I’ll be the first to say that I don’t enjoy ‘pretentious’ films. I fall for all the traps, when music swells, I cry, when dance starts, I laugh, and I don’t always think critically about the media that I am consuming. But I am trying to change this, and exploring past films that hold a lot of meaning and legacy is one of the first steps in solving this.
In 1992, Gregg Araki released the first of three Queerpocolypse film The Living End, and it had a very minor amount of acclaim. Now however, it is more of a cult classic that grapples with a community with no faith in their healthcare, their government or each other. I watched this a few days ago, with no initial understanding about what the plot was about, and for the first half of it, admittedly watched with some scepticism. However, as the storyline progressed, I was surprised by how much the film spoke to me, and reflected the very real and current problems faced in America today.
The film followed two characters, who both have AIDS, but illustrate directly opposing behaviour and decisions. Jon is careful about his decisions, has a job he is reluctant to fully abandon and shows hesitancy in the face of abandoning public decency. Luke, on the other hand, is classically ‘depraved’. He displays a larger than life persona, is violent, and illustrates the purely hedonistic style of his life, killing, sex and driving with little thought for those around him. They are polar opposites of each other, so the question of why they spend time together, and to what effect, come to mind.
By the 90s, there were only presentations of gayness, and living with AIDS in the presentation of often white collar, Caucasian men who are trapped within the social structures that oppress them; often they don’t complain, and when they do, it’s through self-blame, grief or hopelessness. This film subverts this narrative entirely. Reminiscent of a Kerouac or Thelma and Louise-esque road trip, it distances itself from the classical urban confines that are often ever present themes in post-epidemic cinema of the 80s. The small bedrooms with rumpled bedsheets, and large, clinical hospital rooms are a distant memory in The Living End, Jon and Luke are rarely inside, opting to remain on the open road, on the fringes of civility.
When watching this film, I was thrown back by quite how explicit and sexual it was. It’s overtly sexual, its aggressively sexual but I don’t think this is fetishising or performative in the way I sometimes see films now. Instead, it’s incredibly obvious that sexuality is used to undermine the loneliness that is felt through the film; despite two characters spending the whole film together, I watched it from the perspective of sexuality and disease as a solitary experience. The sex is used to confront the idea that tactility does not equate to connection, and that sex does not create bond. The drive of the film is AIDS; without Jon’s diagnosis, the plot would not have happened, but the focus on sex compounded with disease and safety illuminates the common misconception that AIDS is a sexual disease, and one that gay men are wholly guilty of spreading. The film is critical of the argument that gay men only use sex to create connection, and in fact, put copulation on a pedestal above all other form of love.
But the fact that The Living End uses sexual overtones to showcase the dysfunction, Araki critiques these misconceptions, and shows simply how ridiculous this notion of connection is – sex alone does not create a relationship, but mutual respect, emotional intelligence and personal growth do.
It sounds like I hated the characters, but I really didn’t. They undermine the caricature of the post-AIDS gay man, and shows them in a complex way – both are conflicted, angry and alone, desperate to mind meaning, and ultimately failing. I sympathised, and grew bitter on their behalf. As Luke says in the film, if the President got AIDS, they’d have a cure straight away. This feels very relevant still today, healthcare is still a deeply controversial subject in the USA today, and privilege and misinformation is foundational to it.
Unveiled in November 2025, President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes cuts to student loans and limits funding opportunities– including nursing training. According to the bill, only “professional degree” students are eligible for high loan limits, and has stimulated that nursing does not fall in this category. Naturally, there has been wide criticism from many in response, including president of the American Nursing Association, Dr Jennifer Mensik Kennedy who argues that “Nursing is the backbone of the healthcare structure in the United States”.
The Trump administration has also been responsible for numerous changes to the information spread regarding vaccines and medication, including in most recently, changing the CDC website to include language that says, “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” This is a direct contradiction to their previous statement that scientific research has quantifiably confirmed that “vaccines do not cause autism.” Alongside this, Trumps healthcare changes this year have included proposals to dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for transgender youth, but also additional proposed rulings to block all Medicaid and Medicare funding for all services at hospitals that continue to provide gender affirming care. LGBT+ rights, including healthcare often run contradictory to governmental policies, and Trumps’ administration is a haunting reflection of the erasure and inaction that is voiced in The Living End; Luke and Jon feel AIDS is not a priority for American healthcare, that their suffering is overlooked and this is directly related to their queer identity. Within his first year in office, President Trump cancelled a federal suicide prevention lifeline specifically for transgender youth, an action that defined how his administration would utilise medical devolution to marginalise those already subjugated.
So watching this film had disturbing relevance, just as with Fight Club, it’s anti-establishment, nihilistic and bitter overtones have obvious application to the situation in America currently.