By David Futrelle
Terry Gilliam is tired of talking about his movie The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Instead he’s decided to take advantage of the media attention surrounding the film’s late UK release to expound at length on his rather tiresome (and decidedly unoriginal) theories of gender and race and how white men like him are the most persecuted people on planet earth.
Yes, he’s turned into one of those guys. Or perhaps, given his reputation as kind of a dick, he’s always been one.
In an, er, wide-ranging interview with Alexandra Pollard of The Independent, the 79-year-old director called #MeToo a “witch hunt,” whined that white men are “being blamed for everything wrong with the world,” and then, for funzies, declared that his manifestly white self was somehow really a “black lesbian” because lots of people with his last name are black.
Refusing to talk for more than a moment or two about his movie, Gilliam began the interview with a tirade about the alleged evils of #MeToo.
We’re living in a time where there’s always somebody responsible for your failures, and I don’t like this. I want people to take responsibility and not just constantly point a finger at somebody else, saying, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’ .
#MeToo is a witch hunt. I really feel there were a lot of people, decent people, or mildly irritating people, who were getting hammered.
After all this humorless bloviation, he then wondered aloud why people don’t think #MeToo jokes are funny. While admitting that a lot of #MeToo accusations are true, he added that “the idea that this is such an important subject you cannot find anything humorous about it” was just plain wrong.
Gilliam then brought race and gender identity into the mix, making the One Trans Joke that so many reactionary would-be comedians think is so hilarious.
When I announce that I’m a black lesbian in transition, people take offence at that. Why?
Pollard, who at this point must have been inwardly cringing at each new pronouncement from Gilliam, told him it’s because, er, he’s manifestly not that.
He explained that many people with his last name are indeed black so maybe he’s half black or something? (The exceedingly white looking Gilliam doesn’t seem to realize that it’s infinitely more likely that his similarly lily-white ancestors owned the ancestors of the black people who now have that last name.)
He then gave up the fatuous claim, only to insist that
I don’t like the term black or white. I’m now referring to myself as a melanin-light male. I can’t stand the simplistic, tribalistic behaviour that we’re going through at the moment.
But he quickly returned to the joke about being a black lesbian.
I’m talking about being a man accused of all the wrong in the world because I’m white-skinned. So I better not be a man. I better not be white. OK, since I don’t find men sexually attractive, I’ve got to be a lesbian. What else can I be? I like girls. These are just logical steps.
It’s not hard to see why Pollard says that it’s “deeply frustrating to argue with Gilliam. He is both the devil and his advocate.” And a pretty tedious devil at that.
Get some new material, dude.
NOTE: In case you’re wondering about the title of this post, it’s from an old Monty Python routine.
H/T — thanks to Twitter’s@WeaselFidget for alerting me to the interview.
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I’ll continue liking Brazil and Time Bandits, but I guess I won’t be sending any more money Gilliam’s way.
If Michael Palin turns out to be not as nice as he seems, I’ll be devastated.
@Naglfar
The thing about reactionary positions is that they allow vapid would-be conservatives to cosplay as enlightened revolutionaries, whilst fighting for the status quo.
I suppose it’s a defense mechanism, because the alternative would be accepting that society is indeed fucked up because it’s men like them running it.
Please take this for the honest question that it is, with the background that I am on the spectrum and have a difficult time understanding what I perceive to be “double standards”, when there is not a logical basis for it:
What’s the harm in allowing people to identify however they want when it comes to social constructs? (Obviously, species is not a social construct, but race, gender and perhaps sexuality, at least with the current definitions of sexuality are social constructs) I don’t understand why they are considered differently and one is ok, but another isn’t.
@Snowberry
I know lots of old people that this happened to. Like my grandmother. She’s in her early 80s and derails any discussion of feminism or LGBT rights by talking about “how far we’ve come” as if there’s no more progress to be made. I’ll do my best to make sure I don’t fossilize when I get old.
@Lucrece
As an opera fan, I know that feeling. For me, I can generally separate the art from the artist once the artist has died (note: not the same as “death of the artist” philosophy, I mean literal death) because then they’re not profiting off of it.
