OBEY! screened at Panic Fest, 12 April 2026
The entire life – both real and virtual – of online influencer “Mom2theMax” (Paige Phillips) revolves around her adopted dog Max (OpieQ). For after being told repeatedly by her to “Obey!”, Max presses a button (that electronically sounds out the word ‘bitch’) on a communication mat for the first time, and the video of this event goes viral. Seeing opportunity, Mom builds an entire business on canine training and communication clips, with Max her star, model and guinea pig. “I believe that all dogs have the potential for communication,” Mom says to camera in one of her videos, “We as owners just have to listen deeply and treat them as equals.”
The problem, though, encapsulated in the all-caps title of Jordan Wippell’s short OBEY!, or even in words like ‘Mom’ and ‘owner’, is that this is not a relationship of equals but of exploitation, and Mom2theMax hardly lives up to her own stated principles. Mom is imperious and arbitrary in her demands, ignores Max’s hints and requests, and even fails to give him the treats that are the promised reward for his obedience. When Max is killed in an accident, Mom’s grief may be genuine, but it is not clear whether it is more for Max himself, or for the collapse of her revenue stream. Yet when Max’s mostly invisible spirit returns to speak to her through the buttons on the communication mat as though it were a ouija board (with a 36-word vocabulary), the (séance) table will turn, as the newly empowered dog will face its Mom with the wrongs she has done him.
This hilariously horrifying short concerns a power struggle between species and across the vale of life and death. Not just a good but a smart boy, and with an acute sense of fairness, Max metes out bitter truths one word at a time, and demands justice and reprisal in terms that the ‘bitch’ herself laid out. With Max’s crudely direct verbal remarks juxtaposed to the stream of insipid online commentary that Mom’s site receives, OBEY! draws out both the similarities and differences between Mom’s reality and her online persona, and exposes the hypocrisy that can so easily characterise our performative lives in the virtual realm. With Max pushing all Mom’s buttons, here ‘Sorry’ seems to be the hardest word, and while calling Mom ‘Bitch’ may bring her down to Max’s level, ultimately it is death that proves the real equaliser.
strap: Stay!: Jordan Wippell’s hilariously horrific short brings an exploited dog back from the dead for justice from its influencer bitch ‘Mom’
© Anton Bitel
