Vox Lux (Brady Corbet, 2018)

[Mr Sausage]

Potential Discussion Question:

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Another aspect of this film that I'm still wrapping my head around after three watches is the "deal with the devil" piece and Dafoe's narration at the end. This is finally what makes it earn its spot in the horror camp for me (perhaps I'm just looking for an excuse but considering this is horror for every reason Assayas's film is for me, I'm not going to discriminate). Does anybody have a good reading on this part of the film? Because at this moment in time I just see it as another 'possible truth' that remains in the unknown but by which perhaps Celeste has attached personal meaning. In other words, it's a piece of her subjective meaning amidst the nihilism that may or may not have driven her actions or paved the way for her internal narrative of her life. And if so, is this a healthy coping mechanism to simplify just a little piece of life by assigning tangible responsibility to a prayer, or is it her fatalist undoing by creating a core belief from guilt that has led to her making poor choices; or an excuse to self-destruct amidst hopeless post 9/11 America, or perhaps actually a cure as was its intent, or does Corbet reserve the right to say it's all of the above, and that it doesn't matter if it's true or not because all that matters is that subjective meaning anyways?

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I think I said this upthread, but I read the Faustian bargain less as a piece of character psychology than as something intertextual. I saw this film as a modern reworking of, and response to, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. In Mann's novel, the titular Faustus, Adrian Leverkühn, a brilliant composer whom Mann gifts with Schoenberg's innovations in atonality, appears to deliberately contract syphilis in order to court the genius that lies in the madness of its tertiary stage, at the cost of ever experiencing love or intimacy. Late in novel, Leverkühn's friend, the narrator, comes across a piece of paper where Leverkühn details meeting an emissary of the devil and agreeing to forgo the experience of love in exchange for 15 years of musical genius. Is this the hallucination of a man descending into syphilitic madness, a metaphorical fancy describing his extreme but material and rational decision to contract syphilis, or a very real Faustian bargain carried out in merely physical terms? It's impossible to say (tho' the collocation of love, lust, disease, madness, and morality is pure Mann). Much like in Vox Lux, this detail is twice mediated: we learn it from a narrator who does not himself get it straight from the source.

Perhaps the key to the Faustian bargain in Vox Lux lies in Leverkühn's trade off: he will gain brilliance at the cost of love. Many love Leverkühn; many want to find their way in to his life and share it, the narrator especially. But Leverkühn holds them all at arm's length, unable to share that love even as he brings spiritual ecstasy through his music. So, Celeste. How loved, how unable to love. Adoring fans she can only bark at and berate; a daughter she pawns off, a martyred sister she can only hold in contempt, a business manager she can only get high with. She holds people at arm's length; even her closest, most intimate moments are needy and demanding rather than sharing. She wishes to bring light and happiness to the world through her music, yet she brings none of it to the people around her nor herself. She is complicated, yes, but she does seem to've sacrificed love to bring happiness through music. She tried love and understanding once, with the shooter, and she was cut off and nearly rendered voiceless by his shots. Never again?

In Mann's novel, Leverkühn's life is paralleled by the horrors that engulfed Germany in the early 20th century. I don't remember the parallels in enough detail, and fear vulgarizing the novel by a simplistic description. But I think Vox Lux reworks those parallels by charting the rise of Celeste's pop optimism with the horror and degradation of 21st century violence and fanaticism. It doesn't assign causes or blame, but it does wish us to view those two things in terms of the other. If Leverkühn's pact brought genius, but genius at the cost of love, what is the price of happiness and light at the cost of love? Perhaps the terrorist violence coupled with the ecstasy of the pop concert is playing a larger symbolic role for Celeste's own life, which strives for positive emotions on the impersonal level, but is wracked with unhappiness and torment on the personal. Or perhaps there's a dualism/yin-yang argument going on. Creation, joy, light, what have you, cannot occur without destruction, terror, blackness, and so forth. A larger Faustian bargain: there needs to be sorrow to have happiness. Things are defined against their opposites. Nothing is the one singular object.

I suppose I don't consider this film horror for the same reason Mann's novel isn't horror. I don't necessarily disagree with anything anyone else's said, tho'.

[therewillbeblus]

I like that reading a lot, Sausage, and I'm not married to my own interpretation to forego it. I do think there is something deeply existential going on that postures at psychology, so I can't say I subscribe to all of it (and I'd say that while the "she tried to love and understand once" point is especially interesting, it's still psychological as a result of sociological numbing herself, a consequence of the scary world we are powerless over) but I like how the end of your analysis also views this content on levels that scale from the individual to the cosmic. To hear you describe it, I wouldn't be surprised if Corbet was thinking about that story as a focal point or inspiration at least, and I'm going to seek it out - unless of course you are just drawing a comparison and don't recommend it!

I'm curious if you view demonlover as a horror movie? While they're different, I think there's a similarity in how the individual micro-levels of powerlessness extend to globalization and beyond to a flooding sense of existential dread. I don't think categorizing one as such necessitates the other (I am more on the fence with this film, despite feeling much stronger about the other), but I find them to match up enough to compare along those lines.

[Mr Sausage]

I suppose I should clarify: I meant I read the bargain as originating in intertextuality rather than in psychology, tho' of course it allows for some interesting character psychology to come out of it. I guess for me it's the interpretive structure of the thing, the key to an overall reading, rather than something more specifically tied to Celeste's character. We can use it to interpret her behaviour against the whole, but I wouldn't say it explains her behaviour. Hence why its reveal can be delayed so significantly without affecting the coherence of either the character or Portman's performance. It's a nexus point of ideas, say.

Also: I fucked up. That final sentence in the spoiler box was part of a longer explanation I deleted. It was supposed to be deleted too, but now it floats there mysteriously.

