Narrative is DEAD! Welcome to the Rise of the Neon Films.
[warning: film plot spoilers ahead]
With an estimated 1.44 trillion (Canning, 2020) photographs and images to be captured in 2021, the competition for likes, shares, views, followers, and donations has never been greater; effect and theatricality supersede conventional value. As a result, surface level has become a complicated device to negotiate; how to analyse and decipher this shift within our visual language is an important one to consider.
Experiencing or navigating this volume of content embodies the disorienting relationship we have with our present condition, where fact and fiction, truth and lies, reality and fantasy continually merge and collapse into strange hybrid states. In his seminal text, Capitalist Realism, writer and cultural theorist, Mark Fisher has described this era as something that is ‘infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment’ (2009: 54). Despite living in an ever more mediated age with unlimited access to data and information, there is a ‘hidden landscape’ (Syverson, 2021: 121) that has become increasingly deceptive, liquid, and abstract. Traversing this shapeshifting and shadowy environment poses a difficult task; being visually literate and aesthetically critical is more important than ever. A good place to start in understanding our present moment resides with images- the harbingers of this plasticity and ‘social disorientation’ (Syverson, 2021: 10).
As an artist that works predominantly with images in moving and reified forms, I am continually drawn to cinema for the reason that it has the ability to harness the unpredictability and mutational qualities of the image. Cinema is an intuitive platform, examining visual and popular culture in such a way that it becomes dynamic, permeating the depths of our social political landscapes. The openly commercial nature, larger economic structure, and wider reaching format helps to achieve a broader level of awareness that is perceptive and archaeological. Certain genres and films ‘are highly reflective of the culture that made them’ (Kerner, 2014: ix), offering back our subconscious desires in frightening and surprising forms.
This article looks to explore a trend in cinematic releases from the last five years that can help to navigate late capitalism’s ‘turn from belief to aesthetics’ (Fisher, 2009: 5). These films include: The Neon Demon (2016), Revenge (2017), Mandy (2018), Climax (2018), Assassination Nation (2018), and Uncut Gems (2019). Centred around a variety of female and male protagonists, the characters embark on hedonistic journeys of revenge, violence, justice, and despair. Their cinematic plots share similar contemporary discourses surrounding gender politics from the fragile male ego to self-righteousness in an age of social media. However, these concepts waver- feeling almost secondary, as the presence of cinematography overwhelms the screen, leading to the subversion of conventional narrative structures.
Accompanied by pulsating electronic soundtracks, each film subjects the viewer to an onslaught of images. Violent not only in their subject matter but in their ‘rigorously constructed aesthetics’ (Lehrer, 2019), the images shimmer and spit, drowning in a sticky neon secretion. To watch becomes a horrifyingly pleasurable experience, overdosing on the ‘dizzying accelerants of late capitalism’ (Syverson, 2021: 116).
Although each film stands independently without ever having to know the existence of their counterparts they are not mutually exclusive, forming a quasi-subgenre. They vacillate between horror, exploitation, fantasy, and thriller genres, eviscerated and sutured back together to create a Frankenstein visual frenzy. The resulting cultural product is a visceral synthetic residue, inhabited by fleshy growths of pop cultural trash, floating as flotsam and jetsam, offering surprising and unpalatable tastes. Narrative is secondary; these films are about the ‘culture of surfaces’ (Korine, 2013).
By removing traditional story arcs and instead adopting a highly stylistic approach, the neon films in question have come under severe criticism for relying on a ‘tendency toward effect-for-effect’s sake’ (McCarthy, 2016). This focus on surface level can appear vacuous, where images overtake the hierarchy of intellectual commentary, relying on sensational and depraved subject matter. Many of these films can be rightfully criticised for their use of hyper-violence but this criticism stems from a very literal response, often in a narrative driven context. For example, the violent imagery used within Revenge (2017), a reimagining of 1970’s rape revenge exploitation cinema, is ‘so relentless and absurd that the film takes on a surrealist and hallucinogenic quality all of its own’ (Ovenden, 2018) (see fig.1).
[Figure 1]
In the final scene of Revenge (2017), the lead protagonist Jen, confronts Richard, a character who is both her lover and attempted murderer; a battle for their very survival commences. In a ‘candy coated neon haze’ (Korine, 2013) entrails, viscera, and copious amounts of luminous blood ooze over the surfaces of a luxury villa compound. The sequence is brutally excessive but also darkly comical; these filmic images become transcendental. Director Coralie Fargeat, cunningly leads the viewer in one direction only to recalibrate, propelling them into unclear, unstable territories.
Nicholas Winding Refn’s, The Neon Demon (2016), equally outraged audiences from its use of throwaway depravity- cannibalism and necrophilia develop into common tropes towards the end of the film. Cultural writer Lauren Wilford took a stance against this backlash, reading the work as an ‘intoxicating, sensory, and psychological experience’ (2016) rather than a critique about how an aspiring model battles the echelons of the Los Angeles fashion industry. If taken literally, then the narrative is indeed clichéd, laughable, and perverse. However, the way in which the images are constructed, worked over and over, again and again, transformed beyond recognition and then edited back together, fabricate ‘a level of ornamentation so fetishistic it goes well beyond surface mimicry or satire’ (Chang, 2016). The design process is uncompromising, relentless, and indicative of this quasi-subgenre. The images feel autonomously fleshy, ready to break through the screens that they are bound to.
In a 2018 interview with Tribute Movies, Sam Levinson, director of Assassination Nation (2018) expands on this design process, explaining why he chose to move away from conventional modes of narrative into something more disjointed and volatile. Assassination Nation (2018) is a contemporised version of the Salem Witch Trials, where a data leak sends the town into a bloodied frenzy; a hunt for the accused ensues. With a violent outburst of hidden online content suddenly coming to surface, Levinson wanted to mirror this within the very structure of the film. He describes the experience of navigating online material and comment sections, as a tangential ‘rabbit hole’ process; a process that ends in the loss of orientation and corporeality. Assassination Nation (2018) is a shimmering cesspool of images and graphics, punctuated with warring, inauthentic ideologies (see fig.2). As artist and writer Hito Steyerl states, ‘data, sounds, and images are now routinely transitioning beyond screens into a different state of matter’ (2019: 144), affecting real time events.
[Figure 2]
Representation has consequently reached a critical point, not just through sheer volume of content but through a ‘loss of confidence in images’ (Steyerl, 2019: 178) and their referential values. This transition towards surface level may not be as vapid as first predicted, on the contrary, these films are grappling with surface level in raw complex forms. Steyerl continues; ‘many of the rules and conventions of visual representation have become almost obsolete [...] Traditional truth-testing procedures -journalistic, legal, and to some extent also scientific- have been replaced by digital rumour, widespread deregulation, the law of demand, and Wikipedia-like, crowdsourced knowledge’ (2019: 176). Despite greater access to information and technology, the digital revolution has inevitably led to deregulation and devaluation; truth is secondary, effect is first.
Screen-based environments are rife with unbridled competition; online content hunts desperately for relevance and publicity. ‘As the web spills over into a different dimension, image production moves way beyond the confines of specialized fields [...] almost everyone is an artist’ (Steyerl, 2019: 149). Today content is more often than not created for content's sake; meaning has little to no regard. As we wade through digital surfaces, we are subjected to an elaborate mating ritual, grounded in sensorial trickery, instant gratification, and an artistic flare full of complexity and guile.
Given that so much of contemporary life is relayed through the image or screen, losing confidence in optics is an unsettling prospect- a reason why these films feel divisive. Through cinematography, the filmic images are transmogrified to the point of a complete loss of referential value, leaving the viewer detached, disoriented, even outraged at this collapse into surface. Without contextual meaning, the presence of image becomes overwhelming, bodily- almost material. In a ‘world that has become too available’ (Steryl, 2019: 148), the only thing the viewer can do to stabilize against a vortex of visuals and effect is to latch onto this material excess. The neon films create ‘an experience that is hard to articulate because it operates outside of our usual cultural constructs’ (Schlenker, 2021: 34).
