Scuzzy, sexy, and driven by anger at the ongoing AIDS crisis, Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992) follows the exploits of an HIV-positive couple, journalist Jon and hustler Luke, as they reject conformity and take to the road. A touchstone of New Queer Cinema, the movie crackles with defiance, capturing the blunt rage and vital passion of its historical moment.
After two ultra-low-budget features, The Living End was a critical and commercial breakthrough for its director. Araki’s film rejected the activist call for positive images of homosexuality and challenged the representational politics associated with HIV/AIDS. Blending personal reflection with close formal analysis, Glyn Davis examines the film’s production history, the live and thorny topics with which it engaged, and its significance as an independent production. Peppered with witty and knowing references to other movies and marked by a bold, dynamic deployment of locations, colour, props, actors, and industrial and shoegaze music, The Living End established an aesthetic template for all of Araki’s subsequent projects.
Over thirty years after its release, The Living End remains a groundbreaking work of queer cinema, its anger undiminished. Livid, smutty, and barbed, it astutely captures the peril and fury of queer life in the United States under the shadow of HIV and AIDS. Davis’s fresh insight and rich context give new texture to this urgent and enduring film.
