Jodorowsky: Between Cult and Art Appeal (Copy)
In an introduction to his book Distinctions, Pierre Bourdieu claimed: “The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar… enjoyment… implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested… pleasures forever closed to the profane” (Bourdieu 7). When Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo and The Holy Mountain crossed the Mexican border into the US, they found a home in the “profane” counterculture sphere of midnight movies. The marketing team for both films self-consciously promoted the films to hippie audiences, who could attend midnight screenings and revel in a collectively oppositional atmosphere. Initial critical responses to both films, particularly The Holy Mountain, confirmed Bourdieu’s thesis: critics, members of the “high art” sphere, viewed Jodorowsky’s “head cinema” with disdain. However, a closer look at these critical responses reveals a constant negotiation of whether Jodorowsky’s films ought to be doomed to the trash bin of cult grotesquerie, or that they deserve to be co-opted into the respectable, “meaningful” sphere of filmmaking. Ultimately, El Topo and The Holy Mountain problematize any clean delineation between “high” and “low” art by finding audiences that belong to both camps across changing cultural moments and value systems.
El Topo and The Holy Mountain remain perhaps most famous for their participation in the “midnight movie” circuit. Having completed El Topo, Jodorowsky arrived in New York City in 1968 and found an audience for the film at the Elgin Theater in Chelsea. Screening every midnight at the Elgin, El Topo became the first of many midnight movies: films characterized by excess, humor, and transgression (Austin, Studlar). The midnight movie setting celebrated “debased,” non-normative films by cultivating an aura spread through word-of-mouth (Mathijs & Mendik 4-6). In fact, El Topo picked up enough word-of-mouth buzz that it remained at the Elgin for six months, attracting the likes of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who purchased and distributed the film via ABKCO films (Santos 22). As for The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky inaugurated the film at Cannes and continued to show it at the midnight movie circuit until the end of 1975 (Santos 34).
For both El Topo and The Holy Mountain, the midnight movie scene created an environment to celebrate the counterculture ethos of the mid 60s and early 70s. America had recently seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, as well as the growing revolutionary anti-Vietnam war sentiment. In response to these socio-political developments, the disaffected baby boom generation cultivated their famous subculture of radical politics, hallucinogenic drugs, rock ‘n roll, free love, vaguely “oriental” mysticism, and a recognizably colorful visual style (Hoberman and Rosenbaum 285). As the enthusiasm of Yoko Ono and John Lennon might imply, Jodorowsky’s films catered to counterculture sensibilities visually and thematically. With the midnight movie theater as a familiar setting, disaffected counterculture-inspired youth could gather in an ecstatic collective effervescence: simultaneously an act of rebellion, and a communal rite of belonging.
To inaugurate the midnight movie setting among counterculture audiences, the marketing team behind El Topo emphasized the experiential, provocative, and unconventional nature of the film. El Topo follows a mysterious cowboy who shares the film’s title (notably played by Jodorowsky himself) as he undertakes a quest to spiritual enlightenment across a Sergio Leone-esque spaghetti western environment. However, as the announcer of the film’s theatrical trailer keenly reiterates, “El Topo is not a western. It goes far beyond any western… El Topo is not a religious film. It contains all religions. It is a mystic film” (Klein, El Topo Theatrical Trailer). When the announcer finally decides to discuss what El Topo actually is as opposed to what it is not, he uses the following descriptors: “Bloody, tender, sexual, miraculous, terrible, violent, monstrous, cruel… an experience for all of your life” (Klein, El Topo Theatrical Trailer). These marketing descriptors emphasize El Topo’s mystical, otherworldly, undefinable character, mouth-watering characteristics for counterculture cult audiences. Jodorowsky himself demanded that his audience show up to the midnight screenings high (Hoberman and Rosenbaum 285); perhaps it should come as no surprise that Lennon and Ono became as enamored with the film as they did.