I haven't seen demonlover, tho' I've been meaning to. Perhaps for the horror list project.

Mann's novel is one of the 20th century's richest and greatest works of art. I could hardly recommend it more.

[therewillbeblus]

Great, thanks I’ll check it out - and that makes sense. I’d agree that we aren’t meant to use a psychological lens to evaluate the milieu even if its absence elicits more mysterious obscurities which only lead to amplified psychological effects for the viewer. I definitely see this as a philosophical film in its modalities for broad assessment. I’ll be interested to hear your eventual thoughts on demonlover, though it’s very possible I’m alone here in finding any connective tissue

[Mr Sausage]

To your point, I think the audience you talk about is emblematic of such a state of the world as well through this history of suppression, and the result is a potential social apocalypse. But I also don't think he presents any opinion on where 'distracting oneself from the problem' should stop and where 'facing it' should begin, or blueprint onto 'how,' and instead just presents the world 'as is,' which is why the film succeeds so well because it moves from turning into a typical didactic message movie to a forced subjective assessment of asking ourselves questions that elicit only the most personal answers.

Thinking about this some more, I'm not sure Corbet is building an engagement/disengagement duality because there is a vision of engagement in the movie, and it's the terrorists. They are the most extreme example of social commitment, using violence and terror to attack those aspects of modernity they believe are driving us from wholeness and truth. They very much have their eye on what pop music is supposedly drawing attention from.

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I think the terrorists are an extension of the school shooter, who also uses violence in a direct confrontation with those parts of society that make him miserable. The movie associates him with the violent, edgy music of the late 90s/early 2000s (Korn or Limp Bizkit or somebody like that I assume), not as a Tipper Gore moralism, but as a complicated provocation. Certain unhappy music can feel more emotionally in-tune with a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, but what if its effect is morbid and isolating? Or, to put less blame on the music itself, what if its authenticity is a result, a symptom, of the problems that pop music is accused of not addressing? Wouldn't that make pop music's putative inauthenticity a lot more complicated since it's therefore not a symptom of social malaise in that way? But then perhaps pop is a symptom in another way, since, as I intimated in my long post, there's no point feeling uplifted unless you're feeling down. Pop is a response to horror and trauma, an attempted liberation from it, meaning it's also inextricable from ugliness. To consider pop, one also has to consider the ugliness of the world. In Celeste's case, she makes the most transcendent pop because of her direct experience with era-defining ugliness, indeed an experience we're invited to see as a deal with the devil. And ever since, her music is explicitly shadowed by another era-defining ugliness, ones clothed in her own shining pop iconography. I don't see rejections or criticisms here so much as a more encompassing view of the issue.

Pop music and pop concerts are easily dismissed, but what if they're a necessary product of atrocity in the way Corbet seems to be hinting? Is pop an evasion, or a form of resilience, to use therewillbeblus word? Resilience only comes from pain, positive emotion out of negative, etc. I don't want to make too much of this, but there's something there, I think.

[therewillbeblus]

Well I agree with all of that, though I’m not entirely sure what you mean initially by the engagement/disengagement dismissal, as

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I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the terrorists as the ultimate engagement, but they serve as a kind of Lacanian ‘Real’ in representing a manifestation of the engagement that exists always but remains hidden until it pierces through like the birds in Hitchcock’s film. Your point that people are engaging in at least some respect is true, so it’s not a duality as much as a spectrum as I said before, along which we are in a continuous loop of internalizing stimuli and responding, even if with actions are non-actions or viewed as such by these terrorist groups. There is a relationship there impossible to escape from; an endless feedback loop or yin/yang complementary type as you more aptly describe. I actually think there is a lot to your post.

And yes, pop is a response to horror absolutely, so it serves as an engagement but also an attempt at disengagement, or engagement on their terms which is still a defense mechanism for projection against that Real. Here, strangely, the Real takes on a form of reality unlike Lacan traditionally viewed his term I believe, but I admit I have forgotten enough of his original analysis to back that up much more.

Resilience can come from pain, but doesn’t necessarily have to; and while I agree that this may be the case here that’s why I used “healthy coping mechanism” too (although the subjective assessment of the word “healthy” is itself problematic to Corbet’s inclusive assessment) because whether pain, discomfort, nonpreferred, or the degree of intensity to which this is dysphoric for each individual, the response services a complex recognition of engagement in a reaction that is all-encompassing as you say. I think Corbet rightly sees it as evasive and confrontational, a response where every action is a condition of engagement, even non-actions (which are actions) as viewed as such by the terrorist groups, for example, who are representative of this singlemindedness in forcing ‘pure’ violent engagement. If Corbet is arguing for anything in this film I think it’s that while these threats and the emergence of the Real is itself a response to the feedback loop, that these singleminded engagements are a primary source of the problems in our world, and that Celeste and her concert audience are at least on the right track of engaging with the world on a more diverse or eclectic level, giving them some credit that they may not be giving to themselves. I think he weaponizes his film with ambiguity as I said initially, to counteract the weaponization of the singlemindedness of these groups, shooters, etc. that taint the world away from a holistic view.

I’m currently on a lunch break at a professional training for supervisors in the mental health field and our trainer spent a while talking about how in the 80s and 90s depression was by far what we encountered most amongst students and working adults, while now it’s heavily set on anxiety. The millennial generation’s anxiety is rampant and as we attempt to engage in an overwhelming world, there is always going to be a scale of what feels safe for engagement. I think that sense of safety is a lot of what Corbet is interested in here, but I agree with you, Sausage, that there is always engagement, just as every perceived non-action is philosophically also an action. The safety of that engagement to the individual as shaped by cultural and macro systems, as well as socially constructed attitudes, ideologies, and morale, is objectively presented here without an answer. I think Corbet stands against the simplicity while embracing, through distant acknowledgment, sympathy for this universal challenge rooted in a collective anxiety that extends down to the individual who can feel they are suffocating alone, like Celeste.

