After a visit to the censors, Gregg Araki’s new shocker only just made it onto our screens, reports Andrew Worsdale
IN January 1996 the Publications Control Board, under the Publications Act of 1974, banned a movie from South African screens for the first time in over two years. Distributors Ster-Kinekor received a paragraph from the directorate stating that the film was of ”no redeemable merit” and the decision to ban it was based on its excessive use of violence and blasphemy.
Eight months and an appeal to the board later, the film The Doom Generation is being released with two cuts. Both of them relate to blasphemy — which Director of Publications, Dr A Coetzee, claims is justified — as it would be under the revised Act and in terms of the new Constitution because the scenes in question are offensive to the religious convictions of a section of the public.
The film by punky, low-budget queer movie-maker Gregg Araki is, visually, his most accomplished work to date. Araki has never been short of caustic comment and in The Doom Generation he adds to his usual cynical confection with uniquely beautiful production design and cinematography. It tells of two young lovers, Jordan White (James Duval) and Amy Blue (Rose McGowan), and their run-in with Xavier Red (Jonathan Schaech), a sexy, slightly psychotic drifter who inadvertently decapitates a Quickie-Mart clerk. The trio then go on the run in a heady adventure structured around their sexual encounters.
An indication of the film’s interests lies in a pin- badge which takes pride of place in their car: it reads ”Eat, Fuck, Kill”, and that’s about all they do in the movie — albeit against sumptuous backgrounds and set to a score from The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain, This Mortal Coil and Nine Inch Nails.
Created for outrage, Queer Cinema researcher and critic Jenni Olson says of it, ”This seemed the last word in envelope- pushing at the time of its release, the movie your grandma would rather fellate a crucifix than watch to its outre end.” At press previews in the US, many critics walked out, or seemed unsure of how to deal with the film. Local journalists seemed equally taken aback. But that’s probably because most of them, and indeed the Censor Board, are well outside the film’s intended audience. In an interview in Bright Lights Film Journal, star Rose Mc Gowan says, ”All of Gregg’s films are about today’s youth. I can’t say that I would go see Reality Bites. I don’t think I would go see those movies because they’re all made by 45-year old men in Hollywood, who are all thinking, ‘Oh, they’ll get off on this, they’ll think it’s hip, slick, and cool!”’
Araki agrees: ”There’s no cinematic equivalent to the alternative music that’s popular now. The Doom Generation is for and about what I call the Lollapalooza Generation — disenfranchised kids with an attitude who don’t normally go to the movies.”
A single print of the film is being released this Friday at The Mall in Rosebank, Johannesburg before moving to Cape Town and Durban