The End of Civilization.

linebaugh

Well-known member
Do drug cultures typically take a political bend, left wing usually, or is that just leftover hippie cliche?
And what are examples of right wing spheres with a drug culture, the nazis?
 

sus

Well-known member
I've always understood heterotopias as Other not because they are unsettled, though I guess technically that's true, but as places where associations are rewired in a way alien to The Town.

Yeah it's hard to say. I think about a lot of the safe space/hostile work environment discourse this way. A startup is a heterotopia of sorts: it's like 4-8 boys in their twenties who often live/eat/shit together, coming up with their own culture. It's "frontier" culture—anything's up for challenge, you can't play by the usual rules, you're trying to build something new, whatever. And a lot of its productive potency comes from this frontier character. Once the larger culture gets a whiff of these spaces tho, they get labeled "toxic" and need "domesticating"—pretty soon there are mental health dogs in the office, HR resources go from 0 to 20% of the budget, etc
 

sus

Well-known member
I think there are a lot of bars, for instance, whose cultures would be seen as "rough" and "hostile" and "unwelcoming"; there just isn't the same culture pressure to domesticate these spaces for whatever reason
 

sus

Well-known member
The heroes journey = doing loads of psychedelic drugs.

Paglia thinks the failures of her generation were caused by taking too much acid. Dropping it. Investing in holy grail quests for personal spiritual actualization and losing their grasp of the real.
 

luka

Well-known member
Paglia thinks the failures of her generation were caused by taking too much acid. Dropping it. Investing in holy grail quests for personal spiritual actualization and losing their grasp of the real.

Yeah this is because she thinks the really cleverest people did it and destroyed themselves. Who knows. As PKD always points out the thing about taking drugs is there's no way to find out what would have happened if you didn't take them. You can speculate but you've switched timelines irrevocably
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Yeah it's hard to say. I think about a lot of the safe space/hostile work environment discourse this way. A startup is a heterotopia of sorts: it's like 4-8 boys in their twenties who often live/eat/shit together, coming up with their own culture. It's "frontier" culture—anything's up for challenge, you can't play by the usual rules, you're trying to build something new, whatever. And a lot of its productive potency comes from this frontier character. Once the larger culture gets a whiff of these spaces tho, they get labeled "toxic" and need "domesticating"—pretty soon there are mental health dogs in the office, HR resources go from 0 to 20% of the budget, etc
Thats a good example, if not also hilariously self satirizing. But I think there's a material element to heterotopias. Architectural in the Bourdieu sense. Start ups are just looking for a slice of the pie, while a heterotopia is pointed in an entirely different direction and thats reflected in the physical make up of the space. Why the bar is labeled 'unfriendly' or 'rough' but tolerated, and the start up is domesticated.
 

luka

Well-known member
There's definitely some wishy washy moralism in holy mountain but only cos Jodorowsky thinks he's some sort of spiritual guru
 

sus

Well-known member
Thats a good example, if not also hilariously self satirizing. But I think there's a material element to heterotopias. Architectural in the Bourdieu sense. Start ups are just looking for a slice of the pie, while a heterotopia is pointed in an entirely different direction and thats reflected in the physical make up of the space. Why the bar is labeled 'unfriendly' or 'rough' but tolerated, and the start up is domesticated.

Some start ups* are just looking for a slice of the pie. Many genuinely want to change the world, and some have.
 

luka

Well-known member
is there somewhere where Jodorowksy wrote or said that

not that it's an invalid reading, but you could just as easily say it's about journeys of self actualization helping you discover "the real"

There's some drug gurus that get pilloried in it
 
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luka

Well-known member
They're supposed to be false prophets Jodorowsky is going to show you how to ascend the mountain without drugs. He's a bellend that man and his films are terrible.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it could definitely be about multiple, possibly contradictory things

pretty sure it's not anti-drugs tho potentially anti-guru (tho, that isn't exactly clear to me)

I think the point is more you can't really say it's clearly about any single thing
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Holy Mountain is one of most truly whacked out films I've ever seen, which isn't to say it's necessarily profound, just nuts

I get the feeling that if you asked the man himself what it's "about" he probably couldn't tell you
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
is there somewhere where Jodorowksy wrote or said that

not that it's an invalid reading, but you could just as easily say it's about journeys of self actualization helping you discover "the real"
I don't know if he ever said that, but I took it as much. And self actualization and 'the real' in the context of the movie are the same thing I think. Self actualization and finding the real being the universal message behind the specific message I'm describing, a kind of, watch out for shallow, fake, opportunistic spiritual, hippie shit on that journey to self actualization. When the film breaks the fourth wall at the end I think that's the message- all this is well and fun but dont forget about reality.
 
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