Likhitha Reddy
Professor Ervin
Honors Special Topics: Films of Terry Gilliam
May 6, 2103
Escape from Reality
The modern world is plagued by the departure from an idealistic and imaginative state of mind into a realm of superficial social anxieties. Director Terry Gilliam, an American-born British director and member of the comedy group Monty Python, displays the theme of the rejection of pragmatism in favor of imagination in many of his movies. The theme of escaping from mundane reality into an alternative, inspired universe is most prevalent in his films Time Bandits (1981), The Fisher King (1991), and Tideland (2005). In Time Bandits, escape is more physical than mental as inspired pre-teen Kevin leaves his mundane life and consumerism-oriented world for a taste of adventure. The Fisher King presents a much different type of escape- Parry is a man who witnesses the murder of his wife and falls into a catatonic state only to emerge as a man who abandons his old life, including memory of his late wife, in order to find the “Holy Grail,” a worthless trophy that he sees in a magazine. Tideland is depicts another mental escape scenario and tells the story of the young daughter of two drug addicts in perpetual denial of her abused state who is aided in her fantasy world by doll heads that she wears on her fingers. Whether physical or mental, escape can provide a temporary panacea, but the problem with it is that one must always return.
Time Bandits, released in 1981, was Gilliam’s first solo-directorial box office success. It features an inquisitive and inspired child named Kevin who leaves his neglectful, consumerist parents to travel time with six dwarves. In the opening scene of the movie, Kevin is trying to relay to his parents the wonders of life in Ancient Greece but to his dismay, they essentially disregard him and are immersed with the desire to buy kitchen appliances in order to socioeconomically keep up with the neighbors (Time Bandits). Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist who wrote the book You are Not a Gadget, focuses mostly on the loss of individuality and the decline of holistic life experiences with the rise of the digital world, Web 2.0, but his criticism can also extend to consumerism. He would use the word “zombie” to describe Kevin’s parents as he defines it as being “like humans except they have no internal experience. They are unconscious” (Lanier 44). Kevin’s parents are not captivated by their inventive child and his worldly interests, but are obsessed with the consumerism: the harsh reality that they have succumbed into and can no longer escape. They are stuck in a comatose-like state as they dwell in a shallow and benighted reality, oblivious to anything but their own selfish wants instead of living a profound and meaningful existence. Lanier says “the deep meaning of personhood is being reduced by illusions” (Lanier 20). The illusions in this case are the kitchen appliances. Kevin’s parents believe that if they possess these trivial objects, then their lives will become more wholesome and happy, but they are mistaken. Once they purchase the material items, newer products will be released and they will want upgrade to the latest trends. Kevin’s parents are in a vicious cycle: they will never be content with what they have and will always yearn for more tangible things.
Lanier describes consumerism perfectly by saying “if money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless” (Lanier 83) and that humans are doomed because “culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising” (Lanier 83). Media and modern day society makes people feel that, if they do not have money and expensive belongings, their lives are meaningless and less significant than those of the rich. Lanier says “culture is filled to the brim with rhetoric about what the true path to a better world ought to be, and these days it’s strongly based on an antihuman way of thinking” (Lanier 22). Kevin, who is still a child, has not been sucked into this usually inescapable vortex of consumerism yet. His mind does not care for physical objects but has a thirst for knowledge and experience, which is why he is so eager to leave his life behind. He wants to escape from the monotonous and materialistic world he is engulfed by in order to garner things of real value: happiness and a sense of understanding. He finds solace and a father figure that he is subconsciously searching for with King Agamemnon in Ancient Greece- ironically the time period with the least amount of technology or consumerism that the dwarves and Kevin visit.
In the times of Ancient Greece, citizens were most concerned with their service to the gods due to the frequent rituals and sacrifices. They encompassed their lives with ceremonies and philosophy to serve omnipresent higher beings and their own intellectual health. Though Kevin wants to learn sword fighting, a practical skill to know in that time, Agamemnon instead teaches him magic tricks. The dismissal of practicality in favor of quixotism and romanticism by the King shows that one does not always have to always possess sensible skills to face a harsh reality, but instead learn the impractical arts that can enrich a life. In a biography by Ian Christie, which is mostly an interview with Gilliam, called Gilliam on Gilliam, Gilliam states that the character who plays Agamemnon, Sean Connery, ironically took up the role because “he was feeling guilty about not having been as good a father as he would have liked” (Christie 88). Connery took the role to be a role model for Kevin.
