This is a really interesting post that made me think of ... Don DeLillo. His 1982 novel The Names has most (if not all) of the thematic elements you identify, except that America is the advanced techno-authoritarian presence and Greece is the resistant society. I normally feel squeamish about calling artworks 'prescient', but it's all in there. The microgenre is nearly 50 years old.
Not set in Asia, but Michael Mann also has a fascination with Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, which sits in a free trade zone with Brazil and Argentina. He depicted it in Miami Vice (but only shot b-roll there) and it plays a large role in his book Heat 2. Not as sleek as the Asian settings, but Mann strongly associates it with that same intermingling of crime, trade, globalization, etc.
"It’s for this reason, I think, that even as logistics and supply chains and the dynamics of globalization become more widely covered and emphasized in the press, S.E.Z. Noir is effectively 'over.'"
Here, one might ask whether it's even possible today - will ever again be possible - for Hollywood genre movies to depict Western cultural anxieties in the manner of dad thrillers/Nokiawave/S.E.Z. noir? The disappearance of mid-budget films in general and ambitious genre films at the multiplex, as well as the focus grouping of mainstream cinema to ensure appeal to every person on earth and thus to no one, seems to preclude the perpetuation of the most interesting feature of American mainstream cinema: Its function as a barometer of the (subconscious) anxieties of American/Western elites.
Very well put, and I think you're right—especially with respect to China, where the geopolitical anxieties of Western elites run smack into the profit imperatives of studios!
Hmm. Only God Forgives? Skyfall? Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book? The most recent season of The White Lotus?
Miami Vice has a lot of the same themes; it's not set in Asia, but one of the main characters is Chinese-Cuban, so it picks up those vibes all the same...
Second with I COME WITH THE RAIN. I think i called it "A lysergic dive through Neo-China..."
I would also put THE NIGHT COMES FOR US in the mix which, though a martial arts movie, really captues the sense of Jakarta as being a new S.E.Z "Frontier" for commerce/organised crime (there's even a scene when the main crime kingpin describes Indonesia as a fast emerging powerhouse in the global region!)
Read Max regular Quinn Slobodian opens his chapter on the London docklands in Crack-Up Capitalism with The Long Good Friday, which I watched last night. Absolutely rips and slots in perfectly here.
Reminds me a lot of the period in the mid-aughts where we were getting the Globalization Epics — The Constant Gardener, Traffic, Syriana, Babel. Seems like those fell out of fashion as Iraq ceased to be a present concern, and moved more in this direction
The MacGuffin goods used to be smuggled cognac - I forget which movie I watched as a teen which left me bewildered over that plot point - but now they're vaporware.
Book recommendation: Not quite SEZ noir but how about fading settler-colony noir set in an alternate history in which Manchuria remained a Japanese colony.
I think cyberpunk is a key antecedent but probably should be separated out? (From Nokiawave as well as from SEZ Noir.) In the same way that I think Gibson's Blue Ant books don't really count as Cyberpunk... and I think part of S.E.Z. Nor's definition is that the "sci-fi" is *very* "soft," so to speak.
I wish mark fisher could have read this
This is a really interesting post that made me think of ... Don DeLillo. His 1982 novel The Names has most (if not all) of the thematic elements you identify, except that America is the advanced techno-authoritarian presence and Greece is the resistant society. I normally feel squeamish about calling artworks 'prescient', but it's all in there. The microgenre is nearly 50 years old.
Not set in Asia, but Michael Mann also has a fascination with Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, which sits in a free trade zone with Brazil and Argentina. He depicted it in Miami Vice (but only shot b-roll there) and it plays a large role in his book Heat 2. Not as sleek as the Asian settings, but Mann strongly associates it with that same intermingling of crime, trade, globalization, etc.
I gotta read 'Heat 2.'
I think you could make a case for 'Miami Vice' as S.E.Z. Noir as well, come to think of it...
Rush Hour 2
Neoliberal Noir was right there!
"It’s for this reason, I think, that even as logistics and supply chains and the dynamics of globalization become more widely covered and emphasized in the press, S.E.Z. Noir is effectively 'over.'"
Here, one might ask whether it's even possible today - will ever again be possible - for Hollywood genre movies to depict Western cultural anxieties in the manner of dad thrillers/Nokiawave/S.E.Z. noir? The disappearance of mid-budget films in general and ambitious genre films at the multiplex, as well as the focus grouping of mainstream cinema to ensure appeal to every person on earth and thus to no one, seems to preclude the perpetuation of the most interesting feature of American mainstream cinema: Its function as a barometer of the (subconscious) anxieties of American/Western elites.
Very well put, and I think you're right—especially with respect to China, where the geopolitical anxieties of Western elites run smack into the profit imperatives of studios!
Hmm. Only God Forgives? Skyfall? Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book? The most recent season of The White Lotus?
Miami Vice has a lot of the same themes; it's not set in Asia, but one of the main characters is Chinese-Cuban, so it picks up those vibes all the same...
Yes, I think Miami Vice has a good claim...
Second with I COME WITH THE RAIN. I think i called it "A lysergic dive through Neo-China..."
I would also put THE NIGHT COMES FOR US in the mix which, though a martial arts movie, really captues the sense of Jakarta as being a new S.E.Z "Frontier" for commerce/organised crime (there's even a scene when the main crime kingpin describes Indonesia as a fast emerging powerhouse in the global region!)
Excellent, thank you for the rec!
This is exactly how I felt about Mahjong! Less of a thriller but maybe Irma Vep slides in here as well?
Assayas really couldn't not make a movie about globalization in the 90s and 00s
Read Max regular Quinn Slobodian opens his chapter on the London docklands in Crack-Up Capitalism with The Long Good Friday, which I watched last night. Absolutely rips and slots in perfectly here.
Reminds me a lot of the period in the mid-aughts where we were getting the Globalization Epics — The Constant Gardener, Traffic, Syriana, Babel. Seems like those fell out of fashion as Iraq ceased to be a present concern, and moved more in this direction
The MacGuffin goods used to be smuggled cognac - I forget which movie I watched as a teen which left me bewildered over that plot point - but now they're vaporware.
Book recommendation: Not quite SEZ noir but how about fading settler-colony noir set in an alternate history in which Manchuria remained a Japanese colony.
https://yoshimired.itch.io/manchukuo-1987
https://x.com/nise_yoshimi/status/1927340506276561359
Ha, after reading your first paragraph I immediately thought of Dian's Black Coal, Thin Ice- and then you mentioned him a few paragraph later.
Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 also comes to mind.
2046 is really one of the most gorgeous movies ever made. I almost can't rewatch it because I'm scared it won't capture my life at that moment.
I love this vibe too. Strange Days could also be a contender but it lacks the Asian setting.
I barely watch movies, but I might have to peep some of these.
Is Johnny Mnemonic (1995) Nokiawave, or S.E.Z. Noir? Should cyberpunk be strictly distinguished?
I think cyberpunk is a key antecedent but probably should be separated out? (From Nokiawave as well as from SEZ Noir.) In the same way that I think Gibson's Blue Ant books don't really count as Cyberpunk... and I think part of S.E.Z. Nor's definition is that the "sci-fi" is *very* "soft," so to speak.