El Topo offered the counterculture collective solace amid cascading trauma

Evidence

Materializing a year after the discovery of the Manson Family, seven months after the killings at Kent State, three months after the death of Jimi Hendrix, and two months after Ice, El Topo served as a form of collective solace. Asked if he thought viewers should be high when watching his movie, Jodorowsky replied, “Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’d demand them to be”—not perhaps what he told the Saint Clement’s congregation. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1687