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To bring it back from the vague cosmos to the story, I do think that Corbet is telling a concrete story. Going by attachment theory (yeah, psychological) Celeste has a strained attachment with the world and views it as an unsafe place due to early childhood experience. Her ability to demonstrate empathy is also handicapped because her early attempt at empathizing resulted in deep trauma. So this is a character study, but I also think Celeste is being used as a manifestation, like the terrorist group for their kind of unidimensional engagement, of this engagement via debilitating anxiety that many of us can relate to on some level as many more people in this generation have had consistent experience with variables that stunt the formation of a strong attachment with the world to view it as a safe space in present day.

[Mr Sausage]

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I’m not entirely sure what you mean initially by the engagement/disengagement dismissal

I don't blame you. I wanted to get setting up the subject of discussion out of the way so quickly that I ended up not actually doing the job. So it's pretty incomprehensible.

I meant I don't think Corbet is using engagement/disengagement as part of a critique of pop music or society, as mfunk rather eloquently laid out on the last page (and I do like and appreciate his analysis; my differences with it come down to differences in personality, I think). That is to say, Corbet is no more criticizing the limits of pop's disengagement than he is criticizing terrorism's excesses of engagement. He's collocating two extremes to get at some third thing, whatever that ultimately proves to be.

Plus, if pop music is hollow and Celeste an empty totem, what in the movie is full? If the movie isn't providing something meaningful to weigh pop emptiness against, its critique is emptying and destructive, leaving us with less than we came with. The movie would, in that argument, be offering no meaningful reaction to atrocity, just tearing down an unmeaningful one, leaving us with the bare fact of human ugliness and no recourse, not even a half-hearted gesture to think more. The movie may be multi-facted, but it's not showing us how to be multi-faceted in the face of limited concepts.

Like Mann's novel, Vox Lux is full of ironies. The "re-birth" concept behind Celeste's tour is nonsense given that she spends the latter half of the movie reenacting all her worst habits and teetering on the edge of disaster, and that her list of things she's overcome is really a list of things she's done to others during the movie. And yet, the story is one of shining success. Despite the trauma and emotional pain we see her undergo, all stuff she leaves unmentioned, her final moment in the movie is a successful one. How you put on a performance like that for millions after the day she's just had, I don't know. I guess I see the performance as less hollow than mfunk, because there is an ironic fullness in it. It's empty spectacle and untrue at face value, and yet its very existence lends truth to its conception. Not quite the truth Celeste would see in it, but a truth still. But then in a further irony this truth is credited to the devil. The film never stops qualifying itself, much like Mann's novel.

Your point that people are engaging in at least some respect is true, so it’s not a duality as much as a spectrum as I said before, along which we are in a continuous loop of internalizing stimuli and responding, even if with actions are non-actions or viewed as such by these terrorist groups.

Well, it exists as a spectrum in life for sure, but isn't the movie creating a duality by focusing on the extremes? Like, implying the nature of the all by exploring the relation of the poles?

[therewillbeblus]

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I meant I don't think Corbet is using engagement/disengagement as part of a critique of pop music or society, as mfunk rather eloquently laid out on the last page (and I do like and appreciate his analysis; my differences with it come down to differences in personality, I think). That is to say, Corbet is no more criticizing the limits of pop's disengagement than he is criticizing terrorism's excesses of engagement. He's collocating two extremes to get at some third thing, whatever that ultimately proves to be.

Plus, if pop music is hollow and Celeste an empty totem, what in the movie is full? If the movie isn't providing something meaningful to weigh pop emptiness against, its critique is emptying and destructive, leaving us with less than we came with. The movie would, in that argument, be offering no meaningful reaction to atrocity, just tearing down an unmeaningful one, leaving us with the bare fact of human ugliness and no recourse, not even a half-hearted gesture to think more. The movie may be multi-facted, but it's not showing us how to be multi-faceted in the face of limited concepts.

Like Mann's novel, Vox Lux is full of ironies. The "re-birth" concept behind Celeste's tour is nonsense given that she spends the latter half of the movie reenacting all her worst habits and teetering on the edge of disaster, and that her list of things she's overcome is really a list of things she's done to others during the movie. And yet, the story is one of shining success. Despite the trauma and emotional pain we see her undergo, all stuff she leaves unmentioned, her final moment in the movie is a successful one. How you put on a performance like that for millions after the day she's just had, I don't know. I guess I see the performance as less hollow than mfunk, because there is an ironic fullness in it. It's empty spectacle and untrue at face value, and yet its very existence lends truth to its conception. Not quite the truth Celeste would see in it, but a truth still. But then in a further irony this truth is credited to the devil. The film never stops qualifying itself, much like Mann's novel.

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I agree with your take here, which actually supports my original thoughts before I ventured into Corbet’s possible condemnation of the terrorist’s singlemindedness, but I’ll rephrase. I do think he presents all of these facets as they are and refuses to pass judgment on them, and the pop music as outlet is validated as empathic to the scary space this world is. I’ll say again that I don’t believe anything here to be didactic but rather if Corbet is attempting to say anything about the terrorist groups’ form of engagement, it’s not to wag a finger or condescend them, but to show how the Real that lurks beneath in the shadows is actually present in full force, in our face now more than ever as our collective trashpile of history, culture, religion, politics, technology, weaponry, and systems have escalated to apocalyptic space where we can’t hide from it anymore as easily. Before I got deep into spinning analyses I remember leaving my first viewing in the theatre thinking that the escape into pop music is an example for how we can cope, and I believe Corbet is validating art as a form that can make this world bearable. So I agree that he’s not asking us to face everything multifaceted (not that he’s asking anything, but that would be too much to bear); rather, I think he’s acknowledging that even those of us who appear to be distracting themselves or hiding are actually more resilient than we give them/ourselves credit for, and subconsciously recognizing more facets that we even are aware of. He’s looking at us, validating our resilience and challenging experiences without asking us to do more than we already are to cope.

