(An updated version with voiceover.) This post is spoiler-friendly. If you’d like a spoiler-free discussion of The Doom Generation, check out last week’s post. I also added more songs to the Apocalypse playlist if you want a reading soundtrack. Enjoy! Jordan White from The Doom Generation has been a point of fixation for me. In fairness, he’s a 90s heartthrob character. My first impression of James Duval was a screenshot of him playing Jordan with his iconic long locks and Ministry muscle tee. Without further context, he fits the broody 90s dreamboat canon occupied by the likes of Leo DiCaprio, Heath Ledger, occasionally Keanu Reeves, and River Phoenix. His character in The Doom Generation reveals an entirely different story. Upon first watch/reading of the 90s cult classic, Jordan White is the punk himbo to end all himbos. He oscillates between expressions that could be photo references for Bambi, a level of awestruck that never leaves him at any moment he’s on screen. Other characters describe him as a jailbait boy toy, teasing him for his ingenue nature. He’s tickled by simplistic and juvenile things, from the holographic cowboy belt worn by X (a convenient excuse to zero in on his crotch) or a yoyo from the convenience store (also conveniently used to signal him masturbating while being cucked by his fellow travelers). These, often blended with moments of sexuality, paint a picture of the role Jordan serves within the dynamic of the trio. He is, as the internet would put it, baby. When he sleeps with Amy, their dynamic is reversed from your typical hetero teen romance. Amy always leads, usually from above him, and even when reversed, remains in control. Amy is always the one holding him, and never the other way around. Jordan never attempts to come to her rescue, instead showing support through gentle comfort, calming down her wound-up rage and frustration with a sweet smile or kiss. He’s the heightened version of the soft-boy-retriever boyfriend that the late 10s and early 2020s internet used to rave about. Modern stan twitter would melt if they could handle the more transgressive aspects of the film. This dynamic becomes blurred when X enters the picture. X and Jordan’s dynamic swings between playful and intense, a clear yearning between the two of them. While one could assume that, like Amy, Jordan would let him lead, there’s no way to know for sure. X tantalizes Jordan but waits for him to take the bait. X allows himself to be throttled by Amy, letting their power dynamic swing back and forth whenever they’re intimate with one another. Some viewers read Amy as the versatile character, but I feel it’s safe to extend the same reading to X as well. With X, Jordan’s naivety is a useful device for willful ignorance of the tension brewing between them. Each breakaway feels halfhearted, less intentional withdrawal, and more a lack of understanding on how to address the charge between them. Jordan isn’t dimwitted or too innocent for the world around him, either. In the car, he reveals how his best friend shot himself the day after they had spent time together listening to The Smiths. He asks Amy to consider what she means after she says she loves him, recognizing that not all declarations of love are made equal. He asks X and Amy about what they think their existence means. There are clearly deeper machinations happening inside of him than we’re led to believe for this doe-eyed teen. Unlike other characters — particularly played by Duval — in other Araki films, this internal rumination doesn’t lead Jordan into a pit of sardonicism and despair. Instead, he opts to take the world in as it is, accepting what comes and delighting in what he can. This tendency leads to a misreading of him as a happy idiot. It’s a direct inverse to the coping strategy used by characters like Andy in Totally F***ed Up, Dark in Nowhere, or even Ulysses in Now Apocalypse. These characters zero in on the failings of their world and harden themselves against it to best it. Nevertheless, the realities of the world overpower their shell and find the softest parts of them to rip to shreds. Jordan isn’t exempt from this fate, arguably meeting the most gruesome version of it in his castration and demise. What this fate for Jordan and the demise of only Jordan in The Doom Generation reveal is the world’s treatment of the openness and fluidity Jordan embodies. Jordan does not fight back much throughout the movie, instead being saved by X and Amy with each potentially fatal encounter. This makes him seem like dead weight for our adventuring trio, but it becomes clear that Jordan’s gentler, accepting nature is a refuge for his cohort. Amy and X, when left to their own devices, are