It is also not a mistake that Evil, the antagonist of the movie, is obsessed with technology and that the dwarves are fixated on gathering riches from all time periods. Gilliam is commenting on society’s views of technology and consumerism and is essentially saying these two things are in fact evil. The character Evil applauds himself for having a great understanding of technology while degrading the Supreme Being for not spending his time learning about practical machinery but instead creating life and wonder. The idea of choosing wonder and imagination over boring reality is exemplified perfectly in the following quote from Time Bandits by Evil:
God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty-three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs! He created slugs. They can't hear! They can't speak! They can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, day one! (Time Bandits)
Evil is promoting the life that Kevin’s parents are trapped in while denouncing the miracles and individuality that the Supreme Being crafted. Gilliam views technology and consumerism as restrictions that bind civilization to a dull and unworldly life while impeding the utilization of personal freedoms. One of the downsides of escaping reality is that one must return; Time Bandits, however, provides a hopeful ending. The final scene of the movie, when Kevin’s parents vanish after touching a piece of Evil’s shattered body, shows the liberation from technology and superficial social pressures and symbolizes that Kevin can now live without the societal restrictions that once bound him to a dreary life.
Escaping from reality is portrayed much differently in Gilliam’s 1991 work, The Fisher King. The film centers around a dark-humored radio jockey Jack, who inadvertently provokes a deranged caller to commit a mass murder at a popular nightclub, and Parry, a man in the club who witnesses the death of his wife (The Fisher King). When Jack and Parry first meet when Parry is saving Jack from teenage hooligans, Jack believes Parry to be insane due to his foolish mindset and his nonsensical self-assigned mission to find the “Holy Grail” in modern day New York City. Jack asks Parry, “Did you lose your mind all at once, or was it a slow, gradual process?” (The Fisher King). Jack eventually discovers that Parry was a victim of the shooting that Jack had perpetrated and had been in a comatose state for years before Parry awoke as a supposed hero. Parry proudly proclaims that “[he’s] a knight on a special quest” (The Fisher King). Due to the harsh reality of the murder of his wife, Parry choses to completely abandon his painful past and view his life through a much happier and unhindered lense. He shows obvious signs of denial by electing to rather forget about his wife rather than coming to terms with her death.
He escapes the horror of existence and creates a fantasy world in his mind where he is a hero on a grand mission. Karen Armstrong penned the book A Short History of Myth to showcase the human relationship with fantasy, or myths, over the course of time. She claims “human beings fall easily into despair and from the very beginning [people] have invented stories […] against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value” (Armstrong 2). Parry had much hopelessness in his life but resurfaces with a silly task that gives his existence meaning again because it distracts him from the reality he is physically still in. Armstrong explains that if a myth or fantasy “forces us to change our minds and hearts, gives us new hope, and compels us to live more fully” (Armstrong 10) then it is effective. Parry’s fantasy is definitely valid because he channels all of his despair and anger into this invented alternate life, which gives him a sense of optimism that allows him to survive another day. Armstrong also says that “the myth of the hero was not intended to provide [people] with icons to admire, but was designed to tap into the vein of heroism within [themselves]” (Armstrong 135) which is exactly how Parry sees his situation. He does not adore or admire other figures, but instead he is the protagonist of his fantasy.
Parry is not the only character who escapes reality in The Fisher King. Jack also secludes himself from the world due to the grief and regret of his actions. His fantasy is the world of alcoholism and self-destruction. His girlfriend Anne constantly encourages him to return to reality by working in her video rental store, but Jack always succumbs to his inner demons (The Fisher King). When he meets Parry, Jack develops a different fantasy by also assigning himself a mission- the task of bringing Parry together with Lydia, a woman whom Parry is infatuated with, to ease his own conscious of the sorrow he inadvertently inflicted upon Parry. Jack at first leaves his own fantasy world of alcoholism and enters into reality when he begins to spend time with Parry. Jack, while in reality, deems Parry as insane but soon begins to develop a friendship with him and eventually even enters Parry’s fantasy world and learns that the “material world was not the only reality” (Armstrong 1). Even when offered a new job, Jack rejects it as he realizes he does not want to enter back into the world of reality but instead stay in Parry’s fantasy world. Jack grasps the simple realization that the pursuit of personal satisfaction is doomed to fail, such as in the beginning of the movie when he was in perpetual depression despite his accumulated material wealth, and one can only achieve true happiness through relationships with the people are him or her. The two men transform each other, and though they both have to return to reality- they come back happier than when they were in their own fantasies.
