Queer Teenage Wasteland: Three Films by Gregg Araki

I coincidentally ended up watching three Gregg Araki films on the eve of World AIDS Day. If familiar with his work, you’ll understand the weight this holds. As a pioneer of New Queer Cinema in the ‘90s—a period when the news around HIV/AIDS came with a pervasive sense of anxiety, grief, confusion and fear of the unknown—Gregg Araki was unabashedly telling edgy stories of queer life that very few others were bold and brave enough to tell at the time. On screen, he became known for depicting young, queer characters aimlessly going through life, indulging in nihilism and risqué sexual rendezvouses along the way.

Gregg Araki creates these fantasy worlds that, albeit grittily grounded in reality, have a surreal quality to them. Indiscreet with how much Jean-Luc Godard influenced his stylistic quirks, his visuals were brash, sharp and saturated. Another trademark that came to be an integral part of Araki’s style was his use of music, as he was majorly into punk, shoegaze and industrial. In scoring his 2004 critically acclaimed film, Mysterious Skin, he even collaborated with two musical heroes of his: Robin Guthrie (of Cocteau Twins) and Harold Budd (one of the godfathers of ambient music). With the author of the book that it’s adapted from having listened to a good amount of shoegaze while writing it, their score adds a much needed dreamy escape to a film that is otherwise almost too raw, yet simultaneously vulnerable.

Anyways, without further ado, here are three films from Gregg Araki that’ll leave you, if I dare say so myself, totally fucked up. (No, this is not his Teen Apocalypse trilogy. Sorry!)

1. THE LIVING END (1992)

“Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse,” are a few words spoken into a personal tape recorder in The Living End—and it without a doubt speaks to the mindset of the two main characters. The film follows Jon, a film critic and music lover, and Luke, a drifting hustler with a violent streak—both disgustingly hot, both HIV+, both having nothing to lose. Coming to terms with what they believe to be their fate, the two embark on an escape-fueled road trip to nowhere, complete with violent and sexual climaxes.

Pan out to the larger world in 1992, and the AIDS epidemic was disporportionally affecting drug users, gay men and countries plagued by poverty. The Living End speaks to this moment, capturing a snapshot in time of the abandonment, anger and distrust gay men felt towards the government and society at large. Yeah, the acting isn’t great but that’s beside the point. The punk aesthetics are strong, the visuals are striking and the post-punk cassettes are loud. This film has “death is the ultimate orgasm” written all over it, and it’s a trope that it proudly and rebelliously pulls off.

2. TOTALLY FUCKED UP (1993)

The first of Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy draws many comparisons to Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), as it voyeuristically follows a group of sexually charged, disillusioned teenagers with not a single parent in sight. Self-described as another homo movie by Gregg Araki in 15 random celluloid fragments, Totally Fucked Up begins as a loose series of vignettes of the friend group’s matter-of-fact proclamations on love, AIDS, masturbation and sex. The plot eventually thickens, following their experiences dealing with romance, friendship and assault in Los Angeles. Speaking of, this film makes Tinseltown look like the alienation capital of the world, serving as the cinematic yet desolate backdrop of what Araki calls his “queer John Hughes flick”.

With music from The Smiths, Red House Painters, Ride, Pale Saints, The Jesus and Mary Chain and This Mortal Coil (to name a few), the soundtrack speaks to the group’s collective lost-boy sentiments of angstily feeling misunderstood. Araki’s central characters are usually young outcasts existing on the outskirts of society, but he tells their stories through a lens of intimacy and understanding. In documenting this troubled group’s everyday lives, he reels us in in a way we’re not used to, with us getting to experience their inner turmoil in an up-close and personal way.

3. MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004)

(cw: child abuse, trauma, molestation)

Oh, boy. Whenever talking about Mysterious Skin, I always recall my experience watching it for the first time, with absolutely no other film having elicited such a sickening, visceral reaction, even to this day. I vividly remember finishing the film, curling up in a ball and crying in that ever-so-specific way when no sound comes out. Yep, this one’s a doozy.

To put it lightly, Mysterious Skin is gut-wrenching. It tells the parallel stories of two teenage boys, Neil McCormick and Brian Lackey, and their experiences processing and coping with their shared childhood trauma. It juxtaposes innocence with abuse, sexual violence with purity, in an authentic way that is, yes, unflinching and hard to swallow, but still accessible and engagingly immersive. Unlike the rest of Araki’s back-catalogue, beneath all the nihilism and feelings of emptiness is plenty of sensitivity and heart, which can be difficult to pull off when telling a story of teen prostitution, molestation and grooming.

Araki utilizes a lot of head-on shots of the kids and the adults, mainly because he shot their most difficult scenes separately, but these shots document the characters processing their emotions in real time, right in front of our faces—and we’re not allowed the luxury of looking away. The lust, the excitement, the confusion, the terror, the shame, the numbness… it’s a lot to take in, and it isn’t for the faint of heart. An intense viewing with a contrasting layer of dreamlike beauty, Mysterious Skin is Gregg Araki all grown up.

With him being so far ahead of his time, it’s surprising how shocking and unapologetic Araki’s films still feel. But, all controversial aspects aside, there’s a sense of longing in each one of his films, a feeling that transmits from his sad-boy protagonists to the viewer. Even though his characters give off big “fuck the world and everyone in it” energy, they ultimately yearn for companionship and love. He shows sides of the queer youth experience that people don’t get to see often, especially that of males. As one of the most important figures in LGBTQ+ cinema, Gregg Araki was able (and hopefully will continue) to deliver stories packed with desperation, edginess and empathy.