I don’t think the concert is completely hallow but to mfunk’s point there is a jarring quality to it that rests between the discomfort and grime of the view of the world we’ve gotten and yet the joy from the crowd is unmistakably positive. Yeah there’s an irony there and the lyrics about partying with friends coming from a lonely friendless depressant are as on-the-nose as it gets but I’ll agree that doesn’t rob the audience of their subjective emotional reactions being authentic in a weird way. So it can be both hallow, sad, and hypocritical and yet vibrant, joyful, and honest, depending on the perspective one takes and in what role, spectator as audience of the film or spectator as audience of the concert, to name two.

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Your point that people are engaging in at least some respect is true, so it’s not a duality as much as a spectrum as I said before, along which we are in a continuous loop of internalizing stimuli and responding, even if with actions are non-actions or viewed as such by these terrorist groups.

Well, it exists as a spectrum in life for sure, but isn't the movie creating a duality by focusing on the extremes? Like, implying the nature of the all by exploring the relation of the poles?

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Of course, that’s why I brought up nihilism initially, because Corbet postures toward this mood without planting his feet in the sand, just as he does the same for the pleasures of pop music at the end without taking a position that art can cure pain. It’s no coincidence that the film begins with a horrible realistic event in a school shooting that inspires death, fear, and trauma; and ends with an artistic show that elicits pleasure, excitement, and smiles. I don’t think Corbet cares if it’s fake because it’s real to the audiences and imbues its own authenticity as a result. The rest of the film moves through this spectrum but he absolutely presents the extremes to get at the questions he’s interested in asking, which I’m not sure are real effable points but moody signifiers that draw on our existential narratives in our relationships to this world. I do think there’s more to the engagement/disengagement theme than you do, but I also don’t think Corbet is doing more than posing it as another of his rhetorical, abstract holistic questions, and I guess I don’t see our respective analyses as exclusive by necessity to work on their own or together.

This is one of those films that’s so broad in my view that I find myself agreeing with both of you and with (and against) myself and finding room for all of it. I’m going to pick up Mann’s book today and do a rewatch after I finish. Hopefully I’ll have more to say in response to your analysis after doing a side by side reading.

[Mr Sausage]

Make sure you get the recent John E. Woods translation. Unless you like your translations stiff, prim, and awkward, in which case, old H. Porter Lowe's got you covered.

Oh, and I never thought myself to be disagreeing with you here. More spinning thoughts off of things you've said. I only sort of disagree with mfunk, too. I don't know that I have enough of a bead on the film to make any solid conclusions, including rejecting readings.

[therewillbeblus]

I never thought you were, nor mfunk, I just think the film offers the opportunity to give attention and multiple readings on more elements than most works, or at least that’s my own subjective assessment of this film’s flexibility and diversity vs. the many other complex films I love. And thanks for the tip, changed my order and will get the Woods next week!

[nitin]

mfunk and twbb, in your readings, is the concert at the end worthy of the idolation shown by the concert audience? I get the sense that mfunk’s reading is that it is not but Corbet is not judging the concert audience either for having it is as their relief.

But I think you are seeing it somewhat differently twbb? Or am I interpreting your reading incorrectly?

[mfunk9786]

He's not judging the audience for enjoying the performance, but the concert is deliberately mediocre. At the Q&A I attended, Corbet and Portman had a nice chuckle over the nonsense words that project behind Celeste.

[therewillbeblus]

I don’t think “worthy of idolization” is Corbet’s interest, so I’d have to say no, but “Corbet is not judging the concert audience either for having it is as their relief” has been my point, so that. I believe that the audience is given as much worth as Celeste in that moment but I’d say Corbet isn’t taking any position on where that worth extends (placing it onto idolization, for example, would be making a different point entirely, and as mfunk says the scene clearly does not suggest it) instead validating that whatever gives Celeste or her family or the audience pleasure is justified against the experience of that person and their contextual relationship to their world as a whole, recognizing meaning where it can be found. There may be a significance to showing a process of celebrating art as a preferable avenue and perhaps the one domain we have left to give us pleasure, like the Renaissance, but Corbet also shows the gritty artificiality, the sweaty de-romanticized angles reminding us that the truth exists somewhere in between this glorification and hopeless depression, or rather that it’s both or all of the things in that vast space.

[nitin]

Thanks for clarifying mfunk that Corbet confirmed that the concert is meant to be deliberately mediocre. That does make for a more interesting intent/objective. Will revisit this one soon on BD, it might click more for me a repeat viewing.

[therewillbeblus]

Im struggling to see how that reaction implies that it was deliberately mediocre, or if so, what that implies about the intent. I wasn’t at the Q&A so I’m sure there’s more detail to share, but I could see chuckling at the words to insinuate everything from it was a fun exercise to come up with them, to acknowledging the nonsensical aspects of some art, to shaming the idolization or pop concert experience in general. I doubt it was the latter, and after all great bands like the Talking Heads did the whole ‘bizarre background word’ thing a lot time ago (I wouldn’t be surprised if Stop Making Sense was a reference there). The angles and perspective we get with the camera is intimately close and yet diffuses the magic of that experience so I can get behind the concert being, I don’t want to use the word “mediocre” but maybe ‘exposed in its unglamorous and ironic aspects.’ As far as the concert experience being deliberately mediocre though, whether implying that the songs by Sia are purposefully spiteful, or invalidating the subjective experience of the daughter and sister smiling against all odds or logic based on what we’ve seen before, through an objective stance of Corbet and Portman laughing at everyone condescendingly, well that would ruin this movie for me. I do think it works in its irony as Sausage said (and the interviews I’ve read of Corbet talking about his interest/intent with the pop star seemed to me to be curious about the irony as emblematic of his worldview), but anything more judgmental feels not just out of step with the film but against its entire vibe. But maybe that’s not what those words meant, and it’s one of the other two more humble attitudes.

