The speedy, steady slide of the arts into total degeneracy as a form of weaponized chaos descends like lightning speed in the West. This devolution and digression into post-post-modern non-meaning and madness is pre-eminently exemplified in the latest from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, of Drive (2011) fame. Refn’s Neon Demon is basically Mulholland Drive taken to the next level of depravity, and revamped from the rapacious world of Hollywood to high fashion. Since these two worlds often overlap, Refn’s film is a window into the fact that Madison Avenue and its bourgeoisie, globo-decadence and anti-aesthetic are social engineering tools as much as Hollywood. (This connection is likely, given Refn’s obvious Lynchian influence in his incoherent 2013 film, Only God Forgives).

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