The memorable vapor projects that usually stick with me often push past the vague theme of redundant tech, ubiquitous laserdiscs and cassettes, and instead look at the organic side of genre. Static culture, otherworldly beauty, almost utopian in nature but undone by it’s own uncanniness; in that, the iconic releases of the genre are born. Whether there is some “deep” commentary on beauty or its pursuit to be found in it is another piece to be written or another argument to be had. I think what these projects, like Valet Girls, can do exceptionally well is illuminate the feelings that get lost when beauty is taken at face value.
There’s an obvious nod (and sample) of Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon in “Crystal Skies”, but the fit is apt. In “Crystal Skies”, there’s a objective beauty or at least the approach of it, “nothing fake, nothing false.” Imperfection is only incidental, the result of failing to truly appreciate it, or your own apprehension upon beholding such allure. It should strike you as mystical, bewitching even. It’s pure uncanniness, beneath the veneer. You can catch glints of it in the glassy, marbled surface if you stop to look. The physical beauty is absolute, but that anxiety in the back of your mind? As they say, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
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