#a homo movie by Gregg araki

[sugaronyourtongu3]

Some tv / movie title screens on my CRT tv

[liminally-spaced]

[lessbians]

[quaalussy]

hi

[sloshed-cinema]

The Doom Generation (1995)

Sometimes a narrative takes the term ‘story arc’ very literally.  Amy and Jordan’s sudden and unexpected outlaw run is almost a perfect parabola, beginning in a nightclub called Hell and finishing in a uniquely American inferno.  Gregg Araki attaches a disclaimer to his film at the outset, calling it ‘A Heterosexual Film’, but anything other than a very literal interpretation of the movie indicates this is a lie.  Jordan and Amy have been together a long time as lovers—at least a few months—with Amy as headstrong and driven and Jordan just plain smitten, happy to be along for the ride.  His puppy love is challenged as Xavier (just ‘X’; that name is too long to pronounce) crashes their ride and inserts himself into their lives.  Crass and baudy at outset, he immediately gets on Amy’s bad side, though Jordan can’t help but defend him.  Initially, their dynamic could play off as a lazy “no homo” gag: hanging out at the motel, the pair of young men are arranged in a will-they-won’t-they-kiss setup which is interrupted by that most bro-y of bodily movements, the belch.  Jordan hastily retreats to mess around with his girlfriend in the tub while X looks on.  Heteronormative order restored.  Quickly enough, though, the dynamic is reversed with Jordan looking on in a mixture of jealousy and lust as he sees X being intimate with Amy.  X begins to open up the sexuality of their ménage à trois, creating an environment for Jordan to explore his sexuality: is he jealous of X, or of Amy?  Is she his lover or just the person who understands him the best?  Who does he want?  What does he want?  The culminating threesome in many contexts could be a hollow or even chauvinist gesture: these two men want to fuck, but they’re using this woman as a shield to protect their own preconceived sexuality and masculinity.  Yet there’s something about this moment, raunchy and yet intimate, which suggests the beginning of something new and honest.  Amy gets her pleasure, but promptly and preemptively exits, leaving a black void between the two men who are gently bathed in firelight.  Awkward words are exchanged, but will speech turn to action?  Unfortunately, that’s where the rest of the movie comes crashing in.

This is, of course, a crime caper, and a damn fun one at that.  This America in the mid-90s was an apocalyptic one, replete with billboards and placards assuring that the end is nigh.  Every convenience store is armed to the teeth, and even a random drive-through exchange could end in gunfire.  This trio leave behind them a trail of bodies and dismembered corpses as a result of their altercations with “normal America,” which becomes ever more cynical as implications set in.  White news anchors speculate wildly about a murder scene involving a Vietnamese-American family (the husband given the intentionally inflammatory South Park tier name Nguyen Coc Suc).  The religious fanaticism and conservatism implied by all of the doomsday posters is mocked by X, who has Jesus tattooed on his penis so partners can feel Him inside them.  The burgeoning sexual freedom of this trio is such a threat that the FBI agents pursuing them are encouraged to kill if need be.   It’s funny and it’s madcap.  Severed limbs move long after they’ve left their respective bodies.  American fast food fanaticism is mocked by Carnoburger’s disgusting menu and insane naming conventions.  The thrupple end up at the most delightfully faggy Texas Roadhouse style establishment where EVERYONE has a wig and plastic six-pack rings hang from the ceiling like beaded curtains.  Parker Posey makes a delightful cameo, not even bothering to hide her natural hairline under her wig as she delivers a master-class in the dramatic mid-sentence pause (shoutout also to Margaret Cho!).  A national treasure.  But all of this is ripped away in the final moments of the film.  In almost any other movie, this wouldn’t work.  The jerks from the record shop perform heinous acts, intermingling symbols of Americana with fascist hatred.  It’s strobelit and jarring and shocking and upsetting, and all the better for it, in a subversive way.  All of the rage over homophobic suppression of queer self-expression and health as the AIDS crisis raged unabated which is present in the periphery of the film, in its implication, bubbles to the surface in a final, nihilistic explosion. A heterosexual movie indeed.

THE RULES

PICK ONE

Select either FUCK or FUCKING and sip every time someone says that version of the word.