Of course, the film itself delivered on its marketing promises, containing more than enough grotesque imagery for the transgressive midnight movie audience while thematically adhering closely to the counterculture ethos. On El Topo’s quest, he leaves his son with monks, duels four mystical “gun masters” to reach enlightenment, until he is worshipped by a group of dwarves. The film obfuscates any semblance of conventional narrative structure; El Topo himself dies at least three times across the film’s runtime, at one point as an act of self-immolation. The film’s jarring bloodlust and copiously abundant sexuality also provide for no shortage of midnight movie shock tactics and grotesquerie. However, El Topo is distinctly likened to trans-religious authority figures: Jesus through El Topo’s notably stigmatic bullet wound pattern, and Buddha through the overtly monastic, roughly “oriental” depictions of religiosity. These “desacralizing” attitudes towards organized religion in favor of a vaguely mystical quest for enlightenment adhere to the anti-establishment attitudes found within the counterculture. El Topo ultimately presents a healthy marriage between indefinite, obtuse imagery, and distinctly counterculture ethics -- a marriage that assured the film’s place with midnight movie “low art” audiences.
However, El Topo did not circumscribe the film’s audience strictly within the subcultural sphere, pushing itself on “high art” critical audiences as well. After the previously mentioned promotion of deviance and profanity, the theatrical trailer ends with three different positive critical responses. These responses included praise such as: “one is astonished… by patterns and shades of meaning never noticed before," “a phantasmic allegory for Western civilization,” and “a visual masterwork”(Klein, El Topo Theatrical Trailer). Evidently Jodorowsky’s oppositional framework did not go so far as to exclude critics from enjoying the film, as it later would. By attaching critical validation of El Topo, the marketing team effectively pushed the film as legitimate outside the “crude” midnight movie circle and within the “intellectual” high art critical circle.
El Topo of course received a notoriously confused critical reception, indicative of the film’s negotiation between “high” and “low” art. On one hand, Peter Schjeldahl of the New York Times lavished it with praise, including the aforementioned “patterns and shades of meaning” approbation in the trailer. Schjeldahl titles his review, “Should El Topo Be Elevated To El Tops?” In it, he questions the film’s position as strictly a midnight movie, claiming that “it is about time “El Topo” emerged into the light of day” (Schjeldahl). Schjeldahl’s high praise of the film remains contingent on one factor: imploring Jodorowsky and his team to release El Topo into “the light of day.” This rhetorical move ensures that Schjeldahl legitimates the perceived “meaningful” aspects of El Topo without validating the inferior midnight movie subculture. It is as if to say that the film would somehow deserve more merit, if not for the airheaded hippies promoting it as their own.
Shjeldahl’s language of “elevating” the film finds itself echoed even in negative critical receptions of the film. In an overbearingly cynical review of the film titled “Is El Topo a Con?”, Vincent Canby questions whether El Topo holds any grandiose meaning at all before dismissing it as “not about nothing, but about too much” (Canby). For Canby, the search for a legitimately “good film” lies in analyzing its subtext -- if it does not aspire to any grandiose meaning, then it is simply vacuous art. He concludes his review with a notable contradiction to Schjeldahl’s review: “It would be a terrible mistake, I suspect, to show the movie earlier hour [sic]” (Canby). To Canby, allowing El Topo to “emerge into the light of day” would reveal to now-awake, no longer high audiences that the film does not warrant their attention because it lacks in meaning. Therefore, both Canby and Shjeldahl legitimate the structures of “high” and “low” art; they simply diverge on whether El Topo belongs in the former, or the latter.
