The Doom Generation
90s Pitch-Black Comedy Still Shocks After 30 years.......
Going into The Doom Generation (1995), a 90s cult classic that I have somehow never watched before, I was expecting a violent, romantic road epic with splashes of neon and black comedy, along the lines of Natural Born Killers, released just a year before. While The Doom Generation (written, directed co-produced and edited by Gregg Araki on a shoestring budget) is certainly a road movie, and technically fits into the ‘lovers on the lam’ trope, it is very much its own beast. And what a bizarre, magnificent beast it is.
If you want a film that practically begs to be seen on the big screen at midnight, one that makes you say omfg are they really doing that…They ARE! over and over then this movie is perfect. Just make sure to go in mostly blind. (And honestly you can maybe skip the very grim ending).
With hefty helpings of B-movie schlock and over the top comedic violence, as well generous dollops of transgressive sex, Araki tells the story of nihilistic teenager sweethearts Amy Blue and Jordan White (played by Rose McGowan, in her first role, and James Duvall). After handsome, volatile drifter Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech) basically forces his way into their car, flirting with the bi-curious Jordan and asking the venom-filled Amy if she’ll marry him, then ‘accidentally’ kills the clerk at a gas station where they stop, the three hit the road for a journey filled with mayhem, threesomes and lots of convenience store food (the shots of the food were really amazing, and disgusting, like so much of the film).
Araki is one of the key auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement. From the first frame, which identifies The Doom Generation as “A Heterosexual Film,” the director pulls no punches. This is queer cinema with volume turned all the way up- queer cinema as provocation, a black comedy so dark, gross, unique and campy that it transcends its own format and somehow becomes serious again. Perhaps this is why it still retains the power to shock thirty years after it was released.
Like many cult classics, this film received mixed reviews when it debuted. In a review in the Washington Post, mostly positive, writer Desson Howe described the film as a “parody of movie teenage angst, as well as such killing-spree road movies as Natural Born Killers….an 85-minute, darkly comic assault on the audience,” * while Roger Ebert gave the movie a zero-star, thumbs down review, calling it, “a blood-soaked, disgusting, disturbing movie about characters of low intelligence and little personal worth.”*
Despite a tertiary plot and at times (purposefully?) stilted acting (McGowan definitely steals the show as the foul-mouthed Amy), The Doom Generation casts a spell. The film creates its own nihilistic dream world: a wasteland of gas stations, fast food, bars and liquor stores where everything the trio buys magically adds up to $6.66. As they travel through small town America, the group is constantly approached by angry individuals who claim to be Amy Blue’s spurned lovers, although she’s never seen any of them before. This menacing force eventually catches up with the trio and culminates in a bleak, over the top ending which has a lot to say about how queerness is relentlessly punished by our backward, heteronormative society, but I would need a longer essay to unpack it fully.
This film is definitely not for everyone, but in my opinion Araki’s singular, fully- realized aesthetic vision is worth applauding. The Doom Generation is a surreal nightmare into the dark heart of America(na) and I hope I get to see it in a theater at midnight one day.
Four out of five skulls
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*https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doom-generation-1995
First time I saw it was in cinemas. Highly, highly, eagerly recommend the experience.
Really cool post. Hitting the subscribe button