Defining Favourites: The Doom Generation (1995)

Welcome to America.

Photo: Janus Films

Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another — akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.

Directed by Gregg Araki
Screenplay by Gregg Araki
Produced by Gregg Araki, Andrea Sperling
Starring James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech
Premiere Date: January 26, 1995
Running Time: 83 minutes

The second chapter of Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy is an angry film from start to finish. But it’s the sort of anger that’s lied within the minds of queer Americans who are left without any devices to rely on for their own survival, to the point that even making it through one day after another feels like wandering through hell. But like Totally F***ed Up before The Doom Generation, that apocalyptic feeling is one that creates a certain numbness as varying forms of hatred that have materialized through American history over the years. Right-wing Christian fundamentalists would be preaching all about how queer people are an abomination who will be going to hell the moment they die, but what happens when hell is already the world that they roam within?

From the moment the film starts with the Nine Inch Nails track “Heresy,” it feels like Gregg Araki is making a clear statement about how he feels about the way the world works for queer people through the lyrics “God is dead, if there is a hell, I’ll see you there.” In addition to that, the fact that every purchase made in The Doom Generation amounts exactly to $6.66, only creates this feeling that no matter where this central trio go, they’re all doomed. Together with the fact that they all have the surnames Red, White, and Blue, these three troubled souls only feel like they’re the living embodiment of the disillusioned American youth, constantly being pushed away by a system supposed to protect them.