, and that politics itself is a fraud. Trump, this film argues, has simply elevated the simulation to a new level, stepping through the 'fourth wall' of the political performance to advance a new, 'hyperreal' and deeply weird politics.

Welcome to the kayfabification of everything.

Written & Directed by: Jamie King (https://twitter.com/jamie_jk)
Edited by: Hasan Waheedi (https://www.instagram.com/hassomatic)
Assistant Editor: Oliver Crockett
Music Supervisor & Original Music: David Triana
Additional Music: Jamie King

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