Gregg Araki VS the Modern World
by Sylvia Cottrell, Contributor
I watched I Want Your Sex with my best friend in the new Brooklyn Academy of Music movie theater above the Whole Foods in downtown Brooklyn. We were basically the only people in the theater besides a random middle aged man sitting in the very front. One of my first thoughts while watching it in the theater was “Why are they talking about TikTok so much?” Obviously as time goes on directors have to tailor their movies to changing times, but the 2020s references (Spindrift is mentioned multiple times), felt jarring compared to what I’m used to seeing from Araki’s films. The movie is about a recent college grad named Elliot, who gets his first L.A. job working for an artist named Erika Tracy, helping her produce objectively very bad “contemporary art.” The Gregg Araki movies I’m used to watching are depressing, horny and apocalyptic ‘90s teen dramas with unexpected alien invasions and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
I Want Your Sex, while just as horny as the others, felt strikingly different from Araki’s earlier movies and I was a little disappointed with how modernized it felt. I don’t want to be that guy who’s just like “I like his earlier stuff better,” but sorry, maybe I do! I might only feel this way because I wasn’t a part of the target generation of teens when the “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy” came out. Maybe those kids watched Nowhere and The Doom Generation and found it equally as cringe as I found certain scenes in I Want Your Sex. I might only gravitate towards these ‘90s thrillers because I see them through rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia for a time I was not alive for. While I was writing this review, I talked to my dear friend and resident Gregg Araki expert who argued that Araki’s films have always been about trying to appeal to a mass audience of teens, which today is Gen-Z. This made me give the film the benefit of the doubt a little more, and try to look at the ways in which Araki is staying true to himself in I Want Your Sex. Was Araki successful in transposing his style onto a new generation?
Something Araki always does well is pointing out the issues faced by the generation his film is targeting. Out of the five movies of his that I’ve seen, Nowhere is my personal favorite. I love the characters’ weird names like “Jujyfruit” and “Handjob” the nipple piercings, and dramatic pink and blue lighting. The film is about a group of L.A. teenagers who feel alienated from real life in a world of empty overconsumption. As Araki often does, he takes his social commentary to the next level. The characters each have the coolest bedrooms, one of which features a giant mural of the main character holding two guns to each side of his head. The bedrooms define the movie’s references to a culture of overconsumption and loss of a sense of self, as does the giant green alien who shows up with a ray gun throughout the film to terrorize the two main characters.
I Want Your Sex is also incredibly visually curated, and also pokes fun at some of the issues faced by Gen-Z and our modern world today. Elliot’s boss Erika declares very early on in the film that Gen-Z doesn’t have enough sex, a sentiment Araki clearly agrees with. Elliot then experiences an intense and sometimes violent sexual awakening through his relationship with Erika that highlights unconventional sexual roles and promotes an exploration of sexuality. The film also comments on the state of the art world today. Even Erika admits near the beginning of the film that “contemporary art is a scam” which we can see with her statement piece that consists of a giant vagina filled in with several shades of pink chewing gum. Erika and her brand serve as a symbol of the consumerist, money-obsessed art world today.
Despite my complaints, the James Duval cameo in the last scene and general apocalyptic sexual despair were all very comforting to me. Cooper Hoffman’s character actually reminds me a little bit of James Duval’s character ‘Dark’ in Nowhere. They’re both just a couple of troubled boys looking for a deeper connection. Other little details like Elliot’s Sonic Youth shirt and the penis rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment felt very reminiscent of Araki’s earlier films. I think my biggest complaint with the movie was that it didn’t have more moments like these that stayed true to Araki’s original style. Even still, my best friend and I laughed a lot and experienced some classic Gregg Araki style shock value
