Introduction

Through an examination of the film Totally F***ed Up and its varied soundtrack, A Thousand Stars Burst Open illustrates how New Queer Cinema figurehead Gregg Araki (Rich) utilized music from alternative artists like Coil and His Name Is Alive in his film to help illustrate to viewers his themes of LGBTQ+ social ostracization and tragedy during the HIV/AIDS crisis. The project presents its argument and research findings in an audio documentary inspired by the album The Fire This Time (The Fire This Time), taking a similar approach that integrates music with narration.

Literature Review

In terms of artistic influence, the artist looked towards the foundational audio documentary The Fire This Time (The Fire This Time), which examines at the impact of the Gulf War delivered through a narration layered on top of instrumental experimental dance music. The artist also looked towards albums such as Vanessa Rossetto’s Pictures of the Warm South (Rossetto), which utilizes found sounds and recorded sounds from inside a household. In terms of scholarly influence, the artist looked towards film scholar B. Ruby Rich’s book The New Queer Cinema (Rich), which established the concept of a new wave of queer filmmakers making boundary-pushing movies in the 80s and 90s, and the book Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest (Ehrlich), which places the medium of the audio documentary in a historical context where radio seeks new artistic horizons in the coming of a televised age.

Methods

In regards to the research that took place before the creation process, the artist cited B. Ruby Rich’s book The New Queer Cinema (Rich) and other scholarly texts as well as Araki’s film itself, Totally F***ed Up. The project was heavily inspired by the album The Fire This Time about the Gulf War and its subsequent global impact, utilizing techniques in and out of the digital audio workstation such as scriptwriting, internet scouring, audio clip EQ-ing, audio editing for brevity, arranging audio files, mixing, recording speech, recording sound effects, and others.

Audience & Impact

The project's intended audience is college-aged youth who are unfamiliar with Gregg Araki. As a cinema & media studies student, Araki is one of the artist's favorite directors, and he believes more people should watch his films. Through analysis of the films’ musical content, A Thousand Stars Burst Open reveals up the director’s work to students who may be unfamiliar with Araki and his cinematic output but familiar with the bands that Araki features in his films.

References

Ehrlich, Matthew C. Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest. University of Illinois Press, 2011. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/18427.

Rich, B. Ruby. New Queer Cinema : The Director’s Cut. Duke University Press, 2013.

Rossetto, Vanessa. Pictures of the Warm South. Erstwhile Records, 2025.

Various Artists. The Fire This Time. Hidden Art, 2002.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Criterion Collection for their superb editions of Gregg Araki’s films. I would also like to thank my best friend Ethan, who first introduced me to the work of Araki.