Gaspar Noé's Climax (2018) dives head first into the ‘degenerate excesses’ (Syverson, 2021: 113) of image production. Most aptly described as a dance horror film, Climax (2018) inundates the viewer with arresting visual sequences, deploying a dance troupe to construct and sculpt its images from. Using long continuous shots, Climax (2018) is demonically electrifying, saturated with sumptuous colours, shimmering materials, and static camera angles that suddenly transition into vertiginous, aerial perspectives. The troupe thrash, contort, and flail limbs in every given direction, showcasing their individual talents and then reorganize together as a unified ‘writhing multi-tentacled beast’ (O'Malley, 2019) (see fig.3). The film is a frightening affront, not because of the subsequent LSD-spiked sangria narrative but for the reason that ‘style has absolutely become substance’ (The Critic’s Sanctum, 2020). Like the dancers, the images gasconade in their own right, abruptly coalesce into terrifying entities, and then dissipate once more into pixel apparitions. ‘It is as if Noé has somehow mulched up the quintessence of dance, coke and porn together and squooshed it into his camera’ (Bradshaw, 2018), leaving behind a confusing, nauseating, and bodily experience.
[Figure 3]
This disorientation is further reiterated by Steyerl in real terms, describing how ‘a vast quantity of images now covers the surface of the world- literally in the case of aerial imaging- in a confusing stack of layers’ (2017: 149). Not just from above but from beneath, horizontally, and diagonally, human bodies are continually photographed and filmed from every angle. The average Briton is said to be captured by surveillance cameras between 70-300 times during a single day (BBC, 2011). Although this statistic is not a surprising one, particularly with urban living, there is something frightening about the agency of the image, it’s potential, it’s availability, and how it festers in technological spaces.
This pervasiveness is exemplified by smartphone technology, where photography has transitioned from a passive to an active custom. Poor quality cameras are regularly used by consumer electronic companies to keep the bodies of smartphones user-friendly, compact, and lightweight. Despite the mechanical compromises, our phones still have the ability to produce high-end digital images. To counter these inexpensive sensors and lenses, computational photography, which relies on digital rather than optical processes, has been developed by artificial intelligence to drastically reduce noise (Vicente, 2021). Like aerial and surveillance imaging, computational photography stacks, compresses, multiplies angles, and operates algorithms to maximise images, gathering optimum data in terms of depth, colour, focus, and sharpness. As Steyerl claims;
“algorithms scan pictures stored on your phone or on your social media networks and sift through your contacts. It analyzes the pictures you already took, or those that are associated with you, and it tries to match faces and shapes to link them back to you [...] The result might be a picture of something that never ever existed, but that the algorithm thinks you might like to see”
Computational photography supports the idea that images are truly alive and (un)well; agents operating with their own modus operandi, catalysed by technology and sources with unclear, potentially insidious intentions. The quasi-subgenres turn from narrative to aesthetics feels like an inherently political choice given that photographic processes are no longer documenting or recording images but are instead actively making them (Hayes, 2008). I reiterate; ‘style has absolutely become substance’ (The Critic’s Sanctum, 2020).
Images are ‘bruised’ (Steyerl, 2019: 144), strained beyond their code, and pulverised into a new existence. Banal, meaningless pictures mutate and wreak havoc on (political) visibility. The now president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was reported to have deployed Twitter bots during his rise to political power. To silence the critics of his AKP party and general unrest within the Turkish population, tens of thousands of fake accounts disguised with images of ‘Megan Fox, Robbie Williams and gay porn stars [...] manipulated Twitter trends, blocked certain hashtags and drowned out dissent’ (Poyrazlar, 2014) against his opponents. Similar online tactics have been used in Mexico, Syria, and Russia (Steyerl, 2019: 38), where spamming and flooding oppositional online communities means the process for collective organisation against authoritarian systems becomes much harder to coordinate.
