GREGG ARAKI: Challenger of Homophobia & Mainstream Normativety in Media

“I was always the outsider, always different, always approaching things from a different point of view. As an artist, that’s a huge advantage.”

TRQ: Gregg Araki, Born December 17, 1959

Writer, director, and filmmaker Gregg Araki has challenged homophobia and mainstream normativety in media for over thirty years. His work is provocative, political, and stylish in its self-consciously referential relationship with pop culture. Actor James Duval performs in many of his films, but Araki has also worked with Angela Bassett, Margaret Cho, Sheryl Lee, Parker Posey, Ryan Phillippe, Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Christina Applegate. 

Araki was born in Los Angeles in 1959 to Japanese-American parents, and he grew up in Santa Barbara. He earned his B.A. in film history and criticism from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1982. In 1985, he earned an M.F.A. in film production at the University of Southern California. 

Araki’s work would reflect his growing appreciation of subversive filmmaking found in screwball comedies, road movies and the French New Wave. Jean Luc Godard was particularly influential. In his first film, Three Bewildered People at Night (1987), Araki named a character after the French filmmaker. 

Araki developed his guerrilla filmmaking skills through writing, shooting, and producing his next several films. The Long Weekend (O’ Despair) (1989) confronts Hollywood’s regressive ideology behind movies like The Big Chill (1983). 

The Living End (1992) presents itself as a gay Thelma and Louise (1991) in which two careless HIV-positive men accidentally kill a police officer and take to the road. 

He rarely shot with a permit, which meant he regularly avoided the police while working. This crude and spontaneous approach mirrors the music Araki considered central to his lived LA experience: the uneasy combination of punk’s confrontational energy with the neo-psychedelic distortion of pre-grunge shoegaze alt rock. 

Totally Fucked Up (1993) marked the start of Araki’s teen apocalypse trilogy that included The Doom Generation (1994) and Nowhere (1997). In the film trilogy, Araki explores teen life riddled with struggles with identity, sex, and social chaos. Araki’s characters are romantic and naïve, living tortured lives in surreal, hostile worlds. Araki’s provocative approach uses sex and vibrant visuals to frame unpredictable relationships and violence that ranges from comic-book to realistically horrific. 

After Araki started a relationship with Beverly Hills 90210 and Nowhere actress Kathleen Robinson in 1997, he wrote for her 1999’s Splendor, an optimistic comedy. The relationship between Araki and Robinson ended that year. 

After his work on the never-aired This is How the World Ends (2000), Araki made Mysterious Skin (2004), based on the novel with the same name by Scott Heim. The critically acclaimed film takes a nuanced and unsettling look at pedophilia as experienced by two eight-year-old boys from their baseball coach. Two years later, Araki won the 2006 Filmmaker on the Edge Award at the Provincetown International Film Award. 

Araki shifts gears for the comedy Smiley Face (2007) starring Anna Faris and Adam Brody. The film received good reviews. However, while his humor remains intact in the film, gone are the sex and violence. 

Kaboom landed in 2010, with a return to Araki’s familiar themes. The science fiction film featuring college students as they investigate a cult won the first ever Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm in recognition for its contribution to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. 

In 2013, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City recognized Araki with the retrospective God Help Me: Gregg Araki. 

In 2014, Araki released White Bird in a Blizzard, based on the novel by Laura Kasischke. Starring Shailene Woodley and Eva Green, the film was met with mixed reviews. 

After directing episodes of Greenleaf (2016), 13 Reasons Why (2017-2018), Riverdale (2018) and Heathers (2018), Araki returned to his world of provocative sex, alien invasions, and conspiracy theory with the tv show Now Apocalypse (2019). He co-wrote the season’s ten episodes with sex-columnist Karley Sciortino. The show earned favorable reviews, and Araki is now shopping it around to other networks after being cancelled by Starz in 2019. 

In 2020, Araki joined actors Ethan Hawke, Isabella Rossellini, and Dee Rees as Sundance jury members. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Dazed Digital

GLBTQ Archive

NYTimes

The Ringer

Vulture