{"id":13289,"date":"2019-03-16T08:55:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T15:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=13289"},"modified":"2019-12-24T11:19:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T19:19:38","slug":"a-digression-on-gilliam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2019\/03\/16\/a-digression-on-gilliam\/","title":{"rendered":"A Digression on Gilliam"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_13290\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13290\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13290\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam-300x283.jpg\" alt=\"My Gilliam Film Collection\" width=\"300\" height=\"283\" srcset=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam-300x283.jpg 300w, https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam-768x723.jpg 768w, https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam-1024x964.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Gilliam-1568x1477.jpg 1568w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13290\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My Gilliam Film Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A collection I&#8217;ve wanted for a long time, and finally completed: All of Terry Gilliam&#8217;s films (except for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which isn&#8217;t out yet) are on my Plex server in HD. He&#8217;s just the sort of gloriously weird that works well for me.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny, though, thinking about it. I tend to think of myself as not being a big fan of dystopian fiction*, and yet that&#8217;s a large part of his work. But even in his darker films that don&#8217;t always end on happy notes, there&#8217;s often a definite line of optimism, hope, and the characters fighting against that dystopia \u2014 I think there&#8217;s a good argument to be made that there&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2018\/12\/27\/18137571\/what-is-hopepunk-noblebright-grimdark\">hopepunk<\/a> element to much of his work, which is why it resonates with me.<\/p>\n<p>&#42; I&#8217;m certainly less so now than I was in my youth when I first discovered Gilliam. Something about being aware of the dystopia we live in makes it a lot less escapist, doesn&#8217;t it? And, unfortunately, there&#8217;s definitely evidence that Gilliam doesn&#8217;t always recognize his own racial and sexual privilege, with his <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2018\/film\/news\/terry-gilliam-metoo-mob-rule-1202728819\/#!\">unfortunate comments about the #metoo movement<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-pool.com\/news-views\/opinion\/2018\/27\/Radhika-Sanghani-on-Terry-Gilliam-Hannah-gadsby-diversity-on-comedy\">diversity in media programming<\/a>, which could also partially explain his draw towards dystopian fiction: He can view it from what he perceives to be a &#8220;safe&#8221; distance, just as I did when I first discovered it. Meanwhile, there are lots of people (who, as I think about it, I really don&#8217;t think I can remember much representation of in his films) who are far more intimately, immediately familiar with the realities of living in dystopian worlds.<\/p>\n<p>Huh. Well, that went astray from my original intention of &#8220;hey, I&#8217;ve got all the movies I can from one of my favorite directors!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A collection I&#8217;ve wanted for a long time, and finally completed: All of Terry Gilliam&#8217;s films (except for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which isn&#8217;t out yet) are on my Plex server in HD. He&#8217;s just the sort of gloriously weird that works well for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2043,2037],"tags":[23,2007],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}