Origin of The Term
The term "Acid Western" was coined by Jonathan Rosenbaum in a review of Jim Jarmusch's film, Dead Man, published in the Chicago Reader in June 1996. Rosenbaum expanded upon the idea in a subsequent interview with Jarmusch for Cineaste and later in the book Dead Man from BFI Modern Classics.
In the book, Rosenbaum illuminates several aspects of this re-revisionist Western: from Neil Young's haunting score to the role of tobacco, to Johnny Depp's performance, to the film's place in the acid-Western genre. In the chapter "On the Acid Western," Rosenbaum addresses not only the hallucinogenic quality of the film's pace and its representation of "reality," but also argues that the film inherits an artistic and political sensibility derived from the 1960s counterculture which has sought to critique and replace capitalism with alternative models of exchange.
In the traditional Western, the journey west is seen as a road to liberation and improvement, but in the Acid Western, it is the reverse, a journey towards death; society becomes nightmarish.
Read more about this topic: Acid Western
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.”
—Neal Cassady (1926–1968)
“In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the self-surrender of the orator.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)