[mfunk9786]

You'd have to take my word for it TWBB, but the tone was definitely mocking, and the context was definitely that Celeste wasn't a great artist by any stretch, and a bit of a fraud. Some talk about cults of personality like Trump and how they are built on shaky foundations.

From a Playlist interview with the two, calling the soundtrack and concert "intentionally insipid":

That’s not the film’s only emotional manipulation, though—it also both satirizes and seriously tackles the distracting-yet-artistic world of pop music. Its infectious soundtrack by Sia (without whom, Corbet noted, the movie probably could not have been made) is at once incredibly listenable and intentionally insipid. Portman’s performance of the music in “Vox Lux” follows a similar vein: the film’s final sequence sees Celeste writhing along to the beat in a glittery jumpsuit as nonsense words erupt on a screen behind her.

“It’s almost impossible to go far enough,” Corbet said of Celeste’s tough-yet-strange pop star persona. “Same thing with, like, the text and stuff during the concert. I went and saw a lot of pop concerts for the year leading up to this, and I noticed that there was always this text on the screen behind performers that doesn’t really mean anything.”

“What was it, BABY AVEC CASH?” Portman laughed, citing one of the more ridiculous examples in the film. “That’s my autobiography title.”

I certainly hope that doesn't ruin the film for you, as I still don't see Corbet's position as being one that is anti-pop music or anti-pop music fandom. But I do think this is a different film if Celeste is a great artist worthy of a slavish following.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I didn’t think for one second that Celeste was even in consideration as a great artist, and as I said before I think the word “worthy” is dangerous unless we’re talking about dignifying the masses with equity of worth. I may have read the same interview as that, and while it strays a bit from my anti-positional interpretation, I think it fits more with the ironic perspective rather than a pejorative one. Basically what I mean is that Corbet and Portman are allowed to mockingly call a spade a spade and comment on the hivemindedness of those cult following crowds without invalidating their experience in absolute terms. This is what I was alluding to before when I said I can get behind all of these interpretations, for judgment is natural (and as I’ve said before, the idea of a nonjudgmental person is scary because it means that person has no moral compass in opinions on observations), and so I think Corbet is able to look skeptically at this cultural movement while simultaneously working harder against his judgment to find a humanist angle to fight his own judgment with sympathy. I believe he sees pop music, and likely art geared towards happiness in general, to be a bit fake and questionable given the state of the world but also fair given those circumstances too. He’s not going to make art that way, that’s for sure, but I’m happy with his ability to remain vague and objective enough in his art to restrain those judgments from tipping the scale too much beyond irony towards superiority. I take your word for it of course! And it sounds like we actually probably agree in several respects on this area of the movie.

[mfunk9786]

To me, it isn't about whether Celeste has value, it's how much value Celeste has. She's a deeply flawed person making deeply flawed art who is worshipped by the public. It is evidence of a cultural rot that has always existed in some form, but has dangerously escalated in the last 20 years.

[therewillbeblus]

Well yeah, the vibe of the film is centered around that rot as a moody exposition on essentially the social apocalypse unfolding globally, culturally, and individually - but while Celeste is certainly to be considered in that realm, there’s too much introspection into her humanity for me to believe the focus is primarily on assigning her a level of value. I appreciate that angle by which to view it though, because it’s necessary to offset the humanist posturing, but I think the film works because it skeptically questions her value (or to rephrase more comfortably for me: the consequences of her behavior, art, even considering her responsibility as a messenger) while also validating and celebrating her value (behavior as a result of trauma and social context, ability to show up and bring her art to people who may need it, and having to endure the philosophical weight of perceived responsibility in the position of celebrity). By asking how much value she has while also providing her with as much dignity or worth as you and I, Corbet stacks a seemingly hypocritical conflict by which to assess on more than one dimension. Can she have both little value and absolute value, just in different respects and contingent on perspective? I’d say so.

[therewillbeblus]

It is evidence of a cultural rot that has always existed in some form, but has dangerously escalated in the last 20 years.

I want to take a moment to reflect on this point because it’s something that I very much feel myself, and regardless of my admiration of Corbet’s ability to distance himself from a didactic approach, part of what draws me to this film is that subjective alliance with Corbet’s clear disillusionment that bleeds through this picture. To depart from the post-9/11 and Columbine America macro-lens, the objective validation of multiple perspectives and flexible moral stance on participation in the mezzo and individual levels, you’re right that he feels this chaotic daunting social apocalypse and finds hope difficult in the face of such an escalation. Is Celeste’s hopelessness a reflection of his own just as much as our world’s? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting point to consider that the artists making the momentary cure to alleviate such symptoms are just as distraught. There’s a deep authenticity within this shell of inauthenticity, and I suppose that’s where I draw the humanistic energy from. I’m happy that Corbet can take a step back to analyze all the components from a well-rounded and open-minded place, but I’m also just as drawn to this film because I do stand with him in feeling displaced and afraid of the ‘dangerous escalation’ of this ‘cultural rot’ that you do aptly describe. Essentially, I’m grateful for his restraint and reminder to consider more than my subjective experience just as much as I’m grateful for an artist diving head first into exposing my perspective, or telling my narrative, of how the world is.

