Thoughts on The Neon Demon

An unsettling examination of modelling, and a breakdown of the psyches of those that are determined, against their odds, to rise in such a vicious industry. Nicolas Winding Refn has created something so up front and disgusting that it mesmerises.

Refn uses Colour and light, particularly the eponymous neon, very intentionally. We get an almost seizure inducing show of purple and pink in only the second scene when Jesse goes to an underground party with her new colleagues. The screen is literally whitewashed in the next scene, followed by a shot of Jesse waking up in her motel, letting us know that she is not part of that world yet. Jesse is innocent and ignorant of what she is getting into; she curls up in her interview with the agencies recruiter dressed up in, almost ironically, a bright purple dress and she glows when compliments are given. Neon is the modelling industry, a flashy display of colour that masks what happens inside and white is Jesse, a mixture of ambition, innocence and corruptibility that reflects the neon light beautifully and, more importantly, naturally.

Mikey, the revered photographer, gives this natural beauty a special treatment. Not to steer completely away from the tropes within his practice and the typical portrayal of it in the media, he tells Jesse to take her clothes off when he clears the photography room. He then smothers Jesse in Gold, as perhaps the most disreputable and unsavoury compliment given to her in the whole film — she is worth more than purple and pink.

Natural beauty is what everyone in the modelling industry hopelessly yearns for. To quote the one who has been luckily born with it, they ‘starve to death’ to obtain the beauty she is no longer taking for granted. But natural beauty can be acquired. Refn considers nature as cruel, sordid and gruesome. The first embodiment of this is seen when a puma randomly breaks into Jesse’s room, hungry for blood. When Gigi and Sarah eat Jesse, the famous photographer notices a change and immediately fires his other model to shoot them instead. The only way to steal natural beauty is, therefore, to commit an act only permissible in the natural world, to become a predator, almost as if a predator is a form of beauty itself.

Jesse represents everything that annoys the modelling industry; natural beauty that plastic filled models envy, a virginity she does not want to give up and that those who work behind the scenes, such as the photographer or, in this case, an explicitly sexually frustrated make-up artist named Ruby desperately want. All corners of this industry love and hate her, she refuses to be one of them but has the disposition to vastly surpass all of them.

The dichotomy between the artificial and natural is heavily explored. Ruby explains to Jesse that lipstick is named after either food or sex, as it sells better this way. In this scene, Jesse is almost without any make-up, and Ruby, Gigi and Sarah are covered with it. The two models immediately see her as a threat, the natural world invading what they have already supposedly monopolised through their plastic perfection. On the contrary, Jesse is clearly intrigued and attracted to her, she sees her as a woodland fairy from a realm she long abandoned. Her entire line of work is to mask nature — she puts make-up on corpses for funerals as well as dolling up models for catwalks. Thus, when someone who radiates nature like Jesse barges into her life, she cannot contain her desire and is forced to vent elsewhere when Jesse refuses her — she has sex with a corpse. Like how tree roots crack the concrete streets from underneath, nature always prevails.

The most striking moment of objectivity happens far away from the studio, it happens in a diner. Gigi and Sarah want to order the special, because ‘they always do a good job of remembering it’. ‘They’ being the waitress. We never get to see her face, nor do we hear her voice. She has her back turned to the camera, and Gigi and Sarah are vividly in focus talking to her. When one revels in and becomes homicidal for an industry that routinely objectifies, it becomes second nature to objectify every other female you come in contact with.

Refn explores the most primitive aspects of humanity in his films, with Drive and Only God Forgives exploring violence, The Neon Demon turns to sex. He explores these themes unapologetically — there is not a scene that blushes nor a shot that turns away from something unpleasant. This film just so happens to also shed light on an unpleasant industry, and the film critiques it by embodying it on a meta level. Just like modelling, The Neon Demon is dark, vicious and almost frighteningly smooth.