Having grown up in the Los Angeles subculture described by Gregg Araki's films, maybe I can sort of help authenticate their weird emotional tone and narrative drift, not that the work needs authenticating. But what with this “Queer Film” tag confusing the air around things queer, I wonder if Araki's work is being seen distinctly. To my mind—and despite what many critics seem to be saying—it's not about his or anyone's identity—sexual, ethnic, or otherwise.
If anything, it's about being smart, aesthetic, driven, lonely, and occasionally derailed by romantic notions of interpersonal love that you know are absurd even as you veer obsessively toward some fascinating stranger.
That Araki's Asian American and queer is beside the point, though it's nice that both aspects are generating interest in his oeuvre at the moment, if that's what it takes. But he'll be making his shit long after “Queer Film,” “Modern Primitivism,” “New Age,” etc. are just jokey reference points in some future documentary about the hazy, crazy late twentieth century.
“Queer” is a useful way to define yourself, sure, just as long as it gives you a thrill, or it intimidates people in power, or it provides you and your friends with power, but otherwise... who cares? Why let power mongers fence us into this narrow, predetermined identity just so they can praise us and/or our art in a qualified way, like, say in Araki's case, he's one of the more curious talents in his little genre, as if he worked for a travel bureau or something. Like... “Here's a teensy-weensy grant for your troubles,” or “Here, have a positive if condescending review. And sorry about AIDS.” or whatever.
Point is, are we so lazy or scared that we'll not only let ourselves be bunched together behind the minority art banner, we'll let this construction design our art-making practices, even if these compromises turn our work, no matter how radical, into minor tempests in a societal teapot? Fuck that.
One of the great things about Gregg Araki's films is how they fight this convention to their core. Aesthetically singular and concerned with issues of concern to a lot of folks at the moment, the films are nonetheless even sort of anti-trendy in some weird way. Still, I suspect they may wind up inspiring a trend or two among even younger filmmakers, if they haven't already.
— Dennis Cooper, Foreword to The Living End script.
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