The denial of realism in favor of fantasy is also seen in Tideland. The film follows a young girl named Jeliza Rose as she moves into a decrepit and unlivable house with her heroin addict rock star father, Noah, after her mother overdoses on drugs. The first night in the house, Noah dies of a heroin overdose, leaving Jeliza Rose alone in the middle of the countryside (Tideland). However, Jeliza Rose is not unaccustomed to being alone as she was neglected by her parents her entire life and was isolated from real friends and love. Lanier summarizes kids simply with the following quote: “Children want attention” (Lanier 180) and it is very true when concerning Jeliza Rose because all she desires is companionship. Due to the abandonment and mistreatment from her now deceased parents and her isolation from civilization, Jeliza Rose escapes the harsh reality that her father is dead in the middle of the living room by talking to the doll heads she wears on her fingers and trying to befriend the only people she meets in the great, empty plains of Texas, the neighbors Dell and Dickens. She “divide[s] the world into two parts, one of which is ordinary- deterministic or mechanistic, perhaps- and one of which is mystifying, or more abstract” (Lanier 154) in order to combat her loneliness and distract herself from the reality of her situation, which includes no food and no running water. She desperately seeks the company of Dell and Dickens in order to, as Lanier describes it, “avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind” (Lanier 180). Deep in her unconscious, Jeliza Rose knows of her predicament. She recognizes that her parents are dead and that she has been abandoned, but in order to cope with this cruel and unsympathetic actuality, her mind forms a mental barrier to keep this reality out.
Jeliza Rose’s prolonged denial is her refusing to believe in her current situation, opting instead for a fantasy world where she is surrounded by friends and happiness. Lanier describes childhood with the following quote:
The good includes a numinous imagination, unbounded hope, innocence, and sweetness. Childhood is the very essence of magic, optimism, creativity, and open invention of self and the world. It is the heart of tenderness and connection between people, of continuity between generations, of trust, play, and mutuality. It is the time in life when we learn to use our imagination without the constraints of life lessons. (Lanier 183)
Jeliza Rose exemplifies all of the characteristics that Lanier explains, only in a much darker fashion. She has great imagination, such as when she and Dickens describe the countryside as an ocean and the train is a land shark, but only uses this creativity to distract herself from the extremely scary situation that she is in. Jeliza Rose can never truly experience how Lanier describes childhood because her neglectful and inattentive parents have robbed her of it. Because of such lack of acquaintanceship, Jeliza Rose views Dickens not only as a friend but also as a lover and a “boyfriend” (Tideland). Lanier writes that “it is a common observance that children enter the world of sexuality sooner than they used to, but that is only one side of the coin. Their sexuality also remains childlike for a longer period of time than it used to” (Lanier 180). Jeliza Rose, completely isolated her whole life, dedicates her entire life first human friend, Dickens. They begin to share kisses as the movie progresses and Dickens reveals his plans for the detonation of the land shark (Tideland). Because of the lack of innocent childhood, Jeliza Rose thinks of herself as an adult and tries to convince herself in her fantasy world that she is grown and mature enough to have a lifelong relationship with Dickens, but in actuality she is only a scared and lonely child who would do anything for companionship.
Jeliza Rose is merely one of the several characters who escape from reality in Tideland. Both her mother and father take flight from reality in a dangerous way- through the world of drugs and alcohol. Noah, Jeliza Rose’s father, even claims that he reason he takes drugs is to escape, presumably the reality of taxes and his declining music career, by saying every instance before he injects heroin that he is “going on a little vacation” (Tideland). After Jeliza Rose’s mother dies, Noah once again tries to escape, but this time it is from the law. He recognizes he will be sent to jail when the police find the mother’s dead body and an apartment full of drugs so he abandons this realistic fate by fleeing to his mother’s deserted farmhouse. When he and Jeliza Rose arrive, he immediately wants to break away from reality once again because he cannot tolerate the harsh truth that he is living and injects heroin. Eventually reality returns, even though Noah is desperately trying to combat it, with the punishment of death. Dell is also an eccentric character that lives not in reality but a fantasy that she has conjured up through her taxidermy. She preforms the art on both her mother and Noah and pretends like they are alive again by dressing the bodies and even conversing with them. She does not want to face the actuality that the two people she loved the most, her mother and Noah, are gone forever and she tries desperately to hold on to her memories by using their bodies as a constant reminder. In Tideland, no character wants to live in his or her reality. They all come up with alternate, and in some instances dangerous, lifestyles to combat their true difficulties but eventually each character must individually face the wrath of reality. For Jeliza Rose’s parents, their stories ended in death because of their realistic drug addictions and Dell came face-to-face with the reality of an existence without Dickens. If she had only given more attention and love to her existence with Dickens instead of adorning her dead mother in her fantasy world, than Dell would have still had Dickens in the end.
