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class="cb-hide" itemscope itemprop="publisher" itemtype="https://schema.org/Organization"> <meta itemprop="name" content="Senses of Cinema"> <meta itemprop="url" content="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/senses-header-logo.png"> <span class="cb-hide" itemscope itemprop="logo" itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject"> <meta itemprop="url" content="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/senses-header-logo.png"> </span> </span> <span class="cb-hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><meta itemprop="name" content="Jessica Balanzategui"></span> <meta itemprop="headline" content="Cage, Nicolas"> <span class="cb-hide" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" itemprop="image" > <meta itemprop="url" content="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Untitled-design-2-13.png"> <meta itemprop="width" content="1600"> <meta itemprop="height" content="900"> </span> <div id="main" class="cb-main clearfix issue-single-meta-container"> <article id="post-43743" class="clearfix post-43743 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail category-great-actors"> <header id="cb-standard-featured"><div class="cb-mask"><img width="750" height="400" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Untitled-design-2-13-750x400.png" class="cb-fi-standard wp-post-image" alt="" loading="lazy" /><div class="cb-image-credit"><i class="fa fa-camera"></i>Nicolas Cage</div></div><div id="cb-fis-wrap" class="cb-entry-header hentry cb-fis cb-style-standard"><span class="cb-title-fi"><h1 class="entry-title cb-entry-title cb-single-title" itemprop="headline">Cage, Nicolas</h1><div class="cb-byline cb-font-header"><div class="cb-author cb-byline-element vcard author"><i class="fa fa-user"></i> <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/author/jessica-balanzategui/" title="Posts by Jessica Balanzategui" class="author url fn" rel="author">Jessica Balanzategui</a></div> <div class="cb-date cb-byline-element"><i class="fa fa-clock-o"></i> <time class="updated" datetime="2022-01-31">January 2022</time></div> <div class="cb-category cb-byline-element"><i class="fa fa-folder-o"></i> <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/category/great-actors/" title="View all posts in Great Actors">Great Actors</a></div></div></div></header> <div class="cb-category cb-byline-element issue-single-meta"><i class="fa fa-folder-o"></i><a href="/issues/issue-100-issue-100">Issue 100</a></div> <section class="cb-entry-content entry-content clearfix" itemprop="articleBody"> <h2><strong>b. 7 January 1964, Long Beach, California, United States</strong></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">My first viewing of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Cosmatos, 2018), one of the films that sparked the late 2010s Nicolas Cage renaissance, occurred under tense yet absurd circumstances that parallel the tone of both the film and Cage’s own distinctive performance style. I had booked tickets to the Australian premiere of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">at the Melbourne International Film Festival weeks in advance: it was one of my most anticipated films of 2018, given I have admired the work of the film’s production company, cult and horror film specialists SpectreVision, since their breakout success, the Iranian Vampire Western </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Amirpour, 2014). I also love the haunting electro-orchestral music of the film’s composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson (who tragically died in February 2018, before </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s theatrical release). Perhaps above all else, I have long been a fan of Nicolas Cage. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, in my excitement and haste to secure tickets, I forgot to save the screening into my calendar as an appointment. By the time that Friday came around, the date of the screening had slipped my mind, and I had booked a 4-course dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant that night to celebrate a work achievement with my partner. As we progressed through the courses, I kept telling my partner I had a niggling feeling that I had forgotten something: left the door unlocked? Forgotten to feed the dogs? Missed a writing deadline? Halfway through the main course, I finally figured out where this persistent tugging was coming from: I had forgotten that </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was TONIGHT. In fact, it would start in 30 minutes. Refusing to admit defeat, we powered through the remaining courses with a speed the waiter had clearly never witnessed, ran to the nearest train station, and sprinted full pelt from the train into the theatre for the sold-out screening. Just as we triumphantly yet breathlessly took the only two seats left, which were in the front row, the film started. Especially from our vantage in the front row, the film’s cosmic neon hues and meditative yet ominous music ensconced us immediately, cultivating a feeling that we had been plunged into its world which was enhanced by our relief that we’d somehow made it just in time. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s mystical atmosphere is established from the dizzying opening shot of a forest, which is rendered otherworldly and somehow aquatic by the floating aerial camerawork, the shot’s bluish hue, and the Panavision anamorphic format. In the first 30 seconds, the words “Nicolas Cage” filled the screen, which were met with a mix of scattered applause, excited gasps, and woops from the audience. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The film itself, like my journey to it, is nerve-shreddingly tense yet excessive to the point of absurdity. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s hypnotic world is seemingly grounded in a realist setting (the Californian Shadow Mountains in 1983), yet it is constantly on the brink of implosion into the dark but beautiful incoherence of an LSD trip. Narrative-wise, it is a bare-bones revenge thriller. The film follows Cage’s Red as he seeks bloody vengeance on a deranged, LSD-obsessed hippie cult responsible for the senseless and gruesome murder of his girlfriend, the eponymous Mandy, who is burned alive before Red’s eyes while he is bound and gagged. The film’s appeal and artistry, like so many cult films, lies not in the complexity of the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">narrative</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, but in the complexity of the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">aesthetics</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which are stitched to Cage’s typically unpredictable performance style. The film seems to bleed out from the volatility of Cage’s acting approach and persona, which has been cultivated over four decades across a diverse body of films. Cage’s style is characterised by a surface-level steadiness underpinned by barely concealed emotional intensity that threatens to erupt into mania with every twitch of the eyebrow or curl of the lip. Self-reflexively accentuating this duality, at the beginning of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Red is introduced as a subdued and quiet character. Early scenes depict Red and Mandy’s simple domestic bliss in their isolated mountain cabin. Cage’s trademark emotional eruption – which the internet has dubbed “Cage Rage” – occurs after Mandy’s death, in a long take that depicts Red in his bathroom in his underpants, downing a bottle of vodka between screams of rage and despair. The scene recalls Cage’s Oscar-winning performance in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Leaving Las Vegas</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Figgis, 1995), in which his character, alcoholic screenwriter Ben, skulls a bottle of whisky as part of a despairing attempt to drink himself to death. As was evidenced by the audible reactions to this moment in the theatre, this much-anticipated Cage outburst in</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> offered the audience catharsis from the horrors of the prior sequence depicting Mandy’s death, the audience’s own emotional release paralleled on-screen by Cage’s guttural moans and shouts. </span></p> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> evocatively captures the inner workings of Cage’s artistry via its knowing and enthusiastic embrace of the absurd excesses of the actor’s performance style.