Thus, the neon films are frightening, unnerving cultural products not because they are morally or ethically dubious but for the reason that ‘they destroy boundaries between the spectator and representation [...] It warns of [...] the failure of the system of exchange, of what happens when the system of giving and taking back is replaced by the system of taking and taking back’ (Brottman, 1997, cited in Jauregui, 2004). Yes, on face value images may no longer be viable or trust worthy devices but in their broader context: production, circulation, habitation they reveal much about late capitalism’s ‘postmodern jumble’ (Syyverson, 2021: 8). If cinema is to remain a vibrant and critical artistic platform then the need for this transition into surface and effect is essential. Narrative as a way of delivering visual information, has become a passive structure to comprehensively reflect our present condition.
This collapse of representation has long been foreshadowed in what philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, has described as ‘the loss of value in a self-devouring, cannibalistic culture’ (2010: 122). European and North American neoliberal democracies are the apotheosis of this collapse into farce. The system of politics, as seen with the election of Reagan, Schwarzenegger, and Trump, has entered deep into ‘this bewildering parody of all systems of representation [...], where simulacra ends up forming our material destiny (Baudrillard, 2010: 64-74)’. Late capitalism is ultimately evasive and chimeric but cunningly pretends to offer us stability through a series of orders, systems, and regulations- equality is always postponed. Figures like Joey Essex may have single handedly debased our culture but the likes of ‘George Soros and Bill Gates who combine rapacious pursuit of profit with the rhetoric of ecological concern and social responsibility’ (Fisher, 2009: 27) are allowed to operate in a rational context. We are deep in a strange acceptance of fake.
Fargeat’s wider feminist discourse within Revenge (2017) and Mandy’s (2018) use of blood-soaked retribution explore the farcical nature of regulation and structure. The conventional modes of protection: legal, judicial, law enforcement rarely serve to safeguard the public ethically and conscientiously. Instead, these systems often deregulate through flawed investigative processes, lenient sentencing, and ignite social tensions, as demonstrated by the London murder cases of Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman, and Sarah Everard. Even though Revenge (2017) and Mandys’ (2018) deployment of violence is extreme, verging on the absurd, it is a highly deliberate decision to visualise the hidden pathologies within our social justice infrastructures. Fargeat’s decision to move away from narrative devices mirror the ineffective foundations of our democratic institutions that have long entered into hyperreal and illusory spaces. In their surface level, these cinematic images evoke a contemporary sensibility and acumen, compared to the outdated pretence that narrative driven content equals highbrow commentary.
The neon films are not necessarily critical of this late capitalist system as cinema that takes an overtly anti-capitalist stance routinely does the opposite, creating a faux ironic distance, allowing ‘us to continue to consume with impunity’ (Fisher, 2009: 12). Instead the quasi-subgenre gorges on the frenetic energies surrounding image production and spits them back, conveying the violent artifice of the present.
Uncut Gems (2019), a Safdie brothers’ production, articulately addresses the nauseating and ‘twitchy embodiment of 21st-century capitalism’ (Gordon, 2020). In 135 minutes of non-stop spectacle, the film induces both anxiety and pleasure, ‘an experience driven home to clammy effect by frequently disorienting editing and overwhelming sound design’ (2020). The brothers’ creative decision to use Adam Sandler as their acting lead, Howard, a sleazy businessman with a penchant for chaos and gambling addiction is a similar choice to director Panos Cosmatos, casting Nicolas Cage as his main protagonist within Mandy (2018). Sandler’s association with the kitsch, extreme veneer, and vapid use of humour douses Uncut Gems (2019) in a pop cultural residue, adding to the already dominant aesthetics of ‘gleaming metallic and glass surfaces. Howard’s jewellery shop glitters with golden artefacts, none more crass than diamond-encrusted Furbies’ (2020) (see fig.4). The caffeinated allures of late capitalism are laid bare in all their disturbing but highly aesthetic permutations.