I see two halves of Corbet in Vox Lux: the observer and the participant. The observer wants to clinically acknowledge the idea of worth as complex and to assess this anxiety and cultural crisis on a multisystemic level, while the participant feels a personal attachment to this culture and its anxiety and unapologetically shares that opinion as necessary for his own authentic involvement in the material. While the former shadows the latter enough to balance the whole’s perspective out, it only works as well as it does because it has a commitment to both, and an execution that’s as humble as it is audacious.

[therewillbeblus]

It's also timely for this discussion to be occurring around the Superbowl, as I'm reminded that the floor attendees at the halftime show are actually paid (or not compensated depending on who you ask) stand-ins to help move the equipment, acting as fans (some of them may be) as one more facade on top of the more glaring facade of music not actually happening on stage at a music concert. All in service of idol worship, admiration of spectacle, and escapism trumping authenticity. Is the experience of the viewers at home enjoying this not honest though? Is there value to be found in that, or is this sucking all the value out of the art form? Removing my own subjective distaste, can both be true?

[therewillbeblus]

Potential Discussion Question:

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Another aspect of this film that I'm still wrapping my head around after three watches is the "deal with the devil" piece and Dafoe's narration at the end. This is finally what makes it earn its spot in the horror camp for me (perhaps I'm just looking for an excuse but considering this is horror for every reason Assayas's film is for me, I'm not going to discriminate). Does anybody have a good reading on this part of the film? Because at this moment in time I just see it as another 'possible truth' that remains in the unknown but by which perhaps Celeste has attached personal meaning. In other words, it's a piece of her subjective meaning amidst the nihilism that may or may not have driven her actions or paved the way for her internal narrative of her life. And if so, is this a healthy coping mechanism to simplify just a little piece of life by assigning tangible responsibility to a prayer, or is it her fatalist undoing by creating a core belief from guilt that has led to her making poor choices; or an excuse to self-destruct amidst hopeless post 9/11 America, or perhaps actually a cure as was its intent, or does Corbet reserve the right to say it's all of the above, and that it doesn't matter if it's true or not because all that matters is that subjective meaning anyways?

SpoilerShow

I think I said this upthread, but I read the Faustian bargain less as a piece of character psychology than as something intertextual. I saw this film as a modern reworking of, and response to, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. In Mann's novel, the titular Faustus, Adrian Leverkühn, a brilliant composer whom Mann gifts with Schoenberg's innovations in atonality, appears to deliberately contract syphilis in order to court the genius that lies in the madness of its tertiary stage, at the cost of ever experiencing love or intimacy. Late in novel, Leverkühn's friend, the narrator, comes across a piece of paper where Leverkühn details meeting an emissary of the devil and agreeing to forgo the experience of love in exchange for 15 years of musical genius. Is this the hallucination of a man descending into syphilitic madness, a metaphorical fancy describing his extreme but material and rational decision to contract syphilis, or a very real Faustian bargain carried out in merely physical terms? It's impossible to say (tho' the collocation of love, lust, disease, madness, and morality is pure Mann). Much like in Vox Lux, this detail is twice mediated: we learn it from a narrator who does not himself get it straight from the source.

Perhaps the key to the Faustian bargain in Vox Lux lies in Leverkühn's trade off: he will gain brilliance at the cost of love. Many love Leverkühn; many want to find their way in to his life and share it, the narrator especially. But Leverkühn holds them all at arm's length, unable to share that love even as he brings spiritual ecstasy through his music. So, Celeste. How loved, how unable to love. Adoring fans she can only bark at and berate; a daughter she pawns off, a martyred sister she can only hold in contempt, a business manager she can only get high with. She holds people at arm's length; even her closest, most intimate moments are needy and demanding rather than sharing. She wishes to bring light and happiness to the world through her music, yet she brings none of it to the people around her nor herself. She is complicated, yes, but she does seem to've sacrificed love to bring happiness through music. She tried love and understanding once, with the shooter, and she was cut off and nearly rendered voiceless by his shots. Never again?

In Mann's novel, Leverkühn's life is paralleled by the horrors that engulfed Germany in the early 20th century. I don't remember the parallels in enough detail, and fear vulgarizing the novel by a simplistic description. But I think Vox Lux reworks those parallels by charting the rise of Celeste's pop optimism with the horror and degradation of 21st century violence and fanaticism. It doesn't assign causes or blame, but it does wish us to view those two things in terms of the other. If Leverkühn's pact brought genius, but genius at the cost of love, what is the price of happiness and light at the cost of love? Perhaps the terrorist violence coupled with the ecstasy of the pop concert is playing a larger symbolic role for Celeste's own life, which strives for positive emotions on the impersonal level, but is wracked with unhappiness and torment on the personal. Or perhaps there's a dualism/yin-yang argument going on. Creation, joy, light, what have you, cannot occur without destruction, terror, blackness, and so forth. A larger Faustian bargain: there needs to be sorrow to have happiness. Things are defined against their opposites. Nothing is the one singular object.

I suppose I don't consider this film horror for the same reason Mann's novel isn't horror. I don't necessarily disagree with anything anyone else's said, tho'.

I'm not quite finished with Mann's novel yet (thanks again for the rec), but it's definitely giving me a lot by which to measure this film against, though I'm reading it a bit more towards by own take:

SpoilerShow

Adrian, like Celeste, seems to be displaced from his peers and society from the start, perhaps a predisposition to feeling separate, or socially acquired, or both. He seems preoccupied with how to signify meaning, language is not enough and so he turns to music. He doesn't possess the emotional intelligence to access love or connection with others it seems, and so he turns to isolation and theology. When he does engage in a romantic encounter it is either desperate or calculated in its attitude towards self-harm. Like Celeste, this sacrifice he makes appears to be rooted in his self-destruction or surrender in giving up due to feeling displaced from the world. The loneliness and nihilistic perspective has swallowed them both and their respective attitudes move towards solipsism as a defense mechanism to avoid the world they cannot comprehend.