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> As . As I will outline in this Great Actors profile, this absurdity and excess resonates with the subversive spirit and oppositional aesthetics of cult cinema. My experience of watching </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the cinema, which remains one of my most powerful viewing experiences, is typical of the heightened aesthetic experience Sexton and Mathijs associate with cult cinema, which they term the “phenomenal experience” of cult film <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-1' id='fnref-43743-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>1</a></sup>. While the few scholarly examinations of Cage’s star persona and performance style have focused on his status as a “good” or “bad” actor and the discourse surrounding this dichotomy <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-2' id='fnref-43743-2' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>2</a></sup>, Cage’s allegiances with cult film remain underexplored: in Egan and Thomas’ anthology on cult stardom, for instance, Cage does not feature, nor is he mentioned in Mathijs and Sexton’s examination of cult stardom in their influential book on cult film. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-3' id='fnref-43743-3' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>3</a></sup></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is perhaps testament to Cage’s ambiguous positioning between cult and mainstream film cultures, a liminality the actor has embraced since the beginning of his career. In the first decade of his career, Cage played: a leading role in the fantasy comedy-drama film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Peggy Sue Got Married</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (directed by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, 1986), in which he notoriously adopted a nasally voice inspired by the animated horse Pokey from </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Gumby Show</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (NBC, 1955-1968); an eccentric small-time criminal who kidnaps a baby to start his own family in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Raising Arizona</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Ethan and Joel Coen, 1987); an insane literary agent who believes he is turning into a vampire in the horror-comedy </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Bierman, 1988); and a parodically over-the-top Southern outlaw in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Lynch, 1990). Like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, all of these films toy with absurdity. In amongst this eclectic body of films, Cage also appeared in these early years in the romantic comedy </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Moonstruck</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Jewison, 1988), a commercial success for which he garnered mainstream attention. This balancing act between cult/avant-garde and commercial mainstream cinema has long characterised Cage’s career. After winning an Oscar for the critically celebrated, low-budget </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Leaving Las Vegas</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, for instance, Cage went on to star in a trifecta of blockbuster action films which, as McGowan, points out, diminished his newly achieved critical prestige and artistic legitimacy. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-4' id='fnref-43743-4' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>4</a></sup> Cage’s career has endured peaks and troughs of critical acclaim and derision, and the actor is currently experiencing a peak thanks to a string of critical successes in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></i></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As Mathijs and Sexton note, few performers “attain the status [of] both a cult star and a mainstream star at the same time.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-5' id='fnref-43743-5' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>5</a></sup> Cage is one of these few, as he has long traversed the chasm between mainstream leading man and gonzo cult icon. It is important to note at this juncture that Hills asserts that while cult film stardom is defined in opposition to mainstream tastes and norms, it “isn’t always coherently set against mainstream stardom”, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-6' id='fnref-43743-6' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>6</a></sup>, and Cage embodies this ambiguity. Rather than being fully accepted as either a mainstream success or a cult figure, the actor is equivocally positioned in relation to normative metrics of success, good taste and prestige. Yet, I contend that this ambiguity and liminality animates Cage’s aesthetic power. In this Great Actors profile I illustrate how, in the spirit of cult film, key to understanding the allure and artistry of Cage’s approach is his play with the boundaries between good and bad taste, quality and poor acting, naturalistic authenticity and over-the-top excess. The popular suggestion that Cage is “so bad he’s good” encapsulates the actor’s subversive experimentation with such categories. Attempting to position the actor on either side of the good/bad dichotomy misses the point of Cage’s appeal: he would not be so good if he wasn’t so bad. My analysis in this article addresses the importance of excess and absurdity to Cage’s work and highlights how these elements are also crucial to the aesthetic dynamics of cult film, with which, I contend, Cage has a deep philosophical and artistic allegiance. </span></p> <h2><b>Cage and Cult</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In their edited collection on cult stardom, Egan and Thomas describe two types of cult star: actors renowned for their work in cult films and “atypical performers who nevertheless have a presence within mainstream film and media.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-7' id='fnref-43743-7' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>7</a></sup> In line with his subversive liminality, Cage represents both types of cult star. Since the beginning of his career, he has starred in films that can be understood as “cult” classics in the multiple senses of this thorny term. For instance, Cage’s bizarre performance in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – a tonally, generically, and narratively confusing film – was negatively appraised by reviewers at the time, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-8' id='fnref-43743-8' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>8</a></sup> but has subsequently become a beloved cult favourite. The film and its key attraction, Cage’s performance, thus aligns neatly with the common understanding that films become cult classics via the “accidental consequence of their fractured reception trajectories.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-9' id='fnref-43743-9' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>9</a></sup> As Mathijs and Sexton describe, these films tend to be “failures upon their initial release” that frequently encounter “obstacles in their search for audiences” yet they eventually develop “committed followings… [and] go on to enjoy long lasted fandom.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-10' id='fnref-43743-10' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>10</a></sup> This cult reverence is thus often further fuelled by the film’s initial critical and/or commercial failure, and defies typical or “mainstream” definitions of good taste and quality. Instead, as Mathijs and Mendik articulate, cult films offer audiences a sense of rebellion garnered from resistance to or deconstruction of accepted taste hierarchies and markers of quality and esteem <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-11' id='fnref-43743-11' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>11</a></sup></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cage’s performance in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> has been retrospectively appreciated in such a context: while prominent reviews at the time of its release aligned with Caryn’s declaration in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The New York Times</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that “the film is dominated and destroyed by Mr Cage’s chaotic, self-indulgent performance,” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-12' id='fnref-43743-12' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>12</a></sup> it is now considered a masterpiece of Cage ridiculousness. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was featured in MIFF’s 2018 “Cage-a-thon” – a 12-hour celebration of Cage – and the most ludicrous moments from Cage’s performance have been commemorated and re-contextualised in countless memes and video clips. For instance, a close-up of Cage’s face manically contorted in wide-eyed mock surprise as he berates his secretary is the source of what’s known as the “You Don’t Say Meme”, which manifests as gifs, captioned screenshots, and a contour comic drawing. On YouTube, CurlyXP’s compilation video “Best Scene from Vampire’s Kiss” has 1.1 million views, and is described as offering “Nicolas Cage at his finest”. I will come back to the role of meme culture in solidifying Cage’s subversive cult appeal at the end of this article, but I highlight these examples at this juncture to indicate how Cage’s style has been reassessed in the twenty-first century in line with the “marginal or oppositional reading strategies” of cult film. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-13' id='fnref-43743-13' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>13</a></sup> What is appreciated in these </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> memes and videos is how these instances of “Cage Rage” defy social norms and exceed the acceptable limits of human emotion and behaviour in ways that are both hilarious and disturbing. </span></p> <div id="attachment_43744" style="width: 854px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-1-You-Dont-Say-Meme.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43744" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43744" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-1-You-Dont-Say-Meme.png" alt="" width="844" height="281" srcset="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-1-You-Dont-Say-Meme.png 844w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-1-You-Dont-Say-Meme-300x100.png 300w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-1-You-Dont-Say-Meme-768x256.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 844px) 100vw, 844px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43744" class="wp-caption-text">Variations on the “You Don’t Say Meme” taken from <em>Vampire’s Kiss</em></p></div> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cage’s style is thus associated with particular aesthetic qualities that resonate with those of cult films. While studies of cult stardom tend to focus on reception rather than aesthetics, understanding Cage’s appeal demands consideration of this constellation of “cult” aesthetic qualities. In her consideration of Cage’s style and that of other screen performers similarly committed to expressionistic excess, Zucker points to an established taste hierarchy that privileges naturalistic and supposedly “realistic” rather than exaggerated screen performance styles, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-14' id='fnref-43743-14' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>14</a></sup> a hierarchy that has persisted in the decades since Zucker’s piece was published. Cage recognises how his oft-criticized approach operates in a different register to such commonly valued “good” acting: for instance, responding to “Cage Rage” memes about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Cage suggested that his artistic goals are </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">“abstract and more ontological fantasies with film performance” which is why he likes “playing people who were crazy, or … who were on drugs, or supernaturally possessed.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-15' id='fnref-43743-15' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>15</a></sup></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Cage’s exaggerated and “abstract” approach aligns with Mathijs and Sexton’s description of cult films as “so unique that they defy interpretation, and operate on an affective and visceral level… These films are defined through their representational and stylistic excess.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-16' id='fnref-43743-16' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>16</a></sup> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Like many of Cage’s films, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> included, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">operates on this visceral and intensely sensory level: the film’s power, as I intimated earlier, lies in aesthetic and affectual resonances that are not always logical or coherent but are driven by “representational and stylistic excess.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-17' id='fnref-43743-17' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>17</a></sup> In a climactic scene, for instance, Cage’s Red battles a chainsaw-wielding foe with another chainsaw, their duel lit by blinding spotlights and accompanied by throbbing, metallic non-diegetic music that collides with the diegetic sounds of whirring, clashing chainsaws. This representational excess continues beyond the climax: after he fulfils his bloody revenge, Red’s face is captured side-on in medium close up as he drives away from the scene, his visage covered in pink-red blood, a colour which melds with the red-hued sky surrounding him. This image crystallises how the film bleeds out from Cage’s performance and vice versa. Cage slowly turns to look directly at the camera – and viewer –, his blank face transforming into a wide-eyed, maniacal grimace not unlike the expression from the popular </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> “You Don’t Say Meme”. At this moment, the audience is brought into communion with Cage in the wake of the film’s sensorially exhausting climax: breaking the normative fixation with immersion in a coherent fictional world, this disconcerting shot “invoke[s] the presence of the spectator”, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-18' id='fnref-43743-18' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>18</a></sup> to use Zucker’s description of Cage’s work in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Cage’s direct-to-camera leer solicits a perverse intimacy with the viewer, in an example of the “phenomenal component” of the cult film viewing experience. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-19' id='fnref-43743-19' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>19</a></sup> This moment is also “phenomenal” because it incites a bewildering combination of affectual responses, as was evidenced by the audience reactions to the screening I attended. There was laughter at the darkly comic absurdity of the moment; sighs, perhaps of relief, that the film had reached its end and we had successfully endured its sensory assault; and also gasps and inhalations that seemingly reacted to the grotesque tragedy of this shot – after all, the implication of this moment is that while he has killed all the bad guys, Red has now fully descended into madness, as he is smiling at the sight of his dead partner sitting next to him in the car. The shot subsequently sparked applause spurred by the jouissance of this communal experience of intense but mixed emotions.</span></p> <div id="attachment_43745" style="width: 1787px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43745" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43745" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3.jpg" alt="" width="1777" height="747" srcset="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3.jpg 1777w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3-300x126.jpg 300w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3-1024x430.jpg 1024w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3-768x323.jpg 768w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-2-3-1536x646.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1777px) 100vw, 1777px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43745" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Mandy</em></p></div> <h2><b>The Aesthetics of Absurdity and Cage’s Cult Spirit </b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The oppositional aesthetics and subcultural appeal of Cage’s style thus is intimately connected with a subversive form of excess and absurdity that is common to cult film. In his writing on how the Monty Python film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Meaning of Life</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Jones, 1983) plays with cult film’s characteristic unruly absurdity, Mathijs explains how the film exhibits cult DNA through its hyperbole and excess, which blow “aesthetic rules out of existence” via a “crazy abundance of elements”, “explosion of utterances”, and “bodily discharge and fluids”, “instances of transgression that are typical for cult cinema.