MOVIES | Nicolas Winding Refn | 2016
The Neon Demon is a 2016 psychological horror film, follows the descent of a beautiful young girl named Jesse who relocates from a rural environment to Los Angeles to pursue a career in fashion modelling.
Jesse has IT - a rare mix innocence and natural beauty - and the fame and beauty industrial complex want it. Her rapid success incites a violent response from her competitors who seek to possess her natural beauty through ritualistic means.
Industry Hierarchies
Jesse arrives in California with limited financial resources and no family. She is introduced as a virginal figure who frequently wears white in contrast to the darker shades of the surrounding characters.
As her character descends from a state of innocence to one of narcissistic power, she becomes infected with a demonic entity. and she moves ever forward toward the commodification of her character into an object for consumption.
Ruby is a makeup artist who introduces Jesse to established models Sarah and Gigi. Sarah is an established model who views Jesse as a direct threat to her career and status. Gigi has undergone extensive plastic surgery and represents manufactured beauty. The industry is portrayed as a hierarchy where individuals must consume others to ascend or maintain their position. In the end they are brutally reduced to faceless body parts to be objectified for the purpose of selling goods.
Thelemic Occultism and Blood Rituals
The production incorporates explicit occult themes and Thelemic rituals throughout the narrative. The manager of the talent agency, Ruby, functions as the central figure of the coven and the Hecate character positioned at the top of the pyramid.
She performs an Adoration to the Moon ritual naked under a full moon. This ceremony involves the expulsion of a pool of dark blood. Ruby possesses lunar tattoos and a Holy Book of Thelema that includes a reverse pentagram.
Ruby’s residence contains the satanic quote the Light is mine, its rays consume me now from the Crowleyan Adoration to the Sun. Her history includes making sacrifices that resulted in a ban from a pet store. The coven members perform blood rituals similar to those of Elizabeth Bathory. Ruby bathes in a bucket of blood and showers in blood to rejuvenate her youth. These acts are intended to absorb the life force of the younger model and allow blood and life to flow through the coven once more.
Folklore, Myth, and Familiar Spirits
The narrative functions as a modern fable infused with fairytale imagery and myths like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. In the opening scene she appears in a death-like state, suggesting that fashion's perfect commodity is lifeless. The three models form a coven patterned after the weird sisters of Macbeth. Ruby represents the mother while Sarah and Gigi serve as the maiden and the crone.
A mountain lion that enters Jesse's motel room serves as a familiar spirit for the predatory older characters. It moves with feminine grace and represents the power and sexuality that Jesse adopts, and the recurring triangle motif represents the coven and the internal lines of a pagan pentagram.
Geometric
Mirrors are used throughout, as the classic symbolism of her fragmented identity and the industry obsession with surface appearances. Characters are frequently captured through reflections to prevent a fixed positioning within the visual frame. Sarah smashes a mirror, a well-worn symbol of the destruction of her own superficial image and the shattering of the psyche. Jesse kisses her own reflection to represent her transition into absolute narcissism, an empty spaces indicate transitions into new environments as characters walk into the unknown.
A recurring triangle motif represents a conduit for Jesse's inner transformation. The neon triangle can be inverted to point down to hell. During the runway sequence, Jesse walks out of an upwards facing blue triangle into a downwards facing red triangle. This transition represents her descent into a demonic state. Lighting choices differentiate between the safe blue glow of Jesse's early experiences and the predatory red light of the runway.
Industrial Cannibalism and Consumption
Cannibalism provides a literalised critique of the exploitative nature of the fashion industry. Established models kill and eat Jesse to possess her youth and maintain their position in the hierarchy. This act reflects a fame-and-beauty-industrial cpmplex frame, where humans are reduced to commodities or meat, dehumanising of the victim into a product.
Sarah eats the regurgitated (all-seeing) eye to restore her position at the top of the hierarchy. This act represents the industrial consumption of purity and the possession of beauty for private consumption alone.