Cult Pics and Trash Flicks: The Doom Generation (1995)

Cast: James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech
Director: Gregg Araki
Country: Action | Comedy | Crime | Drama | Thriller
Genre: USA

Editor’s Notes: The following review is a part of Matthew Blevins’ weekly series Cult Pics and Trash Flicks

Not long before the omnipresence of the internet and the new millenial morality there was a time of contrived nihilism and apocalyptic nightmares, and these wet-nightmares fueled by video games and bad convenience store food constitute the universe of Greg Araki’s The Doom Generation with its band of rejected anarchists, the unwanted generation birthed by junkie mothers and absentee fathers. Its characters live in a dream-like trance as they engage in an odd road journey of accidental carnage and we are shown the world through the naiveté of teenage eyes that see everything as an illusion, the lies told by the old to sell products and oppress the young before the apocalypse they secretly hope is coming at the change of the millennium. They are brazen anti-intellectuals, living for the moment and making ignorant observations that sex is “kind of like spaghetti” because they are as unpracticed at sex as they are at life, having only a modicum of life-experiences to offer a basis of comparison to any new experience as the newfound freedom of a set of keys unlocks a weird and dangerous world to every teenager.

Its characters live in a dream-like trance as they engage in an odd road journey of accidental carnage and we are shown the world through the naiveté of teenage eyes that see everything as an illusion…

Araki creates a hyperkinetic world that mirrors the boredom of its apathetic teenage characters as it moves from scene to scene with unbroken breathlessness. The characters are bored with life, bored with loud parties, bored with video games, and subsisting on a disguising diet of nitrates and phosphorescent cheese substitutes. Suicide is discussed as the logical option for losing a favorite skull lighter as Amy (Rose McGowan) and Jordan (James Duval) are about to lose their virginity to one another, Amy positing contrived apathy and the overly-sensitive Jordan plagued by the fear of “catching AIDS”, an unlikely proposition between two virgins but mirroring the concerns of the socially conscious of the time. A dangerous drifter named Xavier (Johnathon Schaech) crashes into their lives and the trio set out on a road journey under constant pursuit of murderous lunatics. LA has clenched down upon them like an oppressive force, Jordan commenting that he feels like “a gerbil in Richard Gere’s butthole” in an observation that is both crass and appropriately juvenile, and the three embark on an acid road trip of dangerous self-discovery.

They live in a perilous American nightmare that executes shoplifters but seemingly forgives absent parents and the serving of poisonous food. They use conservative talking points ironically, talking of “doom and gloom” and using the Bush Sr. colloquialism, “read my lips”. They try on identities like new clothing, a lenticular motion belt-buckle and cowboy hat giving Xavier a new character for the road and a budding relationship between the three of them offering the opportunity for tridirectional sexual exploration. They watch the results of their escapades on the poorly-edited evening news as fact becomes as distorted as an unfortunately chosen green tie worn by the clueless newscaster. They subsist on Carnoburgers and caffeine and watch the world unfurl with a chosen attitude of detachment, another identity choice afforded to the young and uninhibited in a world that doesn’t make sense when held to youthful scrutiny.

They try on identities like new clothing, a lenticular motion belt-buckle and cowboy hat giving Xavier a new character for the road and a budding relationship between the three of them offering the opportunity for tridirectional sexual exploration.

Their attempts at sex are awkward and unpracticed as Amy sits in silent anticipation in a dingy white hotel bathtub, waiting for the insecure Jordan to make his entrance and finish their previously interrupted attempt at losing their virginity. Xavier watches from the next room and masturbates as the couple engages in unpracticed sex, secretly attracted to both as he steals a moment of pleasure. The faint light of a CRT television shimmers across the faces and bodies of the sleeping lovers as Xavier looms over their bodies and seduces Amy with his unusually located tattoo of Jesus. Amy attempts to maintain her false disdain for Xavier even as they escape to her car to have sex without waking Jordan. Their vehicular tryst is interrupted by a murderous madman claiming to be the ex-boyfriend of Amy, one among many throughout the film who either Amy truly doesn’t know or willfully ignores in an attempt to shed her old lives in this newest iteration of her identity.

The Doom Generation pulsates with the same hyper-kinetic energy of its over-caffeinated and overstimulated teenagers as they search for identity and thrills in an odd apocalyptic landscape of confusing patriarchal jingoism and dangerous rampaging sociopaths. They feign apathy to save themselves from the pain of attachment and rejection and occupy fast food joints, convenience stores, seedy hotels, and their car (a teenager’s only true sanctuary of personal freedom and self-expression). They speak with lewd arrogance and inexperience but have been thrust into the world unprepared and stripped of innocence through the self-centered apathy of drug-addled absentee parents, seeking solace in video games, sex, drugs, murder, and bad food.

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Matthew Blevins

Director of Home Entertainment & Sr. Staff Film Critic

Behind me you see the empty bookshelves that my obsession with film has caused. Film teaches me most of the important concepts of life, such as cynicism, beauty, ugliness, subversion of societal norms, and what it is to be a tortured member of humanity. My passion for the medium is an important part of who I am as I stumble through existence in a desperate and frantic search for objective truths.

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