I don't know if it matters much if either character actually made a deal with the devil. If Celeste did, it would be of self-preservation as she is doing so for her life not for fame, while Adrian's would be for the ego in greatness, sacrificing the potential at connection that is too insecure and inspires fear, so it's the ultimate form of self-fulfilling prophecy in taking the easy route to escape from the hazy ineffable areas of life that he struggles so hard to access. The history of Germany in the book influences Adrian subconsciously towards hopelessness, much like the terrorism from school shootings to 9/11 and all in between affect Celeste's own change in attitude towards the same. Both characters are born under the umbrella of optimism, or rather humanism. Even though Zeitblom states that he grew up under a humanistic lens while Adrian did a theological one, the implication is that both boys were raised through a positive worldview that deteriorated for Adrian along with his milieu. I appreciate that his inner struggle to access his peers, or to "open himself up to others," as his friend writes, appears to be due to something inherent only exacerbated and reinforced by the worldly destruction; and I'd argue that Celeste, who also is clearly exhibiting pure humanism with her willingness to stand up and bravely try to reason with the shooter, as well as sing a song at a candlelight vigil to commemorate her peers, also sacrifices authenticity (Dafoe early on states that "back then, she used to write her own lyrics" before the shooting) and other signifiers of a hopeful identity, but this appears to be completely due to social learning theory rather than innate characteristics.

I suppose this doesn't matter either, as Adrian, who we have less insight to, may be shaped by his surroundings completely as well; we don't get that omnipotent narrator but instead his friend to tell us a perspective. In Mann's novel, the teacher who speaks of "freedom" defines it by the human being's will to choose God's path or not, but our narrator wisely presents us with the missing perspective here as one of acceptance in the spirituality of mystery as freedom too. Instead, agency as tangible action is highlighted, so Adrian of course succumbs to this reading and, by taking full responsibility and agency upon himself cannot bear to go to God so he goes to the Devil. The same could be said for Celeste, who feels no inspiration or security from spiritual mystery, as all around her is overwhelming disorder stemming from people acting on will, and so she too tries to rely on her own, a process that cannot end any way but failure. She cannot control her happiness that way, as she cannot control the music business, her sister's trysts, terrorist attacks, her lovers' faithfulness, or practically any part of her life. Without some semblance of humility and acknowledgement of powerlessness one cannot access acceptance, gratitude, or understanding. When one places the world on their own shoulders, disappointment is inevitable, and when that world doesn't match one's expectations or needs like only God or the acceptance of mystery can, well nihilism feels rather inevitable. Meaning is optimistic when it is allowed to be mysterious, but the moment is becomes a forced definition by agency that relies on the uncontrollable world molding itself to the preference of that individual, the logical response will be to declare meaninglessness by the futility of access. Anyways, so when Adrian is told that freedom is either the freedom to will oneself to unclear territory or to sin which is tangible, he chooses the easier path that corresponds to his core beliefs and sociopolitical experience. When Celeste fails to achieve happiness in the face of a threatening and horrifying world of harmful mysteries, she also chooses retreat to sin. Who wouldn't, when they only rely on themselves for support?

I think it's important to mention that I am not assigning blame to either character. Even going by recent evidence, human beings have a finite amount of will power, and studies have shown that social support and a belief in a higher power (whether god or simply internalizing acceptance that the scientific processes of the universe are outside one's control) are two of the key factors to alleviate that stress and strengthen one's will power before it depletes. So when either of these character face the world alone, it is not their 'faults' that they are unable to access a sense of connection with others to use as support, nor is it their fault that they cannot overcome the fog of their terrifying worlds to see an optimistic light. But just like Mann doesn't seem to be advocating for nihilism as much as compassionately drawing a situation where one could fall into that clouded mindset, Corbet seems to be doing the same; and just like Mann, Corbet can identify with that hopeless view enough to offer that opposite reaction of conscientiousness to empathize with the characters, whether through the best friend's narrator in the book or through our objective perspective in the film (certainly not the film's narrator, whose function seems to mirror an objective perspective without any emotion, one of apathy to match a part of Corbet, which is then complemented by the camera's distanced sympathy that mirrors our own emotional lability to the experience at hand with a chaotic score and moody shifts across a consistent tone of discomfort - that is which elicits our empathy).

If we take the narrator's second-hand information at face value, the film's final lines:

[The Devil] whispered [Celeste] melodies, and she returned with a mission to bring great change to the next century. He said, “Shut your eyes and repeat after me. One for the money, two for the show. On three we get ready. And on four, come with me.”

seem to indicate either a) a condescending portrait of pop music as the devil's work, or b) a determinist fate through which the devil offers Celeste a sealed future but provides her space to feel good within it. If we go with B (my preference), this is fitting with the complex worldview Corbet expresses in this film, and itself splits into two parts - or a range between two poles. The optimistic half of this outlook would be that we have limitations to change the bleak path we are on, and yet we can find some solace in certain spaces (art, bringing people joy, empowerment), which provides free will within determinism. On the other hand, there is potential harm in the dissonance of escapism by engaging in those acts of solace while ignoring the space that we could potentially be focusing and trying to issue change; in which case this deal with the devil resigns Celeste to accepting doom and an identity engulfed in her art, not allowing her other neglected emotional parts to get the attention they need, just as it resigns Adrian to a very similar fate. One side of the coin is the freedom toward God in Mann's book, while the other is the freedom to choose sin. We either embrace the attitude of positive surrender, that by accepting what we can and cannot control, stay right-sized and remove absolute agency from ourselves, we are afforded a freedom that allows for joy, gratitude, pleasure, positivity; or we move towards an attitude of negative surrender, of expectations, apathy, resentment, social comparing and completely giving up. If we allow ourselves relief from whether or not an actual deal with the devil matters or whether it's symbolic in each story, the same is true: it's a self-fulfilling prophecy either way.

