In El Topo the director Jodorowsky blurs the boundaries in a bid to break down the barricades that exist between normality and abnormality. This results in a surrealist environment where Jodorowsky deconstructs almost every stigma and norm surrounding the disabled body in an attempt to promote and play on its position as a site for horror in cinema. The film is broken into two parts. In the first part we find the gunslinger El Topo on the side of the ‘normal’ people as he fights to become the best gunman in the land. Before he begins this quest we bear witness to him saving a village from a series of madmen. Although these outlaws have physically healthy bodies, Jodorowsky begins the blurring of the boundaries of normality as these men’s actions expose them as the madmen that they truly are. Though their intentions are not fully realised, it is made evident that all of the outlaws are subservient to their master the colonel. It’s from this very slave master relationship that Jodorowsky attempts to dissolve the idea of normality. Whether physical or mental no man is perfect. Some are just more visible than others. This idea allows for us to begin seeing what lies at the heart of the surrealist world of El Topo. In the real word the disabled are generally culturally excluded and made invisible through stigmatisation. In the realm of El Topo, Jodorowsky reverses these modes of representation in favour of making the disabled body a site of interest rather than a site of disgust; this is done through a riot of symbols in an attempt to speak to your unconscious from his unconscious. His cinema strives to remove the view of “disabled people as a category of rejects, as people flawed in some aspect of their humanity”.
Our first true meeting with the disabled body happens when El Topo confronts the first master gunman that he must defeat. This first social encounter with the disabled body does not serve to categorise in favour of the normal body. Instead the blind man’s lack of sight is used as a metaphor for mind over matter as he is presented as being impervious to bullets. In the end he is defeated by El Topo as he places a trap in the sand to distract his concentration and thus get a shot in at him. What’s interesting about this character is that although he is physically disabled by his blindness, Jodorowsky puts him in a stronger position than the previous enemies as he has learned to harness the powers of his mind. What’s poignant about this being put to the fore is how it is instantaneously stripped away by his violent death. El Topo himself, the so called hero of man without legs riding on the back of a man without arms.
Within this symbiotic relationship we bear witness to an amazing symbol for how the disabled body is viewed. In two disabled bodies coming together in an attempt to be one ‘perfect’ body, we are confronted not with the grotesque nature of this relationship, but the grotesque nature of the so called ‘perfect’ body and how in its essence the idea of it is more grotesque than the deformed body itself. The presence of this character deconstructs the notion “that a morphological defect is, to our living eyes, a monster”. Again as part of El Topo’s transformative journey he defeats and kills this guard. Although death of the disabled bodies at this point may be perceived as strengthening the hierarchies of the normative body. I believe that in the bigger picture of the movie it is necessary for both El Topo’s enlightenment and a realisation of the disabled body beyond what stigma signifies. As El Topo continues his quest of enlightenment he eventually defeats all of the master gunmen in the land. Left feeling like a cheater he destroys his gun and decides to revisit all of the people which he has killed on his journey. The boundary between the able and the disabled is finally confronted as El Topo contemplates what he has done. It is at this point that the women that are with him now turn on him. Leaving him for dead they ride off into the sun. The first half finishes with the gunslinger being taken away by a strange band of deformed people.
The name El Topo translated into English means mole and it’s not until the second part of the movie that we find this being realised. El Topo awakes to find himself in an underground cavern amongst a society of deformed people. Due to his injuries he has to stay there for a long time and it’s during this healing period that we find the eponymous character finally integrating with the disabled people around him. This can be perceived as the moment in which he shifts the focus from his body and its capacity, in favour of the organisation of the space that he utilises. He then decides to help all of the outcasts and together with a dwarven girl that has helped him through his recovery he goes on a quest to free them from their subterranean prison. The underground prison in which they reside in can be perceived as a symbol for the domain in which disabled bodies are housed in. This is physically seen in the film, but in its presence, also acts for the mental one that exists within a world where society is built on norms. The journey to remove this prison finds El Topo and his dwarven friend busking in a nearby town so as to get money to dig an exit to the underground prison. The inhabitants of the town are all presented as upper class white folk who hold ‘normal’ bodies. They are all corrupted cultists who enjoy killing for bloodsport, treating slaves as animals and indulging in sexual pleasures. Through the presentation of this so called normal above ground society it becomes apparent that Jodorowsky is critiquing the very notion of normalcy in itself. The notion of deviancy is projected onto the corporeal norm, rather than the disabled body that is not only physically hindered, but is also subjected to mental attack from social norms. This projection plays a role in helping to dissolve aspects of twentieth century social theory that presents “disabled people as those individuals with physical, sensory and cognitive impairments as ‘less-than-whole”.
Towards the end of the film we are presented with one of the most shocking images towards disabled people ever committed to celluloid. As El Topo finally finishes the exit to the prison all of the disabled people rush out and charge towards the town. As they approach El Topo is omnipotently heard screaming “They are not ready for you”. The cultists of the town proceed in killing all of the disabled people.
Fuelled by the rage of this he then proceeds to kill everyone in the town, before dying by self-immolation. Within this final scene there are a lot of issues concerning normality and abnormality being confronted. In its essence it is saying that to truly dissolve the boundaries between these two constructions there is a need to kill of all forms of social thinking towards both constructs and to return as a new society where the boundary is not only blurred, but is completely removed. This idea is embodied by the survival of the son that El Topo has with the dwarven girl in the film. If we are to forget the individual representations of the disabled body and simply look at them in relation to the transformative journey that El Topo undergoes, then the film does end on a positive note. Even though the disabled community at the end are destroyed, the inhospitable space in which they have been occupying acts as a focal point of resistance. With this their deaths symbolically serve to fuel the completion of El Topo’s journey. A journey where the categories between normal and abnormal are completely eradicated. Within this we are presented with hope for the future as in death El Topo takes the ideals of ‘normal’ society with him, whilst also giving space to the most important critical claim with regard to disability is that it is a social construct. “Persons with disabilities may experience functional limitations that non-disabled persons do not experience, but the biggest challenge comes from the mainstream society’s unwillingness to adapt, transform, and even abandon its “normal” way of doing things”. In death he finally transforms into a symbolic representation of the disability paradigm and his reincarnation as his own son reflects the implications of rebirth that this paradigm represents.
Many critics argue that El Topo is a completely un-politically correct film and that its treatment of the disabled body is offensive and only serves to fuel the surreal nature of the film and consequently establishing disability as something that is as surreal as it is horrifying. What we need to ask ourselves is whether or not there is “something to be gained by all people from exploring the ways that the body in its variations is metaphorized, disbursed, promulgated, commodified, cathected, and de-cathected, normalized, abnormalized, formed, and deformed?” One thing that is apparent about Jodorowsky distinct style is that his treatment of the disabled undoubtfully presents it as both horrifying and grotesque, but beneath the surface he contorts these notions in a bid for the viewer to reflect on their own personal interpretations of the disabled body and how its presence still happens to ignite that shock factor.
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