Jodorowsky’s follow up to El Topo, The Holy Mountain, vowed to double down on all the rebellion, hallucinogens, and insanity, intensifying its oppositional philosophy. Compared to El Topo, The Holy Mountain’s theatrical trailer revealed even less about what the film aspires to be, and more about what it rebels against. The announcer promises that the film is “completely outside the entire tradition of motion picture art. Outside the tradition of modern theater. Outside the tradition of criticism and review” (Klein, The Holy Mountain Theatrical Trailer). Evidently, Jodorowsky amps up his disdain for any semblance of traditional ideology and traditional filmmaking, marketing The Holy Mountain in strictly oppositional terms. The trailer’s announcer also makes a similar promise to that of El Topo: “nothing in your education, or your experience, can have prepared you for this film”(Klein, The Holy Mountain Theatrical Trailer). As in El Topo, the announcer insists on reading The Holy Mountain as more an “experience” than a conventional “film.” However, while the El Topo trailer does more to describe its ethos, The Holy Mountain trailer simply allows for the montage of outlandish imagery to do the heavy-lifting on behalf of its announcer. This time around, midnight movie audiences are already familiar with Jodorowsky through El Topo, and they are coming back for the promise of even greater transgression.
Fulfilling the trailer’s hefty pledges, Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain acts as a kaleidoscope of El Topo’s: more counterculture motifs, bigger and more colorful production design, blunter anti-establishment messaging, and a larger array of shock tactic scenes. The Holy Mountain follows the story of the Thief, who undertakes yet another spiritual journey to reach enlightenment. Only this time, Jodorowsky plays The Alchemist, the man who supposedly has the answers to enlightenment. Through the Thief’s journey, he encounters seven different planets and their masters, each of which represents a certain industrial facet of society. By spoofing modern societal authority figures, the film somehow even more explicitly aligns itself with the counterculture movement through overt anti-war, anti-religion, and even anti-“high art” messaging. The film also pays homage to the colorful visual style of the counterculture, employing motifs such as Andy Warhol’s factory, rock ‘n roll guitars, and free sex. As such, the film makes its alliance with the counterculture audience even more explicitly unquestionable than its predecessor.
Unsurprisingly, traditional film critics responded to Jodorowsky’s hostility to tradition in The Holy Mountain with mutual hostility. Rather than going straight back to the midnight movie circuit with his new film, Jodorowsky debuted The Holy Mountain at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was widely panned and booed (Santos 33). Perhaps Jodorowsky aimed to gauge critical reception to the film. Nevertheless, subsequent critical responses to the film did not warm up to it; the only contemporary review of the film in the New York Times simply condemned it on the grounds of mistreatment of animals (Klein, TED). Evidently, Jodorowsky’s anti-establishment stance simply went too far in the case of The Holy Mountain, as most critics ignored the film altogether. The film sat comfortably within the confines of the midnight movie circuit for a year, giving its counterculture audience full, uncontested ownership over the film.
Additionally, due to the film’s complicated distribution, The Holy Mountain remained in relative obscurity three decades after the demise of the counterculture, maintaining the film’s aura within the cult sphere. Because of internal strife between Jodorowsky and Allen Klein of ABKCO films, The Holy Mountain never received proper distribution. Before 2007, audiences could only watch The Holy Mountain by purchasing bootleg VHS copies and pirating -- phenomena that Jodorowsky encouraged (Santos 42-43). Because watching The Holy Mountain remained an act of inherent rebellion, the film maintained its status as a strictly cult object. Critics continued to view the film with ambivalence if not antipathy within these three decades, as none would resort to the disgraceful “cult” tactics of watching the film. Therefore, even long after the end of the counterculture movement, The Holy Mountain perpetuated a loyalty to oppositional currents and underground cinema.
By the time the film received a full restoration and DVD release by ABKCO in 2007, The Holy Mountain found an entirely new audience with a renewed critical interest. Isolated from the midnight movie counterculture context it initially found its home in, The Holy Mountain suddenly held enough merit for critical applause. Alessandra Santos argues that critics found much to love about the film’s “artistic achievement”: its mise-en-scene, undeniably impressive production design, and elaborate cinematography (Santos 47). While the renewed critical response certainly included these technical, formalistic aspects of critical evaluation, critics also praised the film’s content. Recognition of the film’s “satire” and anti-authority themes permeated many of these retrospective reviews (“The Holy Mountain Reviews”). Critics even showed appreciation for the film as a “fascinating period relic,” a film “that could never be replicated today.” Evidently, the “high art” audience seems to have finally co-opted the crude cult film -- only three decades too late.