SIP

Someone lights a cigarette.

Someone fires a shotgun.

A dude recognizes Amy.

BIG DRINK

Jordan does his puppy-dog eyes thing.

An instance of 666 in some form.

[sxfver]

" Another homo movie by gregg araki "

[noname-noslogan]

ANALOG

1# Industrial and Sludge Fan

About Me:

He/It

I collect Cassettes, Records, and CDs

I'm @/HauntedGhosts on AOTY and Last.fm feel free to recommend me stuff to listen too :] I love doing music swaps

**There's a lot of flashing and possibly eyestrain-y stuff on here. Be careful**

Favorite Bands, Genres, and Movies under Read More

Genres:

Industrial, Sludge, Grunge, Noise, Folk Punk, Jazz Rap, Goth Rock, Shoegaze, Doom Metal, Crust Punk, New Wave, DnB, Drone Metal, Hardcore, Pigfuck, etc you probably get it by now

Favorite Bands:

Nine Inch Nails, REV CO., Ministry, Butthole Surfers, Nirvana, Melvins, Sonic Youth, Acid Bath, Eyehategod, Meat Beat Manifesto, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Dead Kennedys, 1000 Homo DJs, Bad Brains, Death(the black punk band not the thrash metal one), Medicine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pavement, Hole, The Velvet Underground, The Violent Femmes, The Prodigy, Disgust, Mudhoney, The Cure, The Smiths, Nails, Terror, Discharge, Skunk, Portishead, Depeche Mode, Deftones, Digable Planets, Tyler The Creator, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Smashing Pumpkins, Electric Wizard, Skatenigs, The Jesus Lizard, Noise Unit, Skinny Puppy, Acid King, Pailhead

^this isn't updated. go to my AOTY to see what I'm listening to (also just bc something isn't on there doesn't mean I don't listen to it.it just means I haven't finished the album ;-;)

Favorite Movies:

Literally Any Gregg Araki Movie, Slacker, Scream (1996), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Empire Records, Slacker, Pulp Fiction, Street Dreams, The Blair Witch Project (1999), Heathers, Cloverfield, Donnie Darko

[goodbyetest]

Directed by Gregg Araki | 79 minutes | R 18+ | Opening Night

6.30pm, Friday, 17 November | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes

Another homo movie by Gregg Araki... screening from a newly restored, director-approved 2K scan.

Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers. Shot on 16mm film without permits, with virtually no crew, director Gregg Araki operated the camera himself, accompanied by only a sound person and producer/PA, and the cast. Araki's breakthrough fourth feature, the first installment in his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy and a seminal entry into the New Queer Cinema canon, premiered at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival.

“A rag-tag story of f*g-and-d*ke teen underground... a kind of cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick.” - Gregg Araki

RSVP on FB

Country: USA Year: 1993 Language: English

[madamcrimson]

I think I found my soulmate.

(Andy from Totally Fucked Up)

[evening-primroses]

“Puts the Homo back in Homicide” is the teaser for Tom Kalin’s first feature, Swoon, but it could easily apply to Gregg Araki’s newest, The Living End, as well. Where Kalin’s film was an interrogation of the past, Araki’s is set resolutely in the present. Or is it? Cinematically, it restages the celluoid of the 1960s and 1970s: early Godard, Bonnie and Clyde, or Badlands— every pair-on-the-run movie that ever penetrated Araki’s consciousness. Here, though, the couple are both guys and they are HIV-positive, one bored and one full of rage, both of them with nothing to lose. They could be characters out of a porn flick, the stud and the john, in a renegotiated terrain. Earlier Araki films were often too garage-band, too cheesecake, too far into visual noise for my taste, but this one was different. Camera style and palette updated the New Wave. Araki’s stylistic end runs paid off, and this time he captured a queers-on-the-lam portrait deserving of a place in movie history: an existential film for a postporn age, one that puts queers on the map as legitimate genre subjects. It’s quintessentially a film of its time.

New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut by B. Ruby Rich

[shortscircuits]

WAIT GREGG ARAKI DIRECTED AN EPISODE OF RIVERDALE??? AS IN GREGG ARAKI, OF LOW-BUDGET ‘HOMO MOVIES’ FROM THE 90s???

