If anyone has ever mastered the art of disaffection and its immortalization in the pop culture oeuvre, it’s Generation X. Or what Gregg Araki billed as the Doom Generation in his 1995 film of the same name. With the tagline, “Sex. Mayhem. Whatever.”, Araki encapsulated the nonchalance of a generation that had been desensitized long ago in the late 70s and all of the 80s. Fed a diet of horror movies, MTV (for the privileged with cable anyway) and Tab, it was the age of the latchkey kid. Let yourself in and let your parents make the cash while you went unattended and unsupervised, fending for yourself with whatever remnants were left in the fridge. Without the judgment of anyone to determine what content you absorbed, the recipe for near total anesthetization was cultivated to a zenith by the mid-90s when Araki brought us this dystopian masterpiece in the spirit of Natural Born Killers, except with a more pansexual Bonnie and Clyde sort of slant.
Named in color-coded honor of the U.S. representation they embody, our roster of “protagonists” includes Amy Blue (Rose McGowan), Jordan White (James Duval) and Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech)–just plain “X” to Jordan. So there you have it: Red, White and Blue. The “these colors don’t run” manifestation of American existence. Except this trio definitely does run together, even if Amy is averse to letting Red into the fold (yes, that’s also code for vagina) at first, kicking him out of her car after he infiltrates it in the midst of a violent scuffle. A precedent he sets for himself only to escalate it upon “rescuing” Amy and Jordan from an Asian convenience store clerk (standing beneath an American flag with the caption “America: Love It or Leave It”–most rational people have chosen the latter) threatening to shoot them (for everyone in the movie is gun-toting, in keeping with the nature of living in the U.S.) if they don’t pay the $6.66 he’s owed–even though the only reason they don’t have it is because X pinched both of their wallets on the way out of the car. And yes, every price amount mentioned in the film adds up to $6.66. For capitalism is the mark of the devil, is it not?
In any case, Red’s means of rescuing obviously entails blowing the guy’s head off, though that doesn’t stop his mouth from still moving as he spews a sort of green bile (specifically relish and onions). From there, this first kill setting off an eventual spree, the three retreat to the type of hotel one imagines Humbert Humbert choosing had he been alive to kidnap Lolita in the 90s. With no one to answer to that would care about their reckless behavior (as Amy puts it, “My mom used to be a heroin addict; now she’s a Scientologist. My old man’s dead.”), the trio has only each other to rely upon, regardless of how much X stirs the pot with regard to their dynamic. After all, the reason Araki tongue-in-cheekly bills it as “a heterosexual movie” is precisely because Jordan and X are so clearly bi leaning more toward the side of gay. Amy is their collective conduit with which to channel this repressed homo hankering, which is why X first masturbates to the two of them banging in the bathtub (licking his own splooge after, to be sure) before exposing himself to Amy while she’s asleep next to Jordan. Awakening to the sight of his Jesus-tattooed dick, she lets him fuck her. Though this is interrupted by one of Amy’s many pursuers who keep mistaking her for someone else (or maybe she leads a drug-addled double life even she’s not aware of thanks to all the crystal–that aspect is never tied up by the end). This little detail is bound to come to roost later on, but, in the meantime, it sends the trio packing for the next motel (dingy, but still worthy of making it on @decorhardcore’s Instagram). In between, more havoc is wrought involving Amy being mistaken for the wrong person, resulting in enough carnage for the FBI to vow to find and kill just the same as everyone else. Putting none too fine a point on one of Amy’s previously expressed sentiments to Jordan: that there’s no place in this world for people like her and Jordan. The boot of the oppressor always wanting to stomp down on them and stamp them out.
Increasingly impervious to the bloodshed they bring about, Red, White and Blue eventually settle into their violence-soaked and orgiastic routine. It’s America, whatever. Perversion, a deadening of the soul and devolution are what makes it the Land of the Free. And Jordan is the lamb to the slaughter offering that must serve as the sacrifice for it all. The proverbial Christ-like figure (just as the horse in Au Hasard, Balthasar) who foreshadows his own demise in talking about a friend of his who killed himself (naturally, said friend was a big fan of The Smiths), and how the human reaction to death is so strange, that one can move on from the loss after enough time has passed. This, too, is a mirror of the American indifference to perpetual pain and suffering (mistaking the “expected comforts” of life in the “First World” for pleasure when in fact they’re the source of all pain). The indifference deemed a natural part of “growing up” by surrendering the last shred of your soul to The Man by getting a corporate-backed job (yielding no loyalty when the economy tanks and you’re cut loose into the wild) that will continue to support the form of corporate socialism that has thrived in the U.S. for so long.
As the trio starts to run out of options and money, they find themselves in an abandoned warehouse that happens to have a mattress in the middle of it, the only entity they really need for their lupercalian purposes. Although Amy has boned each of them separately for the entire movie, this is the moment that builds up to the long awaited threesome. Alas, Amy has to piss in the middle of it, leaving Jordan and X to go outside as they both fumble with what to do with this opportunity to stoke their overt desire for one another. Before anything can happen, however, their potential sexual denouement is interrupted by yet another dude (and his lackeys) in pursuit of Amy, wanting to take vengeance on one of her alter egos by starting with her sex slaves. Echoing the sentiments of the average Bible Belt American, the ringleader of the neo-Nazis taunts, “Two little faggots sitting in a bed/One eatin’ ass and the other givin’ head/Dirty, perverted scum make me see red/World’ll be a purer place when they’re both dead.” Set amid a scene in which the light mimics the flickering movements of a strobe, showing us at times darkness and at time scenes of horror (in truth, it very much reminds one of the end of Looking For Mr. Goodbar), the pledge of allegiance is also stated by the ringleader as he stands over Amy’s American flag-wrapped body, on which he rapes her. The symbolism being that everything the U.S. stands for is rooted in violence and subjugation, part and parcel of its laughable hypocrisy regarding the notion of “freedom for all…” The unfinished part of that sentiment being “…to push their misogynistic white supremacist rhetoric.”
As part of Araki’s “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy,” The Doom Generation very much describes the innate knack Americans in particular have for living numbly to overt signs of an apocalypse happening right before their eyes. In point of fact, there are signs everywhere (“Pray for your lost soul” and “Prepare for the apocalypse” included) indicating that ominous forces are at play in determining not just their personal fates, but the fate of America as a whole. And yet, what else is one supposed to do when the values–and the milieu of destitution and voidness they create–are far too bankrupt to fully process? All one can do is ignore the reality in order to survive. Hence, Red’s infamous final line in the aftermath of the final scene of butchery, “You want a Dorito?” Combining the perfect blend of America’s slavery to commerce and the Patrick Bateman-like attitude that comes with it, The Doom Generation sums up exactly why no country has more serial killers or mass shootings. Of course one is liable to go batshit, bloodlust crazy in a morally and emotionally bereft environment like that.
