A century ago, there was nothing that screamed out “modernism” or “high tech” more than neon lights. Even so, there hasn’t been a lot of research done into the way neon impacted culture. A technology that effected urban life, advertising, pop culture, art, and shifts in historical social attitudes deserves some study. The German author and scholar of American society Christoph Ribbat steps into this neglected space in his short work Flickering Light: A History of Neon.
The element neon is one of the noble gases. When charged with electricity it emits a magical glowing blue hue that is both bright in a way that commands attention and soft on the eye. This proprty of the gas was discovered by accident in a laboratory circa the turn of the 20th century. By trapping it inside a transparent glass tube, it is contained and molded into the any shape desired by the artisan. The name of “neon” got attached to the technology of neon lights even though neon is only one of the gases used in them. Possibly this is because “neon” is rooted in the Greek “neo” which means new, connotating a leap into a futuristic society. Both the name and the appearance of neon lights were mind blowing to a world only just emerging from the 19th century where electricity was scarce and rarely ever used. Despite the large scale industrialization of the modern world, the manufacturing of neon lights was a craft and an art form. The glass tubes were shaped by individual glass blowers whose hands and mouths were their main instruments. Each neon sign was, therefore, customized and unique with no mass production of any singular design.
Ribbat’s account of the history of neon lighting is mostly social though with less emphasis on its technical aspects. One of the interesting parts of the book is his explanation of the relationship between neon signs and big industrial corporations. Businessmen got a hold of it before anyone else could, therefore its primary purpose was advertising. America’s largest city centers, like New York and Chicago, were transformed into otherworldly atmospheres immersed in the glowing light. Times Square drew even more visitors than usual who came just to see the spectacle. Eventually Las Vegas got the same treatment after World War II and the technology spread overseas as well to major urban sources of power like Berlin, Moscow, and Tokyo. But art critics, sociologists, and architects decried neon for turning American appetites towards cheap, simplistic entertainment that dazzled the eyes rather than purveying meaning or deeper reflection. Mostly they hated it because it was the primary medium of advertising, the cheap commodification and commercialization of modern life.
After underestimating the aesthetic appeal of the neon glow after sunset, it fell out of style as it spread out of city centers and into the ghettos, the working class neighborhoods, roadside billboards, and rural towns. It went from being urban chic to low class advertising for cheap restaurants, dive bars, strip clubs, liquor stores, and adult video arcades. By the time World War II ended, the new generaton had forgotten the downmarket trend of neon lights and it came back into vogue for a stretch then declined again for being tacky and tasteless as it had once before. That is when postmodern artists discovered its value for visual stimulation.
The passages of this book covering the history of neon lights are the best parts. The passages dealing with other peripheral but related topics are less impressive. Ribbat’s concerns are with the downtrodden members of society or the people who live beneath the neon lights rather than the people of higher social standing who live behind or above them, often owning them. This means an examination of the poor, the prostitutes, the petty criminals, the drug addicts, and those living on the rougher side of life. This is an interesting subject to explore, but the problem is that Ribbat barely draws a connection between neon and the unfortunate lives these people have. Even worse, he derives all his information from works of literature rather than citing studies done by the sociologists of those times. Ribbat is obviously preoccupied with the aesthetics of neon, but by using works of fiction as a secondary source of information, however good they might be, makes these passages feel disjointed from the main theme of the book. Other sections of the book suffer in similar ways when Ribbat examines the use of neon as metaphor in poetry and song lyrics as well as props in movies. He gets a little too caught up in attempting to define the meaning of neon rather than treating neon as a medium that means little more than the visual impression it makes. Neon lights do act as signifiers of class status packed with meaning, but Ribbat’s analysis is not rigorous or methodical enough to make this clear. He does, however, include a good chapter on the use of neon lights in the visual arts starting in the 1960s.
Flickering Lights: A History of Neon has some chapters that are fascinating and some that aren’t. The best parts of the book do make it worth reading. As I finished, I was left with two thoughts. One is the sense of nostalgia that makes me wish to go back in time to see Times Square and Las Vegas when they were awash in a sea of flickering, glowing, buzzing neon. Those times when artistic creativity, industry, and advertising met in such a unique fashion are long gone and will never come back, at least not in that form. The other thought was how neon signs predated and predicted the gif files we now see on the internet. Designed to turn on and off, making sequential movements, like a flower blossoming and opening its petals or a race horse jumping over a hurdle, repeated endlessly in repetitive loops until someone cuts the power, the best and most elaborate neon signs had a similar visual impact to gifs which we now see on screens in advertising and social media posts. The biggest difference is the sheer, enormous size of neon signs that sometimes covered entire sides of buildings or extended upwards several stories into the sky. I do think society worked better when we were looking outward and up rather than fixating on a small screen right in front of our faces. The former implies growth and expansion while the latter implies shallowness, alienation, and narrow mindedness. Let’s bring those flickering lights back again.
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