These new critical responses showcase a distinct change in critical attitudes: a newfound tolerance towards drug consumption in film. David Fleming cogently argues that Jodorowsky utilized his “head cinema pill films” to inspire cultural and political changes within his high audiences (Fleming). Critics, now fully removed from the counterculture moment of LSD consumption as opposition, retain a more tolerant approach towards Jodorowsky’s pill films. In contrast to the cognitive dissonance of 1970s critics unable to compromise between condoning the themes of El Topo and condemning its affiliated drug subculture, both negative and positive current day reviews of both El Topo and The Holy Mountain simply refer to both films as spectacles with rich themes (“The Holy Mountain Reviews”, “El Topo Reviews”). The midnight movie counterculture suddenly ascribed to itself an aura of distant fetishization, if not respect, from critical audiences. Unexpectedly, critics seem to respect Jodorowsky’s tactics of instilling political and cultural meaning in a so-called “pill film,” rather than refuting the concept of a “pill film” altogether. Thirty years since 1970, two distinct cultural addresses seem to have finally collapsed into each other.
Taking a close look at the divergent cultural addresses of El Topo and The Holy Mountain reveals a constant conversation between “low art” and “high art” spheres. Both films initially retained an oppositional predisposition, aligning themselves closely with the “low art” of the midnight movie scene. El Topo attracted critical confusion that included enough praise for Jodorowsky to market it towards “high art” sensibilities alongside his hippie counterculture audience. The Holy Mountain, on the other hand, inspired universal critical condemnation or ambivalence, relegating the film to the cult sphere. ABKCO Films’ refusal to distribute the film almost served as a happy accident: it perpetuated a rebellious cult aura around watching the film, and it allowed enough time to pass for critics to retrospectively recognize its “worth.” Ultimately, both films represent the blurred distinction between art and cult. Inasmuch as the passage of time inspires negotiation between these two spheres, it also attests to the arbitrary nature of their boundaries.
Works Cited
Austin, Bruce. “Portrait of a cult film audience: The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The Cult Film Reader, edited by Mathijs and Mendik, Mcgraw-Hill Open University Press, 2008, pp. 392-402.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 1984.
Canby, Vincent. “Is El Topo a Con?” The New York Times, 1971.
Fleming, David H. Unbecoming Cinema: Unsettling Encounters With Ethical Event Films. Intellect, 2017.
Hoberman and Rosenbaum. “El Topo: Through the wasteland of the counterculture.” The Cult Film Reader, edited by Mathijs and Mendik, Mcgraw-Hill Open University Press, 2008, pp. 284-293.
Klein, Allen. “El Topo Theatrical Trailer.” ABKCO Films, 1970.
Klein, Allen. “The Holy Mountain Theatrical Trailer.” ABKCO Films, 1974.
Klein, TED. “They Kill Animals and They Call it Art.” The New York Times, 1974.
Mathijs and Mendik. The Cult Film Reader. Mcgraw-Hill Open University Press, 2008.
Santos, Alessandra. The Holy Mountain. Wallflower Press, 2017.
Schjeldahl, Peter. “Should El Topo be Elevated to El Tops?” The New York Times, 1971.
Studlar, Gaylyn. “Midnight S/Excess: Cult Configurations of Femininity and and the Perverse.” The Cult Film Experience: Beyond All Reason, edited by J.P Telotte, University Of Texas Press, 1991.
“The Holy Mountain (1973) Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/holy_mountain.
“El Topo (1970) Reviews.” Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/el_topo
