'Nowhere' (1997): My Favourite Queer Film (minor spoilers)

What happened to the shit-eating??

It’s a sentiment that’s snuck from my lips on more than one occasion when surveying the landscape of recent LGBTQIA+ cinema. Of course, there are many gems of brilliance: I’ve swooned over the gorgeously exquisite ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ and hollered emphatic air punches in praise of the genuine bisexuality of ‘Shiva Baby’, but I can’t help but feel underwhelmed by the neatly inoffensive wave of cushy, plush romances, milquetoast comedies and bland biopics that seemingly dominate the more mainstream serving of queer films. Stuff like ‘Love, Simon’, ‘Booksmart’ and 'Bohemian Rhapsody' ; these ain’t no ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’. For as wonderfully audacious and individual as the LGBTQIA+ community can be, it’s odd that these films can feel so mundane, reduced down to a safe, marketable, stereotypical or crowed pleasing expression of queerness. And although there was the edgier, recently released 'Bros' , it's disappointing that a blockbuster gay story has to be confined to the rudimentary, 'Apatow' comedy formula. I want to hear these stories scream, but they feel so held back. But don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that most of these films are being made at all; normalising these perhaps initially different identities, especially to younger viewers and general audiences, in an entertaining and light hearted way (and not just in a throw-away line) is always great to see. But for me personally, I always slink away to the grungier, seedier cesspool of queer cinema, equipped with the hushed, whisper of “Do you have anything a bit…stronger?”.

A reeking pandorica opens, bringing forth the debaucherous antics of John Waters and the sexual sadism of Pier Paolo Pasolini; gay directors certainly are synonymous with a bit of the aforementioned scatological scran. The terrible two revelled in a type of ‘cinematic terrorism’ in the 1970’s that would make a conservative, tight-lipped audience, squirm outta their collective socks. And the echoes of kaleidoscopic, depraved boldness occasionally rings true amongst the current generation of filmmakers, such as Sean Baker’s bonkers, yet heartfelt and hilarious trans revenge caper ‘Tangerine’, as well as Julia Ducournau’s ‘Titane’, using the subject of body horror and unconditional love to present a brutally beautiful exploration of gender fluidity and non-binary experience. But my personal favourite, lying between these two camps within the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990’s, is the anarchic Gregg Araki. Best known for helming the harrowing, child abuse themed drama ‘Mysterious Skin’, my first exposure to Araki’s work was one of his earlier, more outlandish outings. Falling upon the night before my twentieth birthday, it was a fitting end to my teenage career, the ‘teenage apocalypse’ of movie viewings. His astoundingly auteurist, very weird and sexually fluid 1997 masterpiece, ‘Nowhere’.

I could begin to describe the plot of ‘Nowhere’, but even that is a challenge. Our main lead is James Duvall’s Dark ("...as in the absence of light"), an alienated 18 year old, indifferent to his polyamorous relationship with his bisexual girlfriend Mel, and ruminating on his own dreamy visions of shy, gay classmate Montgomery. That’s the ‘story’ in its most basic form. Although, the true greatness of the film lies less within it’s narrative, but through Araki’s sense of vision, detail and world building: frankly, it’s fucking bananas. A warped, twisted, perverse lens of simulacrum is placed over Los Angeles, production design is staggeringly angular and eye-wideningly maximalist. It’s inhabitants, a rag-tag mess of juvenile delinquents, drift through this vivid, nightmarish suburbia in a series of interconnecting skits and vignettes, colourfully costumed and regularly partaking in freakishly fantastic fornication. These scenes serve as some of the most sensationalised, bloodiest and horniest in ‘Nowhere’, almost acting as a parody of the spectacularisation of sex in media or culture as a whole.

Gregg Araki has stated that “(John Waters) is the original godfather of everything to me ”, and the staple cartoonish wackiness of the trash maestro himself is worn on the sleeve of ‘Nowhere’. Characters with names such as Dingbat, Handjob and Jujyfruit (my personal favourite being Surf and Ski, a pair of shirtless, blonde twins who talk entirely in unison), slinging insults like “scrotal fungus”, “dodo bird” and “dingleberry”; it’s Shakespearean in a way, just with unprecedented levels of concentrated camp. Oh, and then there are aliens. Giant lizard men roam the streets, brilliantly implying the random, free-flowing narrative as extra-terrestrial observation, as if the audience themselves are outsiders voyeuristically looking in. It also foreshadows the backdrop of an intergalactic apocalypse looming over the characters, concluding in one of the best endings I’ve ever seen in a film.

All of these elements culminate to another one of ‘Nowhere’ ‘s greatest strengths and that’s it’s satire of the teen genre. Recent examples such as ‘Euphoria’ or ‘Skins’, and even 90s equivalents like ‘Kids’ or ‘American Beauty’, I find to present their sensitive or risqué subject matter like a finger-wagging, platitudinous PSA: "Do you know what your children are ACTUALLY getting up to??". I understand portraying these issues provides comfort, connection or relatability to a lot of viewers, but it often feels so trite and self-important in an attempt to be daring or provocative. ‘Nowhere’ acts as a monolithic middle-finger to this, and I believe for 1997, it was ahead of its time; injecting teenage tropes, stereotypes and dialect with an ocean of acid and tuning them up to the most insane, disturbing extreme, often to the point of absolute hilarity. Whilst the previously mentioned examples perhaps attempt to be a sentimental or grounded look at reality (key word being ‘attempt’, Mr Levinson) , Araki’s film is orbiting mars in comparison. It isn’t afraid of being deviously goofy, unserious and absurdist. Look no further than a murder involving a can of tomato soup.

However, a scene that stuck out to me on a rewatch was, surprisingly, one of the more quieter and simpler moments. Throughout it’s unrelenting chaos, scenes of raw, soft-spoken intimacy confront the audience, and Araki delivers an emotional gut-punch through his use of juxtaposition that completely strips away the film's frantic energy. After one of the more violent scenes in ‘Nowhere’, the character of Egg (yep, that’s her name) crawls into her bed, bloodied and bruised, her face illuminated by an evangelical Christian TV station that is used as a sinister undercurrent throughout the film, a foil to the teenager’s oddball hijinks. Her straight-laced father knocks on the door, enquiring about dinner. “…I’m not hungry” is her whimpered response. This scene pulls the rug from under you, decking the viewer with a tonal whiplash and the realisation that these are still children, naïve and inexperienced. This seemingly surreal fantasia possesses very real danger, and it’s incredibly sad.

‘Nowhere’ is weaponised queerness. It’s the ultimate ‘punk rock’ expression that I feel is intensely personal to Araki, showcasing his own autobiographical perspective of sexuality as something that can be surreal, scary, erotic, funny, devastating and warmly affectionate, just as free-flowing and interpretable as the film itself, impervious to censorship or committee thinking. I think it's strangely an incredibly honest portrayal of the chaos of grappling with one's own identity, internal and external, in a seemingly uncompromising and abstract world. “They’re full of pride, and full of just me and no filter (sic)” he explains in relation to his early filmography. Unfortunately, Gregg Araki’s recent work has seen him direct several episodes of the dopey, exploitative ’13 Reasons Why’, roped into the very thing he initially rebelled against. But for me personally, ‘Nowhere’ will always continue to remind me of the creative heights that films can achieve. It’s an endless source of inspiration on the limitlessness of storytelling, presentation and personal expression, and I adore it. Go watch it. Dingleberry.