[lichrelly]

is ur pfp from the another homo movie movie I dont remember it was like gay people by the guy who made the doom generation

omg ur right its from totally fucked up!! by gregg araki

[slutdge]

thank u gregg araki for all ur movies about fucked up and problematic homos, truly the representation i crave

[fagrackham]

ok this is the faggiest thing i will ever ask but quickly yall do i get the st sebastian laptop sleeve or the "another homo movie by gregg araki" laptop sleeve

[foxmulderautism]

feel lost and confused at the nowhere opening just calling it a gregg araki movie?? is it not a heterosexual movie by gregg araki?? an irresponsible movie by gregg araki??? another homo movie by gregg araki????

[gianarosegoestothemovies]

New Queer Cinema

Starting from the late 1980s through early 1990s, a “new wave” of queer films became critically acclaimed in the film industry, allowing the freedom of sexuality to be featured in films without the burden of approval from the audience. This raw and honest film genre displays the truth, secrets, and vulnerability of the LGBTQ+ community and the representation that is deserved. The New Queer Cinema movement was started by scholar Ruby Rich who wrote “This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists.” (Rich) This movement started from Rich’s writing piece, not the filmmakers themselves. An article by Sam Moore discusses Rich’s start of the movement. He states, “Rich acknowledges that the films and filmmakers she considers under the umbrella of New Queer Cinema (including Todd Haynes, Cheryl Dunye, Isaac Julien, Gus Van Sant and Gregg Araki), don’t share a single aesthetic vocabulary or strategy or concern.” Instead, they’re unified by the ways that they queer existing narratives, subvert expectations and foreground queerness in material where it had been only implicit” (Moore). The journey through the New Queer Movement started with Ruby Rich defining the movement through her writing and inspiring filmmakers to continue producing movies with the correct representation.

           Actress from Gone with the Wind Susan Hayward claimed that Queer cinema existed “decades” before an official title was given to the genre. French filmmaker Jean Cocteau created Le sang d'un poète in 1934 which is documented as one of the earliest Queer films. This avant-garde style of film is associated with Queer cinema filmmakers such as and is displayed in many upcoming films such as Ulrike Ottinger, Chantal Akerman and Pratibha Parmar. The influence of Queer theory that emerged from the late 1980s helped guide the movement with the creators. The theory states "Challenge and push further debates on gender and sexuality.” Another closely related statement by feminist theory states,"Confuse binary essentialisms around gender and sexual identity, expose their limitations.” Queer cinema filmmakers were sometimes known to depict their films in a “mainstream” way that is agreeable to the audience. There was no exposure to the truths and horrors that the LGBTQ+ community experience and had a lack of representation of historical elements or themes. The concept of “straightwashing” was described to filmmaker Derek Jarman’s 1991 historical film Edward II. This film received backlash from the LGBTQ+ community due to the film’s queer representation catering to heterosexuality and heteronormativity.  

           The truth of the movement was for Queer films to stop romanticizing or bringing positive images of gay men and lesbian woman. The push for authenticity and liberation for the community needed to be represented in films. New Queer films were more radical and sought to challenge social norms of “identity, gender, class, family and society.” (Wikiwand.com).

           To quote the amazing drag queen of all time RuPaul “Everyone is born naked, and the rest is drag” the idea of gender identity and representation in the community is unlimited, why do you need to follow the norms of society when anything is possible? The late 90s documentary Paris is Burning introduced the audience to drag culture in New York City and the people of color who were involved in the community. The term “aesthetic” was repetitive in the research of New Queer Cinema which suggests the significance involved with the style of the films. The documentary includes the aesthetic of the drag world involving the makeup, fashion, and politics. AIDS activism was involved heavily in New Queer films and ridiculed the failure of Ronald Reagans acknowledgment of epidemic and the social stigma experienced by the gay community. Conservative politics occurred during this movement resulting in lack of media coverage and government assistance for the LGTBQ+ community. This political struggle did not discourage the community and the fight is still continuing today.

