How a 1973 movie inspired Kanye West's Yeezus tour

Jul 27, 2023

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In addition to the mountain of his Yeezus tour from 2013 and 2014, there is another imposing mountain behind it: “The Holy Mountain”. The film by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky from 1973 is a surreal and symbolic film that involves a series of spiritual and hermetic journeys. The story follows a thief who becomes a messiah, encountering various eccentric characters and experiencing enigmatic situations while seeking immortality on the Holy Mountain.

Kanye West and Christianity

Kanye's religious dance is constant, along with his quest for power. What makes him an appealing figure is that, in his public figure scope, he is transparent and also hostile to dominant norms - especially when it involves religion and spirituality. He represents the human experience and is contradictory, proud, hypercritical, and arrogant - characteristics often inherent to pastors, rabbis, priests, and religious leaders. In a way, no one can have a “pass” and that’s okay.

In his album Yeezus, Kanye spends all his time asking his audience to be convinced that, even though he is not taken seriously by the clear and authoritarian codes of society, he has the power. After all, you accumulate power by taking it from someone else.

Wow, Kanye is the Pac of this generation. He is making connections with religion and Jesus. He is trying to make Heaven accessible… you know what I mean? Of course, he is arrogant. But, wow, Jesus was too! [laughs] Wasn’t he the guy who always spoke ill of the religious authorities and said he was God? [Smiles] Wow, Jesus was a controversial guy.
Karl, an interviewer

As for this, Kanye's intent finds a 'real' relationship with Jesus, as evangelical Christians would insist is essential? This is unknown, nor is the purpose of Kanye's intent here known; this is very different from someone like DMX, Tupac, or even Lecrae, who have implicit connections with Jesus.

Yeezus and the references to The Holy Mountain

Right in the first 30 minutes of “The Holy Mountain”, it is possible to find more than enough images to reference the Yeezus tour: the face of a thief covered by shiny black flies like a mask adorned by Maison Martin Margiela. The same thief, lifted by a group of naked brown boys, painted green, becomes West's body elevated by a group of masked dancers in nude bodysuits. An Aztec pyramid bleeds blood like a volcano erupting, similarly to what dominates the stage during "Blood on the Leaves".

Alejandro Jodorowsky was born between the 1920s and 1930s, on the northern coast of Chile. The anger fostered during his childhood, which prevented him from attending specific places because they were forbidden to Chileans, is manifested in "The Holy Mountain" and finds an echo in “New Slaves” and its opening lines: "My mother was raised in an era when/clean water was only served for lighter skins."

Diving deeper and increasing the similarities, Jodorowsky speaks in an interview:

"Maybe I am a prophet. I really hope that one day Confucius, Muhammad, Buddha, and Christ will come to see me. And we will sit at the table, drinking tea and eating some brownies. Baked goods, deities. All my best friends are gods."
Alejandro Jodorowsky

Kanye's self-affirmation and Alejandro

In the film, the thief ends up finding a spiritual guide, played by Alejandro himself, who promises to lead him down the path of immortality, which leads to a holy mountain. Eventually, he does not reach the top and is encouraged by his guide to leave with the woman who has been following them. They end up getting married and descend the mountain with the chimpanzee friend. At the end of the film, the thief explains that "we have reached reality" and the camera pulls away, finally revealing the filming crew recording the scene.

Therefore, "The Holy Mountain" is a kind of manual for self-realization, fueled by blasphemy, Freud, surrealism, politics, counterculture drugs, Buddhism, and more. However, one scene at the beginning is more enlightening about the essence of the tour: after coming down from the cross on which he was placed, the group of boys carries the thief to a room full of plaster molds of himself. He becomes angry upon seeing all these copies. The copies are blasphemies - even of crucified lambs - sculpted images of the true god. So, to assert himself, this god screams louder than all the others. To assert himself, Kanye West makes displays. He does what no one else can do and does it in style. You cannot believe what you are seeing (and hearing), that someone has gone to great lengths to make this happen, involving other people in a personal and mysterious adventure.

Where did Kanye West find someone willing to dress as white Jesus? Where did Jodorowsky find the one-eyed man willing to kiss the girl's hand after tearing his eye out in front of the camera, revealing the secret red inside his body to the viewer?