[Figure 4]
The film ends as it begins, in one seamless loop, zooming into an orifice on Howard’s body that transcends the viewer into a tunnel of flesh, light, and colour. The neon films' continual return to flesh further reinforces that pictorial surfaces have taken an incarnate turn, functioning as autonomous beings that have left representation dragging behind.
The use of flesh in the final scene of The Neon Demon (2016) echoes the unbearable tension between surface and our present socio economic conditioning. Gigi and Sarah, models who are vampiric stereotypes, jealous of the lead protagonist Jesse - a newer, much younger talent- are both working on a high-end fashion shoot, when Gigi’s body suddenly starts to convulse. She flees the set in panic, retching over and over, until eventually she vomits up a human eyeball (figure 5). The eyeball formerly belonged to Jesse, whom Gigi and Sarah had literally cannibalised in the previous scene, bathing in pools of the young talent's blood. Unable to contain what Jesse’s body has done to her own, screaming “get her out of me!”, Gigi subsequently kills herself. Sarah watches her die from afar, only to re-consume the eyeball and return to the photo shoot.
[Figure 5]
The sequence is violent, darkly humorous, and visually spectacular. Set in a coastal Malibu mansion, the images are so corrosively artificial that they become hypnotic, where one’s body is caught in a trance-like state and could ‘rot without feeling it’ (Davis, 2006). Steeped in layers of irony, this scene is highly revealing because it uses late capitalism's own protocols against itself, offering back terrifying images that are synthetic yet bodily, doused with spectacle and effect. Despite the eyeball being vomited back it is inevitably internalized into the overloaded ‘sensation-stimulus matrix’ (Fisher, 2009: 24) of the present. It is no coincidence that the body part Gigi rejects is one that is connected to optics, now severed from its original purpose, flesh as material, ‘adrift in a world we can no longer see’ (Syverson, 2021: 120).
The neon films are polarising artworks for the reason that they manage to decipher and decode the ‘postmodern jumble’ (Syverson, 2021: 8) we find ourselves in, appropriating late capitalism’s vitalities and pathologies, which are ironically much the same. Their cinematic images do not simply represent, instead they create an experience, transitioning away from narrative to provide a more authentic visual language grounded in surface and effect. An anxiety or reluctance to accept films like these exist because
“The affects that predominate in late capitalism are fear and cynicism. These emotions do not inspire bold thinking or entrepreneurial leaps, they breed conformity and the cult of the minimal variation, the turning out of products which very closely resemble those that are already successful.”
Much of cinema has also fallen into this trap as a ‘program of bland moral instruction’ (Syverson, 2021: 8), void of artistic experimentation. Visual and cultural devices that question this status quo are met with apprehension, battling against the draconian rules and regulations that the system demands and yet never adheres to. There are, however, artistic devices that manage to evade the chimeric qualities of late capitalism, which use images and their wider production values to tear open new visual orifices like the ones seen in Uncut Gems (2019).
Within these openings we manage to gain a small but significant insight into the calibrations of contemporary life and the blind spots that increasingly haunt our daily movements. With the ubiquitous flow of visual material it becomes sticky and complex to truly process what this lack of visibility means. The quasi-subgenre, however, manages to harness the accelerants and dizzying spectacle of late capitalism and reflect it straight back; it is frightening and beautiful, neon and fleshy.
Yes these neon films may be ethically problematic, violent, and abject but in the pornographic details of their surface an exciting new visual language exists; a language that may just help us to untangle ourselves from ‘a reality that continues to defy representation’ (Syverson, 2021: 121).
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Image List:
[Figure 1] - Image still taken from Revenge, (2017). Directed by Coralie Fargeat. FRA: MEZ Productions
[Figure 2] - Image still taken from Assassination Nation, (2018). Directed by Sam Levinson. USA: Neon
[Figure 3] - Image still taken from Climax, 2018. [Film] Directed by Gaspar Noé. FRA: Wild Bunch
[Figure 4] - Image still taken from Uncut Gems, (2019). Benny and Josh Safdie. USA: A24
[Figure 5] - Image still taken from The Neon Demon, (2016). Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. USA: Wild Bunch