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-20' id='fnref-43743-20' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>20</a></sup> As Mathijs contends, the film’s grotesque excesses and hyperbole construct “absurd considerations” of typical human behaviour and social expectations, illustrating “the idea that whatever flows from the messy insides of people to the highly controlled presentation of self that is one’s outside, challenges good behaviour until it blows up.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-21' id='fnref-43743-21' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>21</a></sup> </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s fixation with bodily fluids such as blood, tears, and vomit, and its sonic cacophony of animalistic groans and grunts – which tend to displace sustained and coherent dialogue – aesthetically renders a similarly absurd but provocative aesthetic. Notably, Red is a character of few words, and one of his longest passages of dialogue in the film comes in the form of his faltering explanation of what happened to Mandy to his friend, Duke: “</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> they lit her on FIRE! They were weirdo, hippie-types, whole bunch of ‘em. And then there was some muscle – it didn’t make any sense. There were bikers, and gnarly psychos, and… crazy evil.”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> This description is far from coherent, but Cage’s desperate and confused tone evocatively captures Red’s trauma as he attempts to verbally articulate what he has just witnessed. This moment emphasises how words bent into sentences could never adequately “explain” Red’s experience, while also playfully underscoring the absurd hyperbole of the film’s premise. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even in mainstream commercial blockbusters, Cage’s unpredictable style tends to lean into the absurd in ways that rebelliously skewer social and aesthetic norms. For instance, in the blockbuster action film </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Woo, 1997) Cage plays a homicidal sociopath, Troy, whose face is transplanted with that of an FBI agent, Archer (John Travolta), who has a personal vendetta against him because Troy killed his son. Thus, throughout much of the film, Cage is not only playing a crazed, homicidal villain, but an over-the-top </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">caricature</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of a crazed homicidal villain: a baroque performance enacted by a vengeful undercover FBI agent attempting to infiltrate Troy’s inner circle. Cage’s performance pushes this already quite ludicrous conceit to its extreme limits. For instance, in one scene, while under the influence of drugs, “Troy” (Archer with Troy’s face) is startled by his appearance in the mirror, after the FBI agent temporarily forgets that his face has been swapped with the violent, evil sociopath who killed his son. His first reaction is to point his gun at the face in the mirror, before regaining composure and reminding himself out loud “I am me” (in this case, “me” seems to refer both to the villain, Troy, and the FBI agent, Archer). He then abruptly contorts his face into a mask-like, exaggerated grimace with bulging eyes, which he fixes in place as he slowly turns around. Cage holds this bizarre, painful looking expression as Troy’s sister approaches him. “I thought you were dead?” she inquires, to which he replies, pointing to his face, “I’m not dead. I’m me”, while maintaining the crazed grin.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The exaggeratedly maniacal facial expression upheld throughout the scene is deeply uncanny, but it also comically personifies the absurdity of the film’s conceit. Furthermore, on a basic level, the human behaviour on display in the scene is so odd that coherent verbal conversation breaks down completely. The only response Troy’s sister can muster is to slap him hard across the face, which finally breaks his facial expression and ends the interaction. As Loacker and Peters assert, absurdity emerges with the collapse of coherent meaning in a way that “erodes, undermines and counter-acts common, apparently rational logic(s) and order(s)”, a deconstruction of meaning that can provoke both unease and laughter. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-22' id='fnref-43743-22' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>22</a></sup> Cage’s exaggerated play with the breakdown of the action movie villain / victim dichotomy also resonates with Sefler’s meditation on absurdity. Sefler describes how Albert Camus, who prominently theorised and narrativized the aesthetic value of absurdity, reflects on the ability of absurd aesthetics to unsettle our cultural attachments to coherent structures and binaries such as clear victims and villains: “the good guy no longer wears a white hat; the bad guy black. The characters wear motley-colored hats – if they wear hats at all” in ways that “foreground the uncertainties of existence” and “a sense of confusion and futility in its full existential absurdity.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-23' id='fnref-43743-23' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>23</a></sup> Even in a blockbuster action movie like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Cage’s performance revels in the carnivalesque breakdown of coherent narrative structure, characterisation, and meaning in ways that playfully foreground such existential confusion. The film’s critical reception captures both the pleasures and disappointments of the logical collapse created by this absurd excess: Schulgasser’s review in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The San Francisco Examiner </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">called </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> “idiotic”, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-24' id='fnref-43743-24' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>24</a></sup> while Corliss in</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Time</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> responded positively to the film’s affectual overload, stating it “isn’t just a thrill ride, it’s a rocket into the thrilling past”, a mythical time when a film could “scare you” due to the level of “emotion packed in”. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-25' id='fnref-43743-25' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>25</a></sup></span></p> <div id="attachment_43746" style="width: 1170px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43746" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43746" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2.jpg" alt="" width="1160" height="653" srcset="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2.jpg 1160w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2-300x169.jpg 300w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-3-2-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1160px) 100vw, 1160px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43746" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Face/Off </em></p></div> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Throughout, his career Cage has regularly selected material like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that captures the aesthetic and philosophical potentials of absurdity, enabling him to inject a cult film “spirit” into movies that we may not otherwise define as cult films. Some of these films, like </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">and David Lynch’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, are more explicitly aligned with this cult “spirit”: Lynch has embraced the absurd across his oeuvre, and like Cage plays with the boundaries between mainstream and cult/avant-garde films. Arp and Brace describe how Lynch’s approach to narrative and (ill)logic creates “a sense of the random and absurd happenings all around his characters and … a sense of order out of chaos”, <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-26' id='fnref-43743-26' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>26</a></sup> and Loacker and Peters point out that Lynch regularly “draws on the nexus between humour and the absurd.