I still think Corbet argues that both ends are on a spectrum that makeup our experience, and that if simplified, each is a part within us that voices its perspective; and I believe Mann is actually doing the same. So this "deal with the devil" in an abstract form can function as a positive or negative form of surrender, born from the same space of discomfort, distrust, fear, isolation, and trauma; but it can take the form of resilience or self-immolation as the result of recognizing one's place in an abrasive and unpredictable world. Both Corbet and Mann appear to be showing us characters that skew themselves to the default in the negative space of sin, of nihilism, and don't judge them for it or dub them weak but offer them up as examples of one way we can go, and an enticing one at that, one that feeds our protective parts and moves towards the magnet of safety in choosing our own downfall versus exposing ourselves to a scary world. The key is that the authors, not the characters, are the objective voices that level our awareness to other options. They validate this position without championing it as the only solution. Instead, through that validation they offer hope with constraints, insofar as we can perhaps acquire some kind of a balance if we try hard enough, despite the inevitable determinist factors outside of our control. Each appears to be a cautionary tale of what happens when we move to giving up completely, but if we channel that anxiety toward a space with more support, in art and people, and awareness in facing the uncomfortable truths of our world today, then we have a fighting chance at accessing some meaning in a life under the limitations and possibilities of existential agency.

And yet on another level, both Mann and Corbet are accepting of their limitations in accessing their characters' psyches: Mann through a bewildered subjective friend, and Corbet through an objective camera and omnipotent narrator who is reserved enough to show the limitations of even a Godly force. Neither can penetrate the minds of their characters, to truly know them, just as they and their characters cannot penetrate or know the world. The humility allows for all of this complex ambiguity in analysis to be handled with a shrug in acknowledging the authors' limitations as well, with which we can either meet with an interpretation of positive surrender as another example of the intangibility of truth and use their ideas as a framework, or meet them with negative surrender, shrugging off even their limited insight as worthless as a blueprint to finding our own respective paths to meaning.

[therewillbeblus]

You'd have to take my word for it TWBB, but the tone was definitely mocking, and the context was definitely that Celeste wasn't a great artist by any stretch, and a bit of a fraud. Some talk about cults of personality like Trump and how they are built on shaky foundations.

From a Playlist interview with the two, calling the soundtrack and concert "intentionally insipid":

That’s not the film’s only emotional manipulation, though—it also both satirizes and seriously tackles the distracting-yet-artistic world of pop music. Its infectious soundtrack by Sia (without whom, Corbet noted, the movie probably could not have been made) is at once incredibly listenable and intentionally insipid. Portman’s performance of the music in “Vox Lux” follows a similar vein: the film’s final sequence sees Celeste writhing along to the beat in a glittery jumpsuit as nonsense words erupt on a screen behind her.

“It’s almost impossible to go far enough,” Corbet said of Celeste’s tough-yet-strange pop star persona. “Same thing with, like, the text and stuff during the concert. I went and saw a lot of pop concerts for the year leading up to this, and I noticed that there was always this text on the screen behind performers that doesn’t really mean anything.”

“What was it, BABY AVEC CASH?” Portman laughed, citing one of the more ridiculous examples in the film. “That’s my autobiography title.”

I certainly hope that doesn't ruin the film for you, as I still don't see Corbet's position as being one that is anti-pop music or anti-pop music fandom. But I do think this is a different film if Celeste is a great artist worthy of a slavish following.

This article from The Guardian reframes this a bit:

"I would never want anyone to think I was making fun of them, because I’m not.” Being a pop star is “an inherently absurd line of work”, Corbet says, but he’s also fascinated by the burnout factor faced by performers on tour: “If you’re shooting a movie for 30 days, you usually come home and polish off a bottle of wine. If I was doing it 200 days a year, I’d probably have a heart attack or liver failure. It’s easy to see how folks start to come undone.”

“The only thing that mass shootings and mass distribution of manufactured hits have in common is spectacle. The movie is about the desire to be iconic. [The desire] to be remembered at any cost is something that seems to be unique to this generation.” What bewilders him, he says, is that “we expect celebrities to be our representatives. It’s totally fair to come down on a politician for misrepresenting you. But there’s a strange expectation of Taylor Swift to take a political stance and support the female Democratic nominees. Even if that’s who I support, why should she have [to have] an opinion about it?”

I think you're right about the intention being on icons, mfunk, and there is a specificity a lot of my own analysis is ignoring which is that sense of unexpected responsibility that comes with being a pop star, which may even be the ultimate ironic twist in a deal with a devil, that of a life in hell as the center of a social world one wants to hide from. I think his statement that being a pop star is "inherently absurd" fits with much of my reading on the film though, in how complex is this experience of creating artificiality in persona, lyrics, performance, art, bases of joy, as well as this face for people to attach themselves to despite its impenetrability and unqualified source for such a merger, not to mention a lack of consent to take on this responsibility or sharing of identity; but yet the performers do give that joy, do work hard, do have their own personalities, and do suffer, and do all of these things authentically. There is an absurdity here that we can laugh at as a 'joke of life' kind of mismatch of expectations and reality, and then there is one of pathos and even horror underneath, all of which is recognized.

[mfunk9786]

I don't think, at this point, we are saying anything different from one another, nor does that Guardian piece move the needle on my understanding of Corbet's tone here re: pop idolatry

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I didn't think it did, you made it pretty clear that you didn't take his statements in your linked article or the Q&A you attended to be condescending, but the reframe helped me get behind it- or rather link my reading to yours- a little bit easier, even if I was already mostly in agreement (at least in one space of this cosmic beast)