American Culture?
The origin of midnight movies started with the film El Topo in 1970. Alexandro Jodorowsky wrote, directed, and starred in the movie. Playing the lead role of El Topo, Jodorowsky had to transform with the character, taking on different physical looks, as the story plot drastically changed as well as the cinematic style. “The film begins as a western. Jodorowsky, bearded and dressed in black leather, comes cantering across the desert on a black horse with a naked child (his actual son, Brontis) clutching on behind him” (Hoberman 80). The film starts out bold. El Topo reins in his horse and tell his son, “Today you are seven years old. Now you are a man. Burry your first toy and your mother’s picture” (Hoberman 80). Brontis follows …show more content…
He slowly transforms into a Crist-like figure by saving lives, repenting for his sins, falling in love with a woman who ends up shooting him in his hands and feet as if he was crucified, and then getting reincarnated and becoming the savor of a tribe of physically impaired people. El Topo became a brief cinematic idol. As El Topo became more of a relatable character to the audience through his newfound identity, the audience would become more obsessed with this idol. Even though, “Jodorowsky played El Topo as perhaps the most potent counterculture hero to even appear on the screen” (Hoberman 100), El Topo is still admired and a relatable figure to its following. Furthermore, “if the film’s devotees identified with the ‘holy killer’ in the first and second sections of the movie, by the third he presented himself as their savior – the champion, quite literally, of freaks” (Hoberman 99). Jodorowsky’s unique portrayal of this sub American hero greatly attributes to the movie’s cult following. Among all films, “El Topo presented itself as a spiritual initiation […] speaking at once to the counterculture’s love of the arcane and its collective paranoia” (Hoberman 98). As we approached the 70s, the counterculture lost its excitement and started to experience privatism, until El Topo came out. What El Topo did was “[it] directed against both an …show more content…
Cult films mold the boundaries of the mainstream movie industry. “Feeble copies of atmospherics David Lynch,” a well-known cult movie producer, “was creating two decades ago appear in every other mainstream teen-horror movie released these days” (Cineaste 45). Taboos and cinematic styles from hundreds of cult films are incorporated into most of our modern day films. “The surface tics and exploitation excesses of old cult movies are commodified, have any dangerous edges knocked off, and get resold in the mainstream in much the same way as has always gone on in the music industry” (Cineaste 45). Certain film aspects that were once looked down upon in cult films are molded into our everyday lives and movie going
The origin of midnight movies started with the film El Topo in 1970. Alexandro Jodorowsky wrote, directed, and starred in the movie. Playing the lead role of El Topo, Jodorowsky had to transform with the character, taking on different physical looks, as the story plot drastically changed as well as the cinematic style. “The film begins as a western. Jodorowsky, bearded and dressed in black leather, comes cantering across the desert on a black horse with a naked child (his actual son, Brontis) clutching on behind him” (Hoberman 80). The film starts out bold. El Topo reins in his horse and tell his son, “Today you are seven years old. Now you are a man. Burry your first toy and your mother’s picture” (Hoberman 80). Brontis follows …show more content…
He slowly transforms into a Crist-like figure by saving lives, repenting for his sins, falling in love with a woman who ends up shooting him in his hands and feet as if he was crucified, and then getting reincarnated and becoming the savor of a tribe of physically impaired people. El Topo became a brief cinematic idol. As El Topo became more of a relatable character to the audience through his newfound identity, the audience would become more obsessed with this idol. Even though, “Jodorowsky played El Topo as perhaps the most potent counterculture hero to even appear on the screen” (Hoberman 100), El Topo is still admired and a relatable figure to its following. Furthermore, “if the film’s devotees identified with the ‘holy killer’ in the first and second sections of the movie, by the third he presented himself as their savior – the champion, quite literally, of freaks” (Hoberman 99). Jodorowsky’s unique portrayal of this sub American hero greatly attributes to the movie’s cult following. Among all films, “El Topo presented itself as a spiritual initiation […] speaking at once to the counterculture’s love of the arcane and its collective paranoia” (Hoberman 98). As we approached the 70s, the counterculture lost its excitement and started to experience privatism, until El Topo came out. What El Topo did was “[it] directed against both an …show more content…
Cult films mold the boundaries of the mainstream movie industry. “Feeble copies of atmospherics David Lynch,” a well-known cult movie producer, “was creating two decades ago appear in every other mainstream teen-horror movie released these days” (Cineaste 45). Taboos and cinematic styles from hundreds of cult films are incorporated into most of our modern day films. “The surface tics and exploitation excesses of old cult movies are commodified, have any dangerous edges knocked off, and get resold in the mainstream in much the same way as has always gone on in the music industry” (Cineaste 45). Certain film aspects that were once looked down upon in cult films are molded into our everyday lives and movie going