Alejandro Jodorowsky is a cult auteur who earned his reputation through his film El Topo (1970), the film that started the midnight movie cult in the US. At this time, a counter-culture movement was occuring amongst young people in America. This movement resulted in embracing alternative lifestyles and rejecting societal norms and institutions, which may explain the success of an outsider artist like Jodorowsky. Before becoming a filmmaker, he had already gained a reputation as a provocative artist in Mexico City for his work in theatre. He was one of the founders of ‘The Panic Movement’, a movement that started when Jodorowsky noticed the surrealist art he enjoyed was now a part of high culture. He saw his surrealist influences like Andre Breton, rejecting popular youth culture like rock music, sci-fi, pornography and comics, which Jodorowsky looked to embrace. So as to reinvigorate surrealism, he leant into absurdity and irrationality alongside his collaborators Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor for the movement. The plays of The Panic Movement were intended to be shocking and use destructive energy to search for peace and beauty.
‘One four-hour ephemera starred a leather-clad Jodorowsky and featured the slaughter of geese, naked women covered in honey, a crucified chicken, the staged murder of a rabbi, a giant vagina, the throwing of live turtles into the audience, and canned apricots’.
One of these plays, titled Fando y Lis (1968), Jodorowsky adapted into his first feature. Due to its counter-culture and transgressive elements, the film inspired a riot at its premiere, leading to its eventual ban in Mexico. In this article I will point out the key elements which cement Jodorowsky’s place amongst cult cinema.
Transgression
Besides his documentaries and the two narrative films he has disowned (all of which made far later in his career), all feature nudity, sex and all but Endless poetry (2016) feature violence and gore. In El Topo he uses the western genre to display his transgressions, a genre not commonly associated with nudity, homosexuality and cross-dressing. Choosing the western genre highlights Jodorowsky’s targeting of America as it has obvious ties to the country’s identity. America has valued heteronormativity and traditional gender roles, the western more often than not recaptures these ideas. However, during the 60s, as a result of the counter culture, these ideas were beginning to be questioned which Jodorowsky looks to examine in his films. Alongside transgression is his common use of ‘freakery’, this being a frequent feature throughout his filmography. He features disabled actors in prominent roles, like the outcasts in the third act of El Topo, “the crippled man” in The Holy Mountain (1973) and the asylum inmates in Santa Sangre (1989), just to name a few. It can be assumed that when creating surreal worlds, his use of disabled actors adds to the spectacle and fantastical mise-en-scene, similarly to Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). It has been said that the inclusion of disabled actors appeals to a cult audience, a possible reason for this, as suggested by cult scholars, is that the outcast, drug obsessed generation of the 60s likens themselves to the ‘freaks’ in the films as they are both socially rejected.
Personality
If the likes of John Waters and David Lynch have taught us anything about cult auteurs, it’s that a vital element of their reputation is their persona, and luckily for us Jodorowsky has quite the persona. In an interview conducted by Don Strachan in 1971, they discuss American film censoring sex for the sake of children where violence is not, Jodorowsky remarks ‘I think sex scenes are for children. Love is for children’. Strachan later asks Jodorowsky about any spiritual experiences he’s had, Jodorowsky replies with three; one felt through his colon finding his ‘Muladhara Chakra’. His second was when he was speaking to a fan of El Topo, where he felt like he was the fan’s mirror, and thirdly when his father was killed, he felt time slowing as a pistol was being raised to his dad and then after he was shot, time sped up again. Just in these snippets from this one interview, you can see him as quite a unique mind compared to a standard director, almost like an odd spiritual creative that speaks in metaphors. It’s easy to see how interviews like this allow Jodorowsky’s personality to shine and helped cement his cult status after El Topo. However, this eccentric personality has come back to bite Jodorowsky in his later years as in some of the interviews to promote El Topo, he said that the rape scene was unsimulated. These statements would then resurface in 2017 to which Jodorowsky released a post on Facebook where he admitted to being intentionally provocative and scandalous in order for him to break into the US. He further went on to explain the implausibility of being able to commit such a crime on a large movie set. If you wish to see Jodorowsky in all of his unbridled madness, I would highly recommend the film Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) where he among others talk about his unmade Dune film which many have called ‘the greatest film never made’. Here you can see his head space when it comes to filmmaking, his crazy ideas and his wild metaphorical speech.
