‘Neptune Frost’: The Materiality of Technology and Liberation

When you trace back the origins of your technology, how far do you go?

Further than the online purchase, a warehouse facility, or even the factory production, our devices have a much more complicated history than what is often immediately perceived. Technology is an amalgamation of raw materials that are sourced from the hands of real people with individual lives and identities. When you imagine a “technological revolution” and “the future of technology” it is often that the analogous work escapes the mind, dismissed as a relic of the past. The science-fiction genre frequently mirrors our existing societal conditions and dominating systems to the extent that many depictions of the future serve to remind us that technological progression is not a gateway to utopia and ethical conditions. Rather, these depictions underscore the persistent mystification of laborers in the growing technology industry, particularly through the narrative lens of the African diaspora. Afrofuturism in media asks us to question the realities of a Black future and the extensive experiences of those who are in it. Neptune Frost (2021), directed by Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams, allows audiences to examine a resistance movement against an imagined future set in an alternative East African village where the horrific nature of material exploitation remains prevalent. 

Neptune Frost can be most holistically characterized by its multiplicity of identities–operating as a cyberpunk musical, an anti-colonialist epic, a neon frenzy of experimental cinema, and a story of disjointed revolution. As a fascinating subversion of binary genre classifications, the film additionally commits to an impressive balancing act between multiple themes. Most notably exploring technology as a simultaneous means of advancement and oppression for laborers who are forced to take part in its material construction. 

The motif of being unbounded and existing as a multiplicity is triumphantly displayed not only in the plot and stylistic components, but also by the titular character Neptune (played by both Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo). They are an intersex young adult struggling with their expression in a world run by religion and binary configurations. They run away from their home after a pastor attempts to sexually assault them. What parallels this event is our introduction to Matalusa (played by Kaya Free) who works in the coltan mines with his younger brother Tekno. When his brother is killed by The Authority–the enforcers of the exploitative mining system– Matalusa is compelled to leave the mines. These two events act as the catalyst for one of the first surrealist sequences that bring Neptune and Matalusa together in a mutual dreamscape. Decorated in black and blue lights, this encounter reveals their innate connection and their potential to emit forces of technological power that could transcend and hack the technologies that their people source through coltan mining. This pivotal meeting inevitably leads them to a hacking collective–where Matalusa is soon to become the elusive hacker, MartyrLoserKing. There, they find community with others facing unrest onset by unrelenting exploitation and identity suppression. 

As other miners begin to appear at the hacking site, they all speak of similar surrealist dreams in which figures, particularly Tekno, would visit and inspire them to hack as well. Tekno, full name Technology, plays an integral role illustrating the laborer as the “powersource” of technologies. Further, his murder at the start of the film displays that, in the end, the miners' lives are ultimately discarded, dishonored, and mystified by general Western society and the regimes that enforce these beliefs on behalf of technology companies. Some of the most prominent companies, Google, Apple, and Microsoft Windows are all directly named in the “Mr. Google” musical number where they are all passionately condemned through Matalusa’s evocative raw vocal performance that is structured over a glitchy, crescendoing instrumental.

The cyberpunk sci-fi subgenre, which can be described as the intermingling of a technologically prosperous world with dominating oppressive conditions that systematically strike down against the “punks,” is aesthetically prevalent in this film. The genre’s form follows the punks utilizing technology as their means of resistance, and in Neptune Frost they literally play upon the materiality of technology and integrate old tech hardware into their clothes and general outward expression within the collective. These costumes, designed by Cedric Mizero, compliment the Rwandan traditional and everyday clothing items while interpolating computer chips, and old motherboards for hair clips and harnesses. Additionally, copper wire and 90s-early 2000s computer monitors are fittingly incorporated as headpieces. This, along with the bold, neon makeup work to propell what was already an eccentric visual representation of our characters. Juxtaposing The Authority members’ uniforms–a pink polo and dress pants–the clothing worn by the collective is intentionally distinct from our world. In this particular future, the hackers have embraced the use of old technologies into other aspects of their lives. They do not immediately render them as useless despite their perceived obsolescence. Their use of both old and new tech in the film reinforces that this decision is not necessarily due to inaccessibility, but rather it is the reiteration that technology has a material life and laborious history at the hands of the worker that deserves acknowledgement–this incorporation is simultaneously intuitive to the collective and countercultural to the world around them.  

As the film progresses, Neptune and Matalusa meet again, but this time in person rather than a dream sequence. In this meeting their connection is palpable– described in the film as a pairing that can create “energy.” It did not immediately occur to me that this would be in the literal sense. This bond comes to a critical point when they share a moment of intimacy where their connection is widely felt. It is enough to emit an ambiguous telekinetic energy that hacks millions of devices in developed countries–exposing on a global scale, the village’s experience under an oppressive government reinforced solely by capital interests they dub as “Black-bodied currency.”  It is when the collective celebrates this act of resistance that one thematically rich conversation stuck out to me. Questioning the efficacy of this resistance, a member named Psychology asks why they do not engage in more radical means. One of the founding members, Memory, responds that “sharing thoughts, critiques, mediations, and poetry can help impart understanding,” and that “understanding is all that is missing.” With a collective their size they are comparatively defenseless to the most direct antagonistic presence, so more invasive tactics could have been destructive and ultimately aimless. The short moment struck me as something that redefined and emphasized the true nature of the collective's intentions. Through these methods they disrupt the livelihoods of those who ignore and undervalue their position in the tech industry, while also remaining anonymous under a pseudonym, preserving their existence.

Neptune Frost is a uniquely layered auditory and visual experience that holds a microscope to a society, not so unlike our own, that deliberately disparages the laborers who source the technological instruments current Western civilization is backed by. Despite their conditions, resistance is found in the fierce spirit of those in an oppressive environment who utilize their deep connection to raw material in order to revolutionize what it means to create technology, unchained from an externally encrypted reality.