There are many similarities and differences to the films Time Bandits, The Fisher King, and Tideland. They share the common theme of escaping from a harsh reality into a happy fantasy world. Armstrong describes escaping reality into a myth or fantasy as “help[ing people] to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one mind, to another” (Armstrong 148-149). Kevin, Parry, Jack, and Jeliza Rose are all inflicted by the harshness of existence in the modern world escape reality to survive the everyday. The movies movies also have a suggestion of hope in the ending scenes: in Time Bandits, Kevin’s parents, along with their materialism and consumerist attitudes, have vanished so Kevin is free to express his individuality and his personal freedoms. In The Fisher King, Parry and Jack are seen together back in reality but happier than they were before. Armstrong connects the two movies with a single quote: “in the myth of the Holy Grail, the waste-land is a place where people live inauthentic lives, blindly following the norms of their society without the conviction that comes from deeper understanding” (Armstrong 137). The “Holy Grail” refers to The Fisher King and Parry’s mission to find it, while the rest of the quote matches exactly Kevin’s parents in Time Bandits who just “blindly follow the norms of society” by buying what advertising tells them they need. In Tideland, Jeliza Rose is finally given what she desires most, companionship in the form of a helping woman, even if the results came from a devastating accident. Jeliza Rose now has the parental figure that she has always needed.
When it comes to my own method of escape, I do not rely on six time-traveling dwarves to crash into my bedroom and take me away or an invented fantasy world in which I must retrieve the “Holy Grail.” I have never believed in myths or in religion and have always questioned the logic behind them and pondered about how many of these stories were scientifically impossible. Armstrong provides an insightful comment when she claims, “all these new faiths developed not in remote deserts or mountain hermitages, but in an environment of capitalism and high finance” (Armstrong 80). I believe that modern day society, including myself, refutes many myths due to the mundane and previously arranged structure of childhood in a consumerist and money-oriented world. Children get to explore their imagination only in the early stages of development, and then are thirsted into a structured world of learning the alphabet and mathematics while story time and recess become smaller priorities. Armstrong goes on to describe the new faiths believing that “nothing should ne taken on trust, everything should be questioned, and old values, hitherto taken for granted, must be subjected to critical scrutiny” (Armstrong 81). Due to the rise of scientific discovery, humans tend to want to learn on the basis of science now rather than myth. It may be sad that I do not believe in magic or myth, and I hold the scientific method in place of any god, but I do this not because I lack imagination but I possess the thirst for truth and this truth is not found in myths or fairytales.
However, escaping reality is a hobby that I partake in quite frequently. Though my endeavors do not range as wide as Kevin’s adventures in Time Bandits, as extreme at Parry’s visions in The Fisher King, or as dark and dangerous as Jeliza Rose’s denial or Noah’s drug addiction in Tideland, I believe that my escape provides the same euphoria that was garnered by these characters. My escape is through the words of text- reading. When I was a child in middle school, I was severely bullied by two girls in my class because I was an easy target as my close friends were in a separate course. These girls ridiculed the way I looked, my dressing style, and any other possible individualistic flaw that I possessed. I could not turn to my teachers, because they saw the girls as two exemplary role models and would never believe my accusations, so I just retreated into the depths of my own mind. I shielded my conscious from their torturous insults by constructing a barrier of ignorance. In the beginning, I attempted to ignore their comments but when I reached home after school had ended, I was left alone to ponder their words as I was an only child and both of my parents had full time jobs. I realized that I could not live my life for the next seven years of middle school and high school with the cruel words from these girls continually ringing in my head and convinced myself that I needed to procure a hobby. One day as I was checking out a DVD from the library, in the historic ages when Netflix was not in existence, I wondered to myself why I always came to the library and never checked out a book?
Because I was about eleven years old at the time, I decided to skip War and Peace and begin my reading adventure in the pre-teen section. The first book that I even picked up and read completely, without having been assigned it from school, was the Sarah Dessen’s novel Dreamland, the story of a teenage girl who becomes involved in an abusive relationship. The theme of escaping reality is prevalent even in this very cliché and depthless book as the main character Caitlin uses marijuana and denial in order to mentally escape and also accept the reality that her boyfriend is violent. Though now being an experienced reader of the classics, Dreamland was a pitiful book but it began a new chapter in my life, pun intended. I began devouring books by the dozen. Every night after homework and dinner, I would sit isolated in my room and just read entire novels. Even on the weekends, I would opt out of going to a seemingly boring movie with my friends in order to lose myself in literature. I became completely oblivious to the incoming comments from the two bullies as I would just read during breaks and not acknowledge their presence. Reading gave me back my confidence, because at one point the girls began to notice my dwindled attention to their comments and eventually stopped their harassment.