Societal Critiques
The underground success he would find in America allowed for him to thrive as a cult auteur and connect with other counter-culture icons. One of these connections was John Lennon of The Beatles who was such a big fan of El Topo, he put up one million dollars to fund The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky’s next film. Again, Jodorowsky attacks the western world on a greater scale as an outsider through critiquing institutions and societal norms. Within the film, a character called The Alchemist introduces a group of people to the main character which he describes as ‘the most powerful people on the planet’. Each of them represents aspects of society, all of which he exaggerates to absurd levels. These range from commenting on extreme beauty standards, content for children being primed for prejudice and hate, and how violence and war have been made more attractive through media. This last one is a sentiment found in other counter culture films of the time such as Catch-22 (1970) and Johnny Got His Gun (1971). These were an effort to show support for the anti-war movement which was gaining a lot of traction due to events like the ‘Mỹ Lai Massacre’ which positioned the US army in a very unfavourable view. Even in El Topo, the film ends with El Topo’s self-immolation after the outcasts he had just freed are gunned down by the nearby village residents. This iconography brings to mind the Buddhist monks who set themselves alight to protest the Vietnam war. He also takes a stab at ridiculing art itself. This is done with the character Klen, who goes about creating art by painting the bums of his workers, having them sit on a blank sheet of paper and passing it from one to another until they have all made a print. Klen states, ‘We produce a new line of art every season’, implying how regimented and dispassionate the production of his art is. Here Jodorowsky implies his disdain for the commercialisation of art, something he obviously holds so near and dear based on how demanding his art is for himself and his actors and how much of himself he exposes in the creation of his art, both physically and mentally.
Outsider
It is important to note that Jodorowsky would go on to make two studio films later on in his career; Tusk (1980) and The Rainbow Thief (1990). However, these are the two films he has since disowned as he was unhappy with how both turned out, claiming them to be compromised. But if anything this cements and necessitates his cult auteur status; thriving when working with free reign of his creativity, only faltering as a result of concessions despite the financial advantages that come from working inside the studio system. In Mathijs and Sexton’s book ‘Cult Cinema: An Introduction’, they speak on many features that can apply to cinematic cult auteurship, the first of which that applies to Jodorowsky is him as a romantic cult auteur. They define the romantic cult auteur as ‘a lone, heroic figure battling against the odds to create works that are taken to heart by outsider audiences.’ This lone and heroic persona fits perfectly with Jodorowsky. For the creation of El Topo, he served not only as the writer and director but also as the star, composer and costume and production designer. For The Holy Mountain, he took up the additional roles of a producer and one of the art department members. With the number of roles Jodorowsky has taken up, he clearly wants to have a hands-on, creative input in as many ways as possible. He is not just creating the world for each of his films by writing them, but he is setting the tone through the score and visualising the worlds by creating the costumes and sets himself as he sees them to best get his creative vision on screen.
Fandom
While Jodorowsky made his biggest impact in the 70s, his cult auteur image persisted afterwards by his fans. After The Rainbow Thief, he wouldn’t make another film for 23 years but would continue as an artist through his comic books, which he had been making since the 60s. With The Dance of Reality (2013), he came back to filmmaking with an autobiographical film of his childhood. It was successful critically but not commercially. This would hinder the creation of the sequel Endless Poetry. So to get the film funded, he started a crowdfunding campaign on the site Kickstarter where the goal of $350,000 was superseded, gaining $442,313 from 3,518 backers. When the film needed additional funding while in post-production, another $233,462 was raised by the fans. The act of fandom, scholars have stated, is just as vital as the art itself and to the status of someone as a cult auteur. This kind of persistent fandom led to this overwhelming support for Jodorowsky surrounding him and his films. It allows for this successful funding by fans, where a filmmaker without Jodorowsky’s cult reputation may have none. In 2021, it was announced that the director of Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Jojo Rabit (2019), Taika Waititi, will direct an adaptation of Jodorowsky’s comic The Incal (1988), with the trailer featuring Jodorowsky. His art and image is relevent even today, similar to how fellow cult auteur John Waters made an unlikely cameo in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015). They almost transcend their cult status into the mainstream if not for their work that put them there in the first place.