The references

The imagery of the mountains is present from the beginning in both realms: in the film and in the tour. In Yeezus, the mountain is present even before Kanye takes the stage. His performance spot, with naked hooded women going up and down. Sometimes explosions and projections happen before the mountain opens. It is the center of the stage for Kanye's journey of self-discovery and consequently, his path to reality, just like Alejandro's narrative.

The group of women present in Kanye's performance is his entourage and counterpoint. Their movements are mysterious, just like the movements of the various groups of women in the film. Several times, they choreograph in a circle around Kanye, resembling the women from the film.

The Holy Mountain and Yeezus

In "The Holy Mountain", faces are uncovered, covered, devoured, overtaken by insects, covered in blood, etc. Kanye's Margiela masks reference the ways of covering the face of Jodorowsky, as do the transparent masks of his dancers.

Many scenes in "The Holy Mountain" contain the gesture of various people carrying someone, usually the thief. The same happens during the Yeezus tour, except that Kanye is carried after "I Am a God" by his team of semi-nude women.

The first show of the Yeezus tour in Seattle included an actor portraying Jesus during "Jesus Walks". The thief in "The Holy Mountain" resembles Jesus and appears on a cross at the beginning of the film, which plays with Christian imagery and makes the sacred profane.

The Christian imagery continues during "Lost in the World" with a kind of procession in a tall church. At the beginning of the film, an equally bizarre procession appears on the street, with crucified lambs.

During "All of the Lights" and "Blood on the Leaves", the mountain catches fire, drips lava, and is illuminated with a fantastic variety of colors that contrasts with the previous darkness and blue tones. At some moments, it explodes, similar to the scene in "The Holy Mountain" in which the model Aztec temple explodes during a reenactment of the Spanish invasion of Mexico.

The masks

For his tour Yeezus, the rapper not only wore Margielas on his feet with matching outfits but also a full Margiela mask. According to his monologues during the tour, ‘Ye does not want to be seen as a black man or a celebrity’. He wanted his ideas to speak for themselves, hence hiding his face. Ultimately, he justifies the fully adorned mask:

"...So, tonight, if just for once, I will explain. Because if not, I would feel so tired and exhausted, and I know that you do not feel my pain. Or do not care about my pain. And I realize, realize, realize this, I realize this..."

Later, he adds...

"Yes, there is a time in my life when I can just be me tonight... If you ask why I wear this mask, it’s because, when I don’t have it on, I have to worry if my face is in the right position for the camera, because I don’t want them to capture the wrong image of someone who wants to hit me... So, if I want to be less aggressive and totally expressive and pass the message to you, I suggest you let me wear the mask."

Jodorowsky and his encounter with Kanye West

Still in 2014, Jodorowsky gave an interview to The British Library and talked about his first meeting with Kanye West:

“I didn’t know him, didn’t know anything about him, I only knew he was a rapper. That he said I was a genius and that I inspired him to do the Yeezus tour and that he was inspired by “The Holy Mountain”. He declared himself to me.”

They met in Nice, France. As stated, Kanye West went to meet the director with 4 more people:

“My secretary said that Mr. West wanted to see me. I asked my friend who Kanye West was and he told me he was a very famous artist. (…) I arrived in the hotel room and he was already there, with 4 other guys, one of them being the director Spike Jonze.”

Alejandro, not knowing the rapper, was intrigued by his interest in him:

“I asked him what he wanted, he said he wanted to do a show and wanted to meet me. He was very nice, like a child who wanted to meet me. I liked him, I could feel the communication. I asked if he was going to do a show and he confirmed. Then I said that as a friend, I could give him ideas. He liked it, we talked, took a picture, and he left.”

When Jodorowsky stopped directing films for a while in the 80s, he developed a form of personal therapy, called 'psychomagic', which combined Jungian psychology and tarot. Occasionally, in his meeting with Kanye, Alejandro did a reading for him:

“I didn’t have much more to say to him, I was nervous, so I asked if I could do a tarot reading for him and he excitedly replied yes. So, I read the tarot for him and it was fantastic. Because evidently, he is a man of great ambitions, he really wanted to find something for the youth, as if he were looking for a purpose.”