The Neon Demon

"Fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses."

Tool - Ænema

Wow. Apparently, nobody wants anybody to like this movie.

In his review for The Neon Demon, Rex Reed called it "pretentious" and "dumbfoundingly awful." Strong words coming from a walking Danish pastry who wears too much Maybelline and still thinks fat jokes directed at women are not only hilarious, but still socially acceptable. To be honest, I find Rex Reed himself to be pretentious and dumbfoundingly awful as well, so I guess we're even.

I had ample warning beforehand that this was the sickest, most misogynistic, sexist piece of crap ever to glorify the sickest, most misogynistic, sexist industry in the world: high fashion modeling. Runway heroin storks trotted out in two dimensions, displaying their numb pussies and Xeroxed facial expressions, furiously masturbating itself in its attempt to be as nauseatingly shocking as fucking possible without actually handing out barf bags beforehand.

Am I the only person here who saw Black Swan?

No, you weren't.

So, Darren Aronofsky can make a movie about a bisexual virgin driven to insanity by her overbearing mother, abusive male teacher and slutty stand-in, who nevertheless manages to attain perfection right before she fucking dies, and everyone - critics and fans alike - cum all over it, calling it gorgeous and sublime and yadda yadda blahblahblah. But Nicholas Winding Refn makes a film about supermodels literally devouring each other, and it's formulaic, plotless trash? Granted, Rex Reed hated Black Swan too, but Black Swan passed relatively unscathed through the festival circuit. God knows why. Black Swan was every bit as superficial and shallow and contrived as everyone is saying The Neon Demon is.

Look, you want pretentious? I'll give you fucking pretentious.
I'm going to give you the most pretentious and convoluted review of what I felt The Neon Demon was trying to say. I hope Refn reads my review and wonders what the hell film I'm even talking about, because he sure as shit never made such a stupid, symbolism-laden film in his life, ever.

The film opens with a shot of our star, Elle Fanning, as Jessie, a sixteen year old girl from Georgia who may or may not have run away from home, and whose parents may or may not be dead. Nobody knows anything about her past, she just shows up in Los Angeles and immediately gets a boyfriend named Dean, who snaps the above morbid glamour shot of her whilst creepily eyeing her with what may be lust but looks more like anger. With this shot, Refn is showing us exactly how the film will end, right down to Jessie's eye makeup.

Dean is aware of the fact that Jessie is sixteen, but pursues her anyway. He is sexual predator #1.

Everyone who sees Jessie falls instantly, besottedly and desperately in love with her. Everyone. Makeup artist Ruby is Predator #2. Painting models by day and corpses by night, Ruby describes Jessie as having "that thing, you know?" Fill in the blanks. Jessie is pure, a virgin, whiter than milk, fresh and clean as a Daisy douche. Whatever her "thing" is, it strikes everyone in the industry immediately and powerfully.

Predators #3 and #4 are Gigi and Sarah, two ghostly blondes whose legs go all the way up to their perfectly plucked eyebrows. Gigi is a Plasticene Queen, suctioned and sculpted into pseudo-perfection. Sarah is the Salieri to Jessie's Mozart. She would have been Top Hot in L.A. if Jessie hadn't come along and spoiled everything.

Predator #5 is Keanu Reeves, who is never better than when he plays a sociopathic creep. His personality is perfect for the role: void. Unmoved. Even when he encounters a mountain lion in Jessie's shabby hotel room (which he runs like a dirtier, more aggressive Norman Bates), his response is vague amusement and mild annoyance.

The mountain lion (or cougar, if you prefer) has somehow slipped into Jessie's room while she was out. The cornered cat is a metaphor: it's Jessie herself. The seedy confines of a garish city cannot cage a wild animal forever. Jessie herself admits that she has no talents or skills, just beauty. She's going to eat as long as she can hunt, and struggle to survive in a concrete jungle with her only weapon - that "thing" - and she will probably end up as a "cougar" long before her twenties are over and done with. After all, as stated late in the film, this is an industry where one is washed up at age 21. No one wants spoiled milk when they can have fresh meat, as Sarah remarks at one point.

Soon, Jessie is scoring closed photo shoots with the best photographers, winning the coveted show closer position at runway events and generally pissing Sarah and Gigi off. In dreams and hallucinations, Jessie sees a monolithic being haunting her, seducing and reflecting her. This abstract shape is the Neon Demon of the title, glowing a haunting blue as it sucks Jessie in, then turning bright reddish pink when it finally ensnares her. Made up of three inverted triangles, two at the top and one at the bottom, it's symbolism seems glaringly apparent to me: the upside triangle represents the female. Three of them represent the Trinity, and enclose within them the upright triangle, trapping the "male" within. None of the male characters in the film have more than one dimension: they are driven by their urges and egos. They are not important to the story. They do not have "the thing" that is encapsulated by Jessie, but they are drawn to it, worship it, romance it, dress it up, preserve it, and fuck it. They all want Jessie: to pose, to submit, to lie still and swallow what they give her. In a story about vacuousness and superficiality, the male characters prove themselves to be even worse than the women: they define what beauty is, and create the standard to which all women must adhere. It's vagina envy.

Trading her innocence and wholesomeness for the reflection within the neon demon's mirrored walls, Jessie emerges from her cocoon as Butterfly Bitch Queen, embracing her narcissism and flinging her scorn in the faces of those who worship and envy her. She has become the Holy Grail, and she knows it. She dumps Dean, who proves to be a hypocrite. She manages to avoid being raped by Keanu Reeves, only to be almost raped by Ruby. Rebuffed, Ruby turns to her nighttime occupation for comfort, fucking a Jessie-like corpse whose make-up she has also just done. It's not a joyous fuck by any means: it's hollow and sad and frankly as cold and stiff as fucking a supermodel probably would be.

Now completely possessed by her own vanity, Jessie is set upon by the Trinity: Ruby, Gigi and Sarah, who tear her literally to pieces. Ruby bathes in her blood Bathory style, and later expels the old, unwanted blood within her in a ritualistic full moon ceremony, smilingly satisfied as she does so, as if cleaning out the rejection and the hurt that Jessie had inflicted upon her. She is born again, taking Jessie's innocence and hopefulness. Later, she happily lounges atop Jessie's grave, much as she had sorrowfully rested atop the cold corpse in the morgue earlier. She finally has a Jessie that cannot reject her, and who lies still and cooperative beneath her.

Gigi and Sarah cannibalize Jessie's perfect flesh. But Gigi's fake body rejects the actual meat. Her plastic palace will not accept actual young, untouched, virgin flesh. She vomits up an eyeball and kills herself, in full ritual seppuku style, with a pair of scissors. Sarah, having successfully digested Jessie's beauty, now has "the thing." She has absorbed it. She has taken Jessie's place and no one cares. Jessie came from nowhere and will not be missed, especially not in this industry. Sarah is now poised to take what she believes is her rightful place at the top. She has eaten the competition. She's the Queen Cougar now, head of the Pride.

How's that for pretentious, mutherfuckers?

I liked this movie. Actually, I liked it more than Black Swan. I liked Jessie's transformation better than Natalie Portman's puppet-jerking surrender. I liked it more than Starry Eyes, which also features a girl named Sarah killing her competition in an ugly struggle to make it in L.A. I've seen trashier and gorier and more sexist, I've seen shallower and flimsier. I really don't understand why everyone wants to hate this movie and punish it for the truth it tells, resenting it for the pretty way that its ugliness is represented. Everyone is condemning it for being thin, vacuous and hateful in its depiction of women. But isn't that the definition of the modeling industry?