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-27' id='fnref-43743-27' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>27</a></sup> </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is no exception, and the film opens with a confronting display of Cage’s potential for dangerously volatile excess, highlighting the resonances between Lynch’s and Cage’s approaches to absurdity. In this scene, the life of Cage’s character, Sailor, is threatened by a hitman set upon him by the insanely controlling mother of his lover, Lula. As Sailor realises what is about to happen, he erupts into prolonged and unrestrained violence, beating the hitman into a bloody pulp. He then turns towards Lula’s mother, Marietta, who has been watching the violence unfold from a nearby flight of stairs, and fixes his gaze upon her. Panting animalistically, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and wild defiance in his eyes, Cage raises his blood covered hand and points at Marietta, a pose he upholds for an unnerving duration. As Nochimson articulates in her book on Lynch, these actions, which introduce us to the film’s supposed “hero”, are “an ugly display of force that makes the audience very uneasy since [Sailor] greatly exceeds the requirements of self-defence.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-28' id='fnref-43743-28' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>28</a></sup> The film, she points out, functions as a “carnivalization of Rambo-like heroism” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-29' id='fnref-43743-29' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>29</a></sup> – a subversion that is enacted largely through Cage’s performance – which subverts familiar Hollywood action movie structures in a disturbing but also comically absurd manner. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cage’s work with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, who also regularly work in a darkly satirically surrealist mode, similarly harnesses the absurd aesthetic and thematic potentials of the actor’s approach, yet in quite a different tonal and generic register than </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(directed by Jonze and written by Kaufman, 2002), Cage echoes his performance in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by appearing as two different characters: Charlie, an exaggerated version of the film’s writer, Kaufman, and David, Kaufman’s fictional twin brother. This conceit is used to explore the neurotic excesses of Kaufman’s approach to the screenwriting process, with the dual characters manifesting Kaufman’s obsessive self-doubt: Charlie is riddled with anxiety and indecision, while his brother David, is outrageously overconfident. Like Lynch’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, this film deconstructs Hollywood conventions and narrative structures, emphasising their inherent absurdity, via Cage’s character/s. Cage’s Charlie is tasked with creating a film adaptation of a book about orchids. Charlie is determined to make a “simple movie about flowers”, rather than a classically-structured Hollywood popcorn movie brimming with violence, sex, and drama. However, as Landy articulates in his analysis of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, “Charlie’s” films – both the one Cage’s character writes in the film’s diegesis, and the Kaufman film the audience watches – end up delivering exactly what Charlie desperately resists. The narratives of both </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and Charlie’s film become increasingly ridiculous, falling into every writing trap that Charlie has been neurotically attempting to avoid, from the overuse of voice-over to convey character motivations, to a series of unbelievable deus ex machinas. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-30' id='fnref-43743-30' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>30</a></sup></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">An additional layer of absurdity can be found in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s very premise. While Charlie repeatedly laments “why can’t there be a movie simply about flowers?” – a point that the audience is seemingly invited to empathise with as a noble aspiration – as Landy points out, “why would anyone want to make a movie simply about flowers? … Why does Charlie (or Kaufman, for that matter) accept the challenge, rather than laughing at its patent absurdity?” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-31' id='fnref-43743-31' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>31</a></sup> In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, both Charlie’s imagined “film about flowers” and the overwrought and unbelievable popcorn movie the film eventually becomes destabilise the logic of Hollywood form, style, and character development. Cage’s dual Kaufmans embody this layered destabilisation. As Charlie, Cage sweats profusely, twitches, mumbles self-loathingly to himself, and utters hysterical streams-of-consciousness into a tape-recorder in an excessive parody of the tortured screenwriter. By contrast, David effortlessly churns out trashy Hollywood movie scripts, and blithely and vacantly lumbers around the brothers’ shared apartment, often lounging around in the background while Charlie suffers over his “simple” flower movie. The brothers embody the apparent dichotomy </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> sets up between aesthetically deficient popcorn movies and prestige art-house dramas. Yet, in the spirit of cult cinema, this taste hierarchy collapses in on itself as Charlie, and the film as a whole, are consumed by the absurdity of excess. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Across these generically and tonally diverse examples – none of which would typically be categorized as “cult” films – Cage’s performances energetically capture absurdity’s “persistent reversion and questioning of conventional boundaries and distinctions that define what is ‘real’, ‘normal’ and logical and what is ‘unreal’, abnormal and illogical.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-32' id='fnref-43743-32' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>32</a></sup> However, Cage’s performance style has also been deployed in ways that highlight how absurdity is not “solely about lack of meaning and order, but about </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">other</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> orders and logics of ordering.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-33' id='fnref-43743-33' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>33</a></sup> For instance, in addition to </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, production company SpectreVision have provided another fitting vehicle for Cage in the form of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (2019), an ambitious adaptation of Lovecraft’s famous short-story, directed by eccentric cult filmmaker Richard Stanley. In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Cage plays committed family man Nathan, patriarch of the Gardner family. Following the premise of the short story, a meteorite lands on the family farm, and the mysterious extra-planetary material emits a strange and apparently indescribable colour that eventually infects the whole property, driving the family insane and causing some of them (along with their pet llamas) to undergo grotesque biological anomalies. As the situation worsens, the audience is primed to anticipate Cage’s trademark chaotic eruption of “Cage Rage”: outbursts of extreme emotion or bizarre behaviour that will puncture the façade of the jovial and dedicated dad. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The film combines Cage’s penchant for the absurd with Lovecraft’s own aesthetic and philosophical commitment to cosmic absurdity. As Martin explains of Lovecraft’s underpinning philosophies, “the concept of absurdity [is one of Lovecraft’s] most important themes, the theme that communicates his perspective on all aspects of human civilization.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-34' id='fnref-43743-34' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>34</a></sup> In particular, Martin points to Lovecraft’s emphasis on “the inescapable subjectivity of human perception, knowledge, and representation” and thus “the fundamental fallibility and insignificance of all human constructs. In effect, all human beliefs are based upon nothing more than shared delusions. Therefore, blind adherence to these constructs (religious, academic, scientific) in light of the principle of subjectivity that undermines them is counter to logic. It is absurd.