@Steampunked
I’ve not ever been very active in the punk or anarchist communities (more of a metalhead) but my limited experience has shown that a lot of modern anarchists don’t pay much attention to social issues and seem to believe that a revolution will fix everything and that in the meantime it’s a waste of time to do anything else. There’s a lot wrong with this mentality, but part of it is that it’s effectively social conservatism since they’re not actually working to fix social problems.
If Gilliam’s statements are mesnt to be a joke, he missed the punchline. You know, the funny bit, the part that makes you go haha. Being stupid and ignorant isn’t comedy, and it isn’t provocative either.
@Vaiyt:
I remember an interview with Carol Cleveland, talking about her Python years. Brought on board when the first series was being written, she was given scripts to read, and thought “this stuff doesn’t work: where’s the punchline?”. She didn’t know then that those sketches would lead into a Gilliam animation.
So, if Gilliam says something unfunny, just imagine him then being chased off the set by an animated monster with seventeen eyes on stalks. It still won’t be funny, but it’ll remind you of why he used to matter.
OT: in other Python news, Neil Innes died a week ago.
@Naglfar
I feel like with the one or two punks/anarchists I’ve come across, they are more progressive regarding social issues, like believing the police only exist to perpetuate a racist and capitalist society.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus was played on PBS in the US in the late 70s and a lot of people were outraged because of the men pretending to be women. Generally, my mom allowed me to watch anything that was played on PBS but she strictly forbade Monty Python (which only made me want to watch it more, of course). But surrrrrrrrre, no one was offended before 2015, Terry.
I have a tattoo based on an illustration I believe is from Terry Gilliam (I’ve never been able to find its original source, & I’ve lost the 2006 Monty Python calendar where I found it) so this is really fucking disappointing & enraging.
The quote that accompanied the tattoo image;
“And on Sundays they will go, in small, well chaperoned groups, to the vast plasterboard cities that pierce the sun.”
@Naglfar
I have seen anarchists like that too. It’s a big reason why I try to stay pragmatic and keep short-term solutions going, even if it involves compromising. The revolution likely won’t be in my lifetime, might as well try to keep things ok in the meantime
Off topic, but word needs to get around:
https://mobile.twitter.com/hodakatebi/status/1213887776229216257
Border Patrol is under orders to detain Iranian American citizens.
@Sapphire
I think the main reason there’s a problem is that the only time I’ve ever heard anyone identify as another race or similar is when they were arguing in bad faith. There’s a long history of transgender (both binary and non-binary) people documented worldwide in different cultures with varying degrees of acceptance. As well, most trans* people are simply trying to live their lives (at least, I am). OTOH, transracial only seems to surface as an idea when some conservative provocateur claims to identify as black to both be racist and to mock trans* folx at the same time. As mentioned above, Gilliam here does not actually identify as black, he’s saying he does to be mocking and reactionary.
@Bakunin
I feel the same way. I see it as, if there is a revolution, it probably won’t fix everything anyways (i.e. even if such a revolution could be done, ending one form of inequality or discrimination still leaves others to be dealt with) and in the mean time I should try to make things better in smaller ways, because a lot of things can’t wait for a revolution.
Then, there’s as Cyborgette mentioned in another thread, there’s the fact that many revolutionary anarchists might not be very cognizant of this, and that could have disasterous consequences.
@Cyborgette
Holy shit. This is escalating even faster than I thought. I’m a bit worried there will be internment camps before long.
@Sapphire :
Thanks for some Sanity !!
Well, damn. I liked a lot of Gilliam’s work, too; he obviously enjoyed playing around with the boundary line between subjective and objective reality. (See: Brazil, Adventures of Baron Munchausen.) I would have loved to have seen a collaboration between him and Satoshi Kon, who similarly played with that line. (See: Perfect Blue, Paprika…)
I had some respect for him during an earlier interview I actually attended when he commented that he’d actually been given a chance to direct the Watchmen movie and gave it up because he didn’t think he could do it (and didn’t want to go down in history as the person who ruined Watchmen). He was also a strong believer that children were generally far more resilient than people gave them credit for.