rage-filled and caustic to a fault. This characteristic makes it easy for them to murder their attackers without flinching, but poor at treating each other with care outside of a sexual context. With Jordan, however, their softer sides emerge with ease. Jordan doesn’t do anything miraculous; he treats them as if they hold the same level of innocence we read him to have. It works because, in actuality, they all hold that level of innocence. The only difference lies in how jaded and detached they’ve each become in reaction to this world that is out to annihilate them. Jordan sees past these layers and finds the human lying beneath them, nestling there with a precious, lopsided grin. In the final scene sequence, before the trio sleeps together, Jordan and X have a heart-to-heart of sorts while falling into their cloud of charged chemistry. When Jordan breaks away to return to Amy, he asks X what he thinks the meaning of their existence is. X has no reply, but Jordan doesn’t mind. He poses the same question to Amy moments later with a similar response. It’s after that question that X comes to join them, and they engage in what the entire movie seemed to be building to. It is that moment of the three of them together, loving each other explicitly, that ultimately answers Jordan’s question and leads to his demise. The only time Jordan fights back during the movie is in this final violent sequence, hurling an insult at the Neo-Nazi attacker assaulting Amy while his fellow fascists hold Jordan back. Garden shears held to his crotch, Amy left bound on an American flag, and X beaten and discarded in the corner, Jordan is asked what his final words will be. Through tears, he declares his love for Amy and meets his end. It’s hard not to see Jordan as a sacrificial lamb — this sweet, seemingly innocent young man who was too good for the scoundrels he was being led around by or the callous hellscape of a world they were traversing through. An easy reading of this arc is that this f****d world will eat the most vulnerable alive. A deeper reading is that heterofacist America, in its typically violent fashion, will destroy anyone who deviates from its norm. These are both fine readings, but are wobbly when we acknowledge a) only Jordan perishes despite the entire trio being queer by 90s societal standards, and b) Jordan is not the wide-eyed innocent he initially appeared to be. Jordan’s true transgression, aptly punished by our neonazis, is the innocence of his nondiscriminating nature. He, without a clear intention to do so, treats everything around him with adoration. It’s not an overly saccharine adoration either, but a delightfully boyish one — at times debauched but never truly dangerous. He let his love for Amy and unrealized love for X lead him to places most rational people would cower from. He delighted in that process, and his nature balanced the less heart-centered ones of his peers. Despite Amy’s former lovers declaring they would kill her, Jordan was always the target of their violence. While this is sensible from a scorned lover’s perspective, X never caught the heat because it’s much easier to target a lover than a fighter. Jordan’s sensitive, charming openness made him extremely vulnerable. Yet, as the last sequence reveals, the meaning of our existence is to love without shame. To love because we’re human, and that’s what we do at our best. Yes, this world we live in hates how big and accommodating our hearts can be. Yes, they may even kill you for it. But without it, life is too bleak. That’s the true twisted tragedy of X and Amy riding off into the sunset together. They may have survived, but the key that kept them alive did not. They may never truly feel alive again. Having Jordan’s character be equally as fluid as X and Amy while being characterized as angelic implies that his queerness is part of his pure-hearted nature. Fluidity becomes detached from the narrative of submitting to our shameful impulses and instead becomes the most pure parts of ourselves. Jordan cannot live because then the world would have to accept this truth. Jordan White is my favorite part of Doom Generation. I’m further endeared knowing he was partially inspired by Gregg Araki’s first impression of a young James Duval. Maybe Araki saw a lamb soon to be slaughtered by the insidious nature of the world. I like to think Araki saw a kid who was sensitive and loving despite the ills set against him. It’s nice knowing that in our universe, this kid gets to live. As a treat for both you and me, enjoy this fan edit I clipped together in a hyperfixation frenzy last weekend. If you missed it, there’s one for I Saw the TV Glow too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe