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-35' id='fnref-43743-35' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>35</a></sup></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">This existential absurdity manifests in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> via Nathan’s fruitless clinging to his domestic life on the farm and a romanticized concept of family, even after the mysterious “colour” has perverted them into something unrecognisable. Afflicted by the colour, Nathan’s wife and young son eventually mutate into a comingled singular mass which cries out incomprehensibly in apparent pain. The depiction of the fused mother and son captures most viscerally the gruesome disintegration of the Gardner family: in a ghastly subversion of mother-son bonds, the individual identities and physical forms of the boy and his mother merge and their coherent speech breaks down into an indistinct cacophony of creaks, groans, and rasps. Yet Nathan is slow to accept the horrifying mutation of his family, forcing his teenage daughter to “spend time” with this abhorrent creature in the attic, declaring passionately while gesturing wildly “we’re a family, and if there’s one thing that families do, it’s stay together.” Towards the end of the film, while his screaming daughter is locked in the attic with the creature that was once his wife and son, he sits alone in his dark living room watching television static, acting as though he is absorbed in a program surrounded by his family. When a detective and hydrologist arrive to find out what has happened on the Gardner farm, Nathan vacantly but pleasantly greets them. He explains that his family has experienced problems with their phone and WiFi, cocking his head back and emitting a staccato laugh as he notes that these technical issues are the result of “life in the sticks.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As scenes like this highlight, absurdity has the potential to be both frightening and funny in its deconstruction of the rational and social structures that people hold on to to make sense of their worlds. As Martin explains, the collapse of coherence, logic, and institutions in Lovecraft’s stories tend to be philosophically positioned as “paradigm shifts” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-36' id='fnref-43743-36' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>36</a></sup>: in Lovecraft tales, otherworldly forces, like the mysterious extra-terrestrial “colour”, operate according to entirely different regimes of meaning than those constructed by human institutions like religion, science, and nuclear families. When characters like Cage’s Nathan in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> fail to loosen their grip on such institutions and regimes of meaning after such paradigm shifts have already occurred, the frailty and absurdity of human nature and society is unveiled. Cage’s performance in the film increasingly plays like an absurd parody of a committed father, and Nathan’s obstinate refusal to budge from his patriarchal identity becomes both funnier and scarier as the film progresses.</span></p> <h2><b><i>Pig</i></b><b> and the Cage Renaissance</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Both </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> have been key to the aforementioned Nicolas Cage “renaissance” of the late 2010-early 2020s. The most recent film to contribute to Cage’s critical reappraisal is </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Sarnoski, 2021), which has been celebrated for Cage’s uncharacteristically understated and authentic performance. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-37' id='fnref-43743-37' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>37</a></sup> Such positive appraisals suggest that Cage delivers a performance in this film in line with normatively accepted metrics of acting quality. Highlighting the liminality of Cage’s persona between cult and mainstream film, this psychological drama film certainly does not have the cult status of SpectreVision’s Cage films – the positive reviews for this film have extended to awards season buzz in a sure sign of more mainstream prestige and acceptance. However, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">deploys some cult film tactics in its intertextually-rich deployment of Cage’s star persona. Some of the marketing materials for </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> implied that the film may be a gonzo revenge thriller in the manner of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">: one of the posters features a side-on close-up of Cage’s grizzled face with the simple tagline “Who has my pig?”, the implication being that Cage’s character would embark in this film on another bloody revenge quest, this time seeking vengeance for the loss of his beloved truffle pig. This conceit, especially when centred around a Cage performance, certainly suggests the potential to devolve into the emotional excess, violence, incoherence, and black comedy of cult film.</span></p> <div id="attachment_43747" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-4.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43747" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43747" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-4.png" alt="" width="768" height="960" srcset="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-4.png 768w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-4-240x300.png 240w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43747" class="wp-caption-text">Poster for <em>Pig</em></p></div> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> does follow Cage’s Rob, a former high-end chef turned truffle farmer, on his quest to find his treasured pig after she is violently stolen. However, while multiple scenes tease us with the suggestion that an eruption of “Cage Rage” may be imminent – most notably, one in which Rob participates in an underground “fight club” gambling ring for chefs – Cage’s outbursts in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> do not come in the form of the heightened facial expressions, eccentric variations in vocal tone and volume, wild violence or exaggerated physical gestures we’ve come to expect from Cage. For instance, in the fight club scene, instead of unleashing in a moment of extreme and unbridled violence, Rob passively takes a beating. Yet while Cage’s performance is muted throughout the film, the absurd excess common to Cage films is delivered in a different guise in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The film’s moment of “Cage Rage” comes when Rob talks to a former protégé, Derek (David Knell), who is now the head chef at a trendy </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">haute cuisine</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> restaurant. Thematically and aesthetically, the scene deploys the devices of prestige drama, as we watch the characters converse in the beautiful setting of an intimate dining room filled with well-dressed guests, the focus being not on violence or physicality but on the nuances of the characters’ lengthy conversation. Yet a comic visual disjuncture is established between Cage’s filthy, bedraggled farmer and his immaculate and classy surrounds, an absurdity enhanced by the realisation at this moment that Cage’s character once mentored this extremely pretentious chef. As Derek superciliously fawns over Rob in an over-the-top attempt to impress him, Cage delivers a scathing monologue, audible to the whole restaurant, questioning his former protégé’s superficial and trend-based approach to food, which is a far cry from his former dream of opening a pub. Both Cage’s calmly delivered yet eviscerating monologue and Derek’s reaction unveils the absurdity of the chef’s confected persona, and along with it, the faux authenticity of Portland’s fine-dining culture. Attempting to literally “hold face” in front of his well-heeled customers, Derek continues to grin as Rob deconstructs his flawed career path: the rising panic on Derek’s face becomes ever more visible even as he maintains his sycophantic grin, an expression which appears increasingly deranged given the circumstances. This expression is not unlike Cage’s ghoulish grins in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, yet this time the tables have turned, as Cage’s rough-hewn insight punctures the veneer of the smarmy chef and erodes the very logic and value criterion upon which his prized career is grounded. In this way, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">cleverly retains the aesthetic and philosophical commitment to absurdity that has surged throughout Cage’s career.