But, yeah, this is pretty sad. And as others have noted above… well, Gilliam nearly caused the breakup of the Pythons and the shutdown of the film The Meaning of Life because his ‘short intro’ (The Crimson Permanent Assurance) went way over budget, over time, and he refused to back down on what he wanted to do. He’s been a bit of a self-important git for a while.
On other discussion:
A friend of mine used to use, as part of his description of punk, the difference between The Sex Pistols (who stayed relatively true to the original punk concept and who were insulted by attempts to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and insulted back), versus The Clash (who moved on to more new wave and surviving members had no problem when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). You could do an entire study on how strongly people actually hold onto the attitudes they claim just based on the history of those two groups.
@Naglfar:
And, of course, revolutions often don’t fix things, and can make things worse, because now you have people running things who don’t actually have a lot of experience running things, and the revolution often needs help from the people deposed, or just gets co-opted by more regressive elements who liked the way things were being run aside from the fact that they weren’t the ones in charge. (E.g., Stalin taking over from Lenin, the way the Southern plantations wrote their economic control into the U.S., the Terror in France…)
In some ways, the American Revolution is actually a serious outlier in how well things went afterward. And as noted, it was hardly immune to the negative effects.
@Cyborgette:
Ack. And someone I used to work with who is of Iranian descent just moved from Canada to the U.S. Which, frankly, I thought was a bad idea because I was worried about things like this happening.
@Naglfar
The infrastructure and practices are already there. The prison system, ICE detention centers, etc. It’s only a matter of scaling it up even further.
TBH some of my friends are talking about getting firearms licenses. I don’t intend to, simply because I don’t think it would be very helpful, but yeah. Shit, as they say, is getting real. A person would have to be very ignorant, very privileged, or very evil not to feel frightened.
@Cyborgette
Plus, the country has the experience of doing it before. It would probably be easier to do again.
I don’t plan to either, because I don’t want to support big gun corporations and groups, but the thought has crossed my mind.
@Cyborgette : everything can degenerate pretty much since the election of Trump, and could maybe not degenerate at all despite the Orange One best efforts.
So, the important part is to conserve energy, and outrage, for if the shit hit the fan. Also be on the outlook of a start of something to help/hinder it if needed.
I would replace “evil” by “stupid”. Being evil won’t save anyone, and there’s alway a large amount of random roadkills in thoses situations.
@Cyborgette:
I have a friend who’s currently working in U.S. Immigration. He pretty much hates ICE as well. To quote him, “We find cases of what’s pretty blatantly human trafficking and we can’t send out investigators because the stormtroopers ate all the budget.”
@Jenora Feuer
I’d imagine that from the perspective of Republican lawmakers, that’s a feature, not a bug.
@Ohlmann
I think we may have different definitions of evil, yours perhaps being narrower than mine.
I actually did originally intend to write “stupid”, but “evil” is less ableist and more accurate. It’s a matter of giving a fuck, not one of intellectual ability.
@Naglfar:
Sadly, that’s quite likely true.
At some point, we need a term for people that have intellectual capacities, but decide to not use them or use them wrong. I though “stupid” covered that case TBH.
ANother reason for me to not use “evil”, is that there are plenty objectively evil people that nonetheless look up their own interest enough to not want a fascist dictator. I mean, plenty of evil, brain-non-using guys are all for it, and a small amount of evil peoples are right in thinking they will be the top dog in that situation, but there’s also all the guys that want people to suffer but aren’t delusional yet.
@Ohlmann
Has the shit not hit the fan already? I feel like outrage is a perfectly reasonable response to putting kids in cages because they’re brown and assassination intended to distract from impeachment and threatening to commit war crimes in Twitter. I wish the people with some power to stop some of this would feel a little outrage.
As the saying (reversed and appropriately amended) goes: “Comedy is hard. Dying in easy – so take the easiest road, soon, you crinkled asshat!”