Jacob Engelberg: 'Araki's Apocalypse: Fragments of Doom'

Ahead of Gregg Araki’s upcoming series Now Apocalypse, Jacob Engelberg presents a .gif collage exploring the theme of apocalypse throughout the auteur’s body of work. From alien invasions to New World Orders to fecund desert landscapes, and Armageddon Day itself, Araki’s fictional universes often find themselves on the brink of ruin. These precarious worlds—and the despondent characters who inhabit them—are typical of Araki’s singular style. If the world is doomed anyway, then we might as well jump headlong into hedonism as we tumble carelessly on our perilous decline into the abyss.

Filmography

Kaboom (2010)
The Living End (1992)
Mysterious Skin (2004)
Nowhere (1997)
This is How the World Ends (2000)
Three Bewildered People in the Night (1987)
Totally Fucked Up (1993)
White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Jacob Engelberg is a doctoral candidate at King’s College London, where he is researching bisexual transgression in cinema, 1970s-2000s. He is the author of: ‘“How Could any One Relationship Ever Possibly be Fulfilling?”: Bisexuality, Nonmonogamy, and the Visualization of Desire in the Cinema of Gregg Araki’.