</span></p> <div id="attachment_43748" style="width: 1290px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43748" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43748" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" srcset="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1.jpg 1280w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1-300x169.jpg 300w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-5-1-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43748" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Pig</em></p></div> <h2><i></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><b>Cage Memes and the Aesthetic Power of Absurdity</b></h2> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To close this essay, I return to the importance of memes to the current Cage renaissance and ongoing aesthetic resonances of Cage’s performance style. Cage’s over-the-top physicality and virtuosically extreme emotional range are particularly well suited to image, gif and video-based memes, particularly given this ephemeral format is also underpinned by absurdity. As McGowan points out, “Cage’s career has been significantly impacted by these representations, and they now form an important part of his overall star image.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-38' id='fnref-43743-38' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>38</a></sup> While recognizing how cult audiences have distinctive processes of fannish appreciation, McGowan suggests that this vernacular online output has contributed to oversimplifications of Cage’s star image, supporting rather than questioning the “good/bad” actor dichotomy by highlighting his more “questionable performance choices” for comic effect. <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-39' id='fnref-43743-39' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>39</a></sup> McGowan argues that such memes may serve to “create the assumption amongst those who have never seen the entirety of the excerpted films that Cage is an indulgent – and perhaps even barely articulate – actor, seemingly incapable of subtlety or naturalism.” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-40' id='fnref-43743-40' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>40</a></sup> Indeed, some of these memes may have this effect on those uninitiated in the “cult” of Cage and in the subcultural pleasures of cult films generally. Yet, like the aforementioned </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> memes, Cage memes also tend to gleefully celebrate the ludicrous elements of Cage’s performance style in ways that playfully subvert ingrained cultural assumptions about what counts as aesthetically valuable, “good” screen performance. Indeed, Knobel and Lankshear define memes as “collaborative, absurdist humor” that also revel in “geek kitsch humor” <sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-43743-41' id='fnref-43743-41' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(43743)'>41</a></sup> – a collective enjoyment of absurdity that questions what’s considered normal, mainstream or “cool”, and which thus resonates with the subcultural communal pleasures of cult films.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">An interesting example of this memeification of Cage concerns a role Cage never actually even got to play: Superman. Cage was once considered for this role, and test footage from 1997 of Cage with long flowing hair in a Superman costume has emerged online. Screenshots and gifs from this footage have become the source of memes that visualise how Cage troubles the boundaries between mainstream film star and gonzo cult icon. Notably, Superman / Clark Kent is one of the most well-known superheros of popular culture, as well as perhaps the most straight-laced and mainstream – the archetype of the super-heroic costumed protector who humbly masquerades as an everyday Joe. The Cage-as-Superman memes underline the absurd disjuncture between the vanilla character of Superman and Cage’s eccentric style and persona: one gif depicts Cage standing in the costume, his shoulders somewhat hunched, as he stares blankly into the middle distance, the camera zooming in on his face as he looks around in slight confusion. The gif’s caption reads, “wait a minute where the hell am I”, playing with the amusing clash of cult/mainstream styles and worlds suggested by Cage-as-Superman.</span></p> <div id="attachment_43749" style="width: 508px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-6.gif"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43749" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-43749" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-6.gif" alt="" width="498" height="498" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43749" class="wp-caption-text">Cage as Superman</p></div> <p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> has also spawned many memes, including, unsurprisingly, one that echoes the popular memes from </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Like the “You Don’t Say Meme”, this</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> meme depicts Cage’s maniacally fixed grimace, this time as he turns to stare at the viewer with his face covered in blood. This meme has been repurposed in numerous ways that aesthetically celebrate how Cage’s style productively skewers normative conventions of human decorum. For instance, in one variation of the meme, a gif of the shot is accompanied by the caption “(Just saying Hi)”. The juxtaposition between caption and image playfully hints at the intense and messy human emotions that often underpin a performatively relaxed and casual text message. The meme neatly captures how the beautiful absurdity of Cage’s style has the potential to peer directly into our souls and rattle our commitment to a logical, coherent human society. </span></p> <div id="attachment_43750" style="width: 508px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-7.gif"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-43750" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-43750 size-full" src="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Figure-7.gif" alt="" width="498" height="255" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-43750" class="wp-caption-text"><em>Mandy</em> (Just Saying Hi) Meme</p></div> <h2><b>Essential filmography</b></h2> <ul> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mandy</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Spike Jonez, 2002)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vampire’s Kiss</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Robert Bierman, 1989)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Face/Off </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(John Woo, 1998)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wild at Heart </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(David Lynch, 1990)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pig </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Michael Sarnoski, 2021)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Peggy Sue Got Married </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Francis Ford Coppola, 1986)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Raising Arizona </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Joel Cohen, 1987)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Color Out of Space</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Richard Stanley, 2019)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Leaving Las Vegas </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Mike Figgis, 1995)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Con Air </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Simon West, 1997)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">8MM </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Joel Schumacher, 1999)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Joe </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(David Gordon Green, 2013)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Trust </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Alex and Ben Brewer, 2016)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Werner Herzog, 2009)</span></li> <li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Moonstruck </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Norman Jewison, 1988)</span></li> <li><em>Kick Ass</em> (Matthew Vaughan, 2010)</li> </ul> <h3>Endnotes</h3> <div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-43743'> <div class='footnotedivider'></div> <ol> <li id='fn-43743-1'></span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cult Cinema: An Introduction</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-1'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-2'> David McGowan, “Nicolas Cage – good or bad? Stardom, performance, and memes in the age of the Internet,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Celebrity Studies </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">8.1 (2017); Carole Zucker, “The Concept of ‘Excess’ in Film Acting: Notes Toward an Understanding of Non-Naturalistic Performance,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Post Script</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> 12.2 (1993) <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-2'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-3'> Kate Egan and Sarah Thomas, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cult Film Stardom: Offbeat Attractions and Processes of Cultification</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Sexton and Mathijs. While McGowan considers some connections between cult film cultures and Cage’s persona, this is not the focus of his article <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-3'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-4'> McGowan, p. 211 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-4'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-5'> Mathijs and Sexton, p. 13 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-5'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-6'> Matt Hills, “Cult Movies With and Without Cult Stars: Differentiating Discourses of Stardom,” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cult Film Stardom</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Egan and Thomas, eds. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 35 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-6'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-7'> Egan and Thomas, p. 1 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-7'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-8'> See Zucker <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-8'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-9'> Mathijs and Sexton, p. 7 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-9'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-10'> Ibid., p. 7 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-10'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-11'> Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, “What is cult film?” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Cult Film Reader</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Mathijs and Mendik, eds.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">(New York: Open University Press) p. 4-8 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-11'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-12'> cited in Zucker, 61 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-12'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-13'> Egan and Thomas, p. 9 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-13'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-14'> Zucker, pp. 54-55 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-14'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-15'> cited in Andrew Pulver, “Nicolas Cage expresses ‘frustration’ with Cage rage internet meme,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Guardian</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 19 September 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/19/nicolas-cage-rage-internet-meme-mandy <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-15'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-16'> Mathijs and Sexton, p. 7 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-16'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-17'> Ibid., p. 7 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-17'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-18'> Zucker, p. 61 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-18'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-19'> Mathijs and Sexton, p. 8 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-19'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-20'> Ernest Mathijs, “Philosophy, Absurdity, Waste and The Meaning of Life: A cult film, of sorts,” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python, </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, eds. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), p. 182 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-20'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-21'> Ibid., p. 182 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-21'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-22'> Bernadette Loacker and Luc Peters, “‘Come on, get happy!’: Exploring absurdity and sites of alternate ordering in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Twin Peaks</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">”, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ephemera Journal </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">15.3 (2015), pp. 622 -625 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-22'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-23'> George F. Sefler, “The Existential vs the Absurd: The Aesthetics of Nietzsche and Camus,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">32.3 (1974), p. 420 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-23'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-24'> Barbara Shulgasser, “Trading Faces,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">San Francisco Examiner</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 1997 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-24'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-25'> Richard Corliss, “One Dumb Summer: Reviews,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Time</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 1997 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-25'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-26'> Robert Arp and Patricia Brace, “The Owls Are Not What They Seem: The Logic of David Lynch’s World” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Philosophy of David Lynch</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, William J. Devlin and Shai Beiderman, eds. (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2011), pp. 7-8 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-26'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-27'> Loacker and Peters, p. 622 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-27'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-28'> Martha P. Nochimson, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), pp. 47-48 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-28'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-29'> Ibid, p. 48 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-29'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-30'> Joshua Landy, “Still Life in a Narrative Age: Charlie Kaufman’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adaptation</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Critical Inquiry </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">37.3 (2011) <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-30'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-31'> Ibid., p. 499 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-31'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-32'> Loacker and Peters, p. 625 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-32'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-33'> Ibid., emphasis in original, p. 625 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-33'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-34'> Sean Elliot Martin, “Lovecraft, Absurdity, and the Modernist Grotesque,” </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lovecraft Annual </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">6 (2012), p. 83 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-34'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-35'> Ibid., p. 84 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-35'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-36'> Ibid., pp. 85; 98-99 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-36'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-37'> See the collated reviews on </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rotten Tomatoes</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pig_2021 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-37'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-38'> McGowan, p. 222 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-38'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-39'> Ibid., p. 215 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-39'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-40'> Ibid., p. 216 <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-43743-40'>↩</a></span></li> <li id='fn-43743-41'> Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear, “Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production,” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A New Literacies Sampler </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Knobel and Lankshear, eds. 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