GREGG ARAKI'S DOOM GENERATION

The early 1990's declared apathy the modus operandi of Generation X. A decade doused in stupid facial hair and a severe lack of care, America's youth guzzled cappuccinos like fascist Italy except in combat boots lamenting personal tragedy underneath Gap ads and Nike signs. Prozac Nation was just the tip of how society was glamorizing depression. The fact that high-end fashion houses selling $200 t-shirts presented alternatives to the healthy Glamazon '90s Supermodel with a new set of waifs a la heroin chic was a start.
Being down in the dumps was a common place (if not commercial) theme for the last decade of the 1900's. 

In 1994, Kurt Cobain shot himself leaving a suicide note behind stating he was "too sensitive", a new cultural martyr of the drugged and depressed 27 Club. In his wake, shitty misinterpretations of grunge brewed and more yuppie-friendly music like Matchbox 20 and Goo Goo Dolls blared out of car stereos and in shopping malls. 1995 was the year that Creed formed. That in itself should say a lot about the downfall of grunge's authenticity.

Grunge's inevitable demise didn't mean that self-obsessed depressed teenagers went away. Nor did musical counterculture stop forming for the latter half of the '90s. Gothic culture resurged with industrial-influenced bands like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and glam-metal-aggro hybrids like Marilyn Manson, his nursery of Spooky Kids lurched around high school cafeterias with lunch boxes and striped stockings. Alternative and indie bands like Pavement and Weezer were gaining intense MTV play, rising out of college rock radio and causing V-neck sweater shortages at thrift stores. Britpop rode the peacoat coattails of shoegaze (hello Liam Gallagher Beatles humming Ride's "Vapour Trail"). Sub-genres of techno were popping up like crazy. The '90s probably had the most prominent rave scene of all time, obnoxiously dressed in glow sticks and candy necklaces. No doubt a few of these looks were rehashed as the aesthetic inspiration for Tumblr generation "sea punks". 

Each generation "grows up too fast" and the corrupt cultural aura of the grim '90s was conducive for film making on the subject of kids fucked up and fucking on drugs. 1995 was a good peak for this with 5 years to reflect on the state of youth. It was the year Larry Clark and Harmony Korine's appropriately titled Kids came out. Political concerns were brushed under the rug:  the '90s hated society's expectations, laziness and high unemployment got a "whatever", they realized the wrongs of the world but the hippies before them had failed to change shit, everyone just accepted that LIFE SUCKS & THEN YOU DIE. Gas station loiters looking for the next cheap thrill and slutty orphan girls with heaves of defense mechanisms were at reign.


One cartoonish display of such lifestyle in 1995 was Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. The plot follows three wayward teens who leave a trail of accidental slayings during their journey of motel room confinement, sexual tensions dripping into a polyamorous meltdown. A ton of really hot sex scenes with Rose McGowan and either of the two main male characters are prominently featured with close-ups of their faces during intercourse and orgasm. Rose McGowan's character is stylized as this Anna Karina '60s French New Wave anti-heroine with '90s industrial misfit valley girl sexpot sass, using a plethora of creative insults throughout the movie. Gregg Araki is definitely influenced by Godard:  use of a low budget, simple dialogue, juvenile delinquent boys and promiscuous lost girls, tragedy and pop culture. Doom Generation's script is full of hilarious one-liners that reflect the conflicts of Teen Loserville USA going nowhere fast in a plastic-filled dystopic void.



Aside from the radical look of and crazy situations within, the soundtrack makes this movie have a certain dream-like quality that makes it memorable and interesting. Appropriately there is a slight presence of Nine Inch Nails and aggro dude tunes. The first few songs reflect this, the opening scenes set in a rave, with violence and blood foreshadowing the conflict to come, leaving the three teens on the run from the law. The characters are undoubtedly something out of a '90s Industrial club:  boys with long hair, stupid tattoos, combat boots, skull earrings, black denim. Then after a while, the film switches to a mostly shoegaze soundtrack infusing otherwise simple juvenile conversation and slutty circumstances with emotive inflections. It isn't a likely backdrop for Cocteau Twins or Medicine but it somehow works. Araki is particularly fond of the band Slowdive and included two of their best songs, "Alison" and:

There is a lot of techno-shoegaze hybrid in the film as well. Not exactly techno or shoegaze but something in between, and definitely ambient and atmospheric. The Lush remix and Aphex Twin songs below are both representative of those tones that truly added more depth to Doom Generation.




Doom Generation was part of Gregg Araki's supposed "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy" and his strongest film to date at the time. He certainly made some of the coolest and most colorful B-movies that focused on goofball teens immersed in corrupting counterculture. And even though his movies are filled with comical interjections about cynical attitudes disassociating themselves from horrific or grotesque situations, Araki's films still have a very real underlying existential crisis:  loneliness, the longing for love, the search to belong, a wish for innocence and happiness in a world of people who don't care. This is especially appropriate considering that Gregg Araki was part of the "New Queer cinema" and focuses on sexual experiences, including teen's first sexual experiences. More on that for a later post...


Doom Generation overall is a highly entertaining sexually charged portrait of teen life in the fast lane, living from one bag of chips and cigarette to the next. It's a perverse portrait of our already failing society, lacking in morale and overblown by convenience and capitalism, aching for tenderness but shuffling along in throes of acceptance. There are cringing moments of violence that I am not going to go into for spoiler purposes but some of the emotional climate of the characters change. Throughout the entire film they feel no remorse for accidentally being involved in the death of any human character but when they accidentally run over a dog, we see the first and only sign of emotional remorse. And then shit gets really ugly. The movie ends with two characters driving off into the sunset, the last line being: "You want a Dorito?"