           Beginning in the 2010s LGBT filmmakers Rose Troche and Travis Mathews created a “newer trend” in queer filmmaking that evolved toward more universal audience appeal. In an article from Wikiwand.com states,

           “Rich, the originator of the phrase New Queer Cinema, has identified the emergence in the late 2000s of LGBT-themed mainstream films such as Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and The Kids Are All Right as a key moment in the evolution of the genre.[20] Both Troche and Mathews singled out Stacie Passon’s 2013 Concussion, a film about marital infidelity in which the central characters' lesbianism is a relatively minor aspect of a story and the primary theme is how a long-term relationship can become troubled and unfulfilling regardless of its gender configuration, as a prominent example of the trend” (Wikiwand).

           The film Watermelon Woman was one of the first queer films I watched for a film class, and this film allowed me to dive deeper into the subject I care a lot about which is the representation of queer narratives about woman of color. Queer woman and men deal with the most discrimination. It is unfair and cruel to see the difference of racial treatment in the LGBTQ+ community because the backbone motto is full exclusion and equal rights. The film Watermelon Woman shined light on LGBTQ+ black woman and interrogated the “Mammy” stereotype that most films depict about black actresses. Minority narratives were pushed into the circuit of the movement with developed into the later academy-award winning film Moonlight that displays those representations makes film history!

           Films to recognize in the height of the New Queer film movement are

Mala Noche (1986), Gus Van Sant, was an exploration of desire through the eyes of a young white store clerk named Walt and his obsession with a young undocumented immigrant named Johnny. The film is shot in black and white on 16mm film, contains many of the early Van Sant fixations that viewers would later see get refined in My Own Private Idaho, including male hustlers, illegality, and class.

Chinese Characters (1986), Richard Fung, this early film asks still-pressing questions about the nature of gay desire when it’s mediated via pornographic images of white men. The video defies genre, mixing documentary with performance art and archival footage to explore the tensions of being a gay Asian man looking at porn.

Looking for Langston (1989), Isaac Julien, this short film, a tribute to the life and work of Langston Hughes, is a beautiful and vibrant elegy. Julien creates a lineage of queer black ancestors for himself. The film moves like the poetry it recites, playing with the gaze and how various eyes look upon the black male body.

Tongues Untied (1989), Marlon Riggs, guided by the writer Joseph Beam’s statement, “Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act,” Riggs goes through his own complicated journey of homophobia from other black people, and then racism in the gay community, to find a community of queer black people.

Poison (1991), Todd Haynes, the three parts of the film tell a story about ostracism, violence, and marginality: the bullied child who allegedly flies away after shooting his father in order to save his mother (“Hero”), a brilliant scientist who accidentally ingests his own serum to become the “leper sex killer” (“Horror”), and a sexual relationship between two men in a prison (“Homo”). Exploits radical work that Haynes later uses in his other films.

The Living End (1992), Gregg Araki, the film follows Luke, a sexy homicidal drifter who has a distaste for T-shirts, and Jon, an uptight film critic in Los Angeles. Both are HIV-positive, and as their relationship unfolds, they fight about being respectful or lustrous.  

Swoon (1992), Tom Kalin, a black and white film that romanticizes wealthy Chicago lovers kill a 14-year-old boy named Bobby Franks because they want to see if they are smart enough to do it. The murder is more a play of power between them, with Loeb weaponizing sex as a way to control Leopold.

Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), Mark Rappaport, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies is a documentary made up of glances and innuendos from Rock Hudson’s persona, displaying how this dashing, leading man of the Hollywood Golden Age was a closeted gay man.

MURDER and Murder (1996), Yvonne Rainer, is known for her experimental filmmaking and choreography, this film represents a late-in-life lesbian named Doris who suffers from neuroses and breast cancer. Her partner, Mildred, a queer academic, tells the story of their romance as older women. Rainer also makes appearances throughout the film in a tux, going on rants about smug homophobic parents while showing her bare chest with a mastectomy scar.

           1992 was the year of the highest amount of New Queer films being produced and exceeding box office expectations. Upcoming 2000s films such as “Booksmart”, “Call me by your Name”, “The Prom”, and “Rocketman” all represent the truths and authenticity of the LGBTQ+ community and creates pathways for more films to include these cinematic themes. The movement continues to grow and succeed in the film industry with new creators and actors being more honest about the LGBTQ+ community.