shawmanic

Mr. Gilliam, I have been waiting decades for an opportunity to discuss something with you. Brazil is among the very top of my favorite films. It is widely discussed as a film about a possibly futuristic (or retro-futuristic) totalitarian state. It certainly is that on one level. I have always viewed it as more importantly an examination, from a Freudian psychoanalytical/historical perspective, of self-repression. The film is replete with Freudian references; quite prominently, the Oedipal Complex, where the mother-son sexual relationship runs through the film. The principal agency of repression is the Ministry of Information, abbreviated throughout as MOI, from the French, “I”. The MOI logo is an almost pornographic representation of sex (and very much like Tantric yoni/lingum representations, which is another closely related angle of perception on the film to be explored). I could go on and on with such details. The first time I saw Brazil, I connected it strongly with Freud. But I struggled with that, asking myself, if it is Freudian, where is the anality? Indeed. I then understood the strange prevalence of ductwork, over-sized duck-billed hats, and the central role of the DeNiro character. Anality (ductwork as intestines/colon) is EVERYWHERE in the film. One could reasonably say it is the film’s central characteristic. Ha! I am no film (or Freudian) scholar, so I may well have missed this, but I have never seen the film discussed in this Freudian context. And viewing the film in this context does not mean it is not also about totalitarian state repression. But it demands that the relationship between self-repression and state repression be viewed as, perhaps, two expressions of a single repressive phenomenon (and one could well bring in the Tantric thing here as well, pointing us, perhaps, toward freedom). Would you comment on this Freudian, psychoanalytical approach to your movie? And, with a current events edge, how do you view the current surveillance state revelations and the relationship of that to self-repression?

Damn this is fun!

Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.

How about yoga? Mula Bandha in particular. Probably very similar to the pelvic therapy approach but there might be subtle differences.

What do you see as the solution to the problem of questionable acquisition of art and museum oieces genreally? I remeber going to museums in London and in particular seeing the dead Sea Scrolls and being realy moved by seeing the actual thing itself. But then thinking, how did that get here?! Even when legally acquired, there is a moral dilmena, right? By the way, does your office have a piece of the view from the Getty campus? Probably the most beautiful view in LA!

Yikes! My adopted 15 year old is from Jiangxi. Where can I learn more (in English) about this scandal?

God, I hate crows! Does that make me a bad person? About 15 years ago living in the western suburbs of Chicago, the crows would wake me up at dawn every damn day! Then some virus or something swept through the population and they all, I mean ALL, just seemed to disappear from the entire Chicago area. Do you recall that phenomena? What were the adverse ecological impacts of that big die-off? Do they outweigh the positive effect of me being able to sleep later?