E-Journal #4
Chicago Reader (Movie Review)
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Acid Western.” Chicago Reader. (1996). February 25, 2008.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0696/06286.html.
I found an interesting critique of the movie Dead Man, a movie which I recently saw.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch, the film is shot in black and white, perhaps to echo the style of
the old American western. Set in the mid nineteenth century, the film begins with the main
character named William Blake (played by Johnny Depp) who is on a train ride towards a
town called Machine, ironically, to begin a new accountant job. As the film critiques the
myth that white people were the first North American settlers, the opening scene depicts
several white passengers firing out the train window at a herd of buffalo, which were known
to be fundamental to Native Americans. When Blake arrives at the office he is abruptly told
that they no longer need an accountant. With little money left, Blake goes to the bar and
then meets a former prostitute named Thel who he ends up in bed with. That same night,
Thel’s former boyfriend barges into the room and fatally shoots Thel, while at the same time
wounding Blake in the chest. Blake narrowly escapes after shooting the intruder in the neck
and then takes a horse into the woods. Meanwhile, the townspeople of Machine believe that
Blake was responsible for the murders of both Thel and her lover, and send a band of men
to bring Blake back dead or alive.
The next day, Blake is awoken by a Native American who goes by the name
Nobody. Nobody tries to remove the bullet from Blake’s chest with a knife but is
unsuccessful. He foreshadows Blake’s fate when he implies that Blake is already dead. Like
Blake, who is an orphan, Nobody reveals that he is also an outcast from his Native tribe
because he was born from two separate bloods. He then goes on to say how he was once
taken as a prisoner to England where he became familiar with the poetry of the English
Romantic poet William Blake, which is Depp’s character’s namesake. Nobody then states
that he believes the young man he just met to be the real William Blake. The film proceeds
as Nobody takes Blake on a journey through the wilderness, “in effect leading him to his
own death” (Rosenbaum 1).
Throughout the film, Nobody recites the poet Blake’s poetry, which Depp’s
character finds crazy. Rosenbaum points out that many of the lines (from Blake’s poems)
that Nobody quotes sound very similar to Native American adages, possibly connecting the
real Blake to that culture. As the film offers a harsh critique of American industrialism, the
viewer sees Blake’s progress from hell, which is the town Machine, to heaven, the untouched
wilderness with which he begins to associate himself with towards the end of the film.
Jarmusch most likely portrayed the metaphorical journey from hell to heaven as an allusion
to the real poet Blake’s work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Interestingly, this film reverses
the depiction that we see in the conventional American western, which is white man against
Native Americans, who usually are depicted as “savages.” Yet, Rosenbuam makes a point
that Dead Man portrays the Native American as the articulate, well-spoken character, while
the white people are portrayed as the ruthless killers. All in all, this was a very insightful film
that unfortunately has been overlooked by the mainstream film industry.
Academic Article
Kripal, Jeffrey J. “Reality Against Society: William Blake, Antinomianism, and the American
Counterculture.” Common Knowledge 13.1 (2006). 25 February 2008
url=http://ezproxy.wpunj.edu:2376/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24292774&site
=ehost-live.
As William Blake’s work had a profound impact on me when I was an undergraduate
in college, I found an interesting article from a journal that is published through Duke
University Press. The article, written by scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal, argues how Blake’s work
provided inspiration for the American countercultural movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Since Blake himself was a revolutionary in his day, and supported both the American
Revolution and the French Revolution, Kripal defines Blake as a countercultural icon. Blake
opposed any kind of organized system, whether it be political, religious, or social. His work
clearly reflected this opposition, and he thus created his own mythological world through
works such as Milton and Jerusalem. Kripal includes an important quote from Jerusalem where
Blake states that he must either create his own world or else become subject to mainstream
society’s traditions: “I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by Another Mans” (Blake 10-20-
21 qtd. in Kripal 100).
One poet who was deeply influenced by Blake was Allen Ginsberg, who became the
staple for the Beat Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Ginsberg claimed to have heard a
voice recite Blake’s poem to him while lying in his bed. After this occurrence, he said that he
sensed a “cosmic consciousness” (Kripal 103) that helped him to rid himself of the everyday
banalities and to see “reality itself” (Kripal 103) as a countercultural being. This vision gave
Ginsberg the inspiration for his poetry, such as Howl, that railed against a conservative
society that undermined all forms of social justice. The institutional beliefs of a racist and
sexist American society were later attacked with such events as the Civil Rights Movement
and the Women’s Movement. Ginsberg’s homosexuality also pinpointed him as an outsider
since the gay culture was not as widely accepted then as it is now. For this reason, Ginsberg
was an outsider looking in, which provided him with a critical perspective in terms of the
mainstream heterosexual culture. In turn, his position as an outsider aligned him with Blake,
whose defiance against conformity ultimately sealed his fate as an outcast from London
society. Also influenced by Blake’s work, British-American author Aldous Huxley
experimented with hallucinogens, in hopes of gaining the same insights and visions through
an altered state that Blake and other such writers and artists purportedly experienced. It is
important to note that during this time, America was suffering from racial segregation, very
fixated gender roles, and the rise of the McCarthy Era. Rather than visiting Blake through
some psychedelic medium, Huxley obtained a vision of the external world, as it was
happening at that moment. This experience therefore provided him with the insight for his
book The Doors of Perception, which later provided a backbone for mysticism and its place in
the countercultural movement. Since Huxley used illegal substances in order to obtain his
visions, which marked him as a man who broke the law, he compared himself with Blake,
who in his time was considered a heretic and one who did not respect the conventions of the
monarchy.
Eastern religion also became popular during the American counterculture era, and
can also be traced in Blake’s work. For instance, since Blake believed in the fusion of the
spiritual world and the everyday world, some of his work has been compared to the Hindu
and Buddhist Tantra literature. Since Blake made an implicit connection between political
oppression and sexual oppression, this ties in perfectly with the countercultural movement
of the 1950s and 1960s. For instance, women were still expected to put men before them
and were given very little opportunity on both a social level and a political level. Blake
actually was an early advocate for the feminist movement and promoted this ideal in many of
his works, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Kripal closes the article with the very
reasonable question of whether a countercultural group or such beliefs can ever truly escape
from becoming a system in itself. For since the countercultural movement had become just
that –- a movement – one might wonder if its proponents have just created another system
without realizing it. While Kripal does not offer a solution to this problem, he simply states
that it will be the subject of many discussions to come.