Another form of escape is listening to my favorite song, “Paradise” by Coldplay. The lyrics depict a girl who is struggling though a cruel life, but just as she is about to lose faith, she “ran away in her sleep and dreamed of paradise” (Coldplay). This song reminds my of my own life and the struggles I have had to overcome in order to function yet another day. As the lyrics go, “Life goes on, it gets so heavy” (Coldplay) and that happened to me. Life became a huge stress and I did not want to partake anymore. During my bout of depression stemming from deep-set insecurities, it was a challenge even lifting myself up from bed every morning and managing a fake smile throughout the day. The only solace I found, like the girl in the song, was “Every time [I] closed [my] eyes” (Coldplay) and just entered into another world. Eventually, I combat my fit of depression and entered into the healthy world of good academic and social standing. I realized that life was hard, but I had to live it to the best of my ability. My parents escaped the harsh reality of a world in India, which was discriminatory towards women, and they wanted me to live without the social constrictions that bound my own mother down. My parents wanted me to have the life and all of the opportunities that they never received themselves growing up in suburban India, so I felt as though it was my moral duty to not disappoint them by isolating myself in my room for the rest of my life.
Though it may not seem at all like I was a troubled child, I was consumed by many inner demons. Extreme insecurities and my parents’ impending divorce cast a harsh and cruel light into my lonely world. I had no one to talk to because I had no siblings and my parents did not like me discussing their divorce to other people, especially to other in my family or my friends, because they did not want to bring shame upon our traditional Indian family. Reading and music really saved me from living my existence in the four walls of my room. They provided me with a safe outlet to release all of my anger, frustration, and sadness and enriched my life in a way that nothing else could. It might sound cliché, but I do not know in what direction my life would have turned if I had not picked up that Sarah Dessen novel. I might have entered a comatose state like Parry, just an utter disbelief of the horror that was my everyday existence. I escaped into the world of fiction and imagined myself as all of the different characters I read about- somewhere far away, in a different time, and experiencing a life that I could only dream of. Reading not only helped me escape, but through my daily mental flights, I would learn more about myself. I discovered that I love mysteries through reading, and that has shaped the rest of my life as I have decided that I want to become a lawyer. It enrages me when fellow students claim that they only read what is assigned to them from classes and no not do any personal reading of their own. I tell them that there are so many amazing stories they have yet to discover, but my stereotypical teenage friends look at me as if I asked them to learn quantum physics. Though they will never be encouraged until they find the magic of reading on their own, I will continue escaping reality by reading for the rest of my life.
Time Bandits, The Fisher King, and Tideland share the common theme of the denunciation of realism in favor of a substitute, invented world. In Time Bandits, eleven-year-old Kevin physically leaves behind his consumerist parents and materialistic world to travel through different time periods with six dwarves. In Fisher King and Tideland, Parry, Jack, and Jeliza Rose, though physically still in the real world, escape reality in their minds and form alternative fantasy universes in which they can escape their realistic problems. Gilliam uses this common theme to convey to his audiences the idea that sometimes breaking from reality and everyday routine is a freedom that everyone should exercise and escape can even be transformed into a defense mechanism. Gilliam is also saying that life should not be consumed with material wants such as money or possessions, but it should revolve around relationships, true knowledge, and understanding of oneself. Life should also be imaginative and fun, not bound down by the constricting and predetermined boundaries of a consumerist society. Gilliam ends all three movies on pleasant notes, contrasting his earlier abrupt and random endings, to show that breaks from the normal reality can result in a happier and more learned society. I believe that, at least every once in a while, everyone should participate in safely escaping from their reality. One never knows what he might find out about himself.

Bibliography
Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005. Print.
Christie, Ian, ed. Gilliam on Gilliam. London: Faber & Faber, 2000. Print.
Coldplay. “Paradise.” Mylo Xyloto. Parlophone, 2005. CD.
Dessen, Sarah. Dreamland. New York: Puffin, 2004. Print.
Gilliam, Terry, dir. The Fisher King. TriStar Pictures, 1991. Film.
Gilliam, Terry, dir. Tideland. THINKfilm, 2005. Film
Gilliam, Terry, dir. Time Bandits. Avco Embassy Pictures, 1981. Film.
Lanier, Jaron. You are Not a Gadget. New York: Vintage, 2011. Print.