Wallace Shawn writes about why he writes about sex:
One reason is that sex is shocking. Yes, it's still shocking, after all these years - isn't that incredible? At least it's shocking to me. And I suppose I think it's shocking because, even after all these years, most bourgeois people, including me, still walk around with an image of themselves in their heads that doesn't include - well - that. I'm vaguely aware that while going about my daily round of behaviour I'm making use of various mammalian processes, such as breathing, digesting and getting from place to place by hobbling about on those odd legs we have. But the fact is that when I form a picture of myself, I see myself doing the sorts of things that humans do and only humans do - things like hailing a taxi, going to a restaurant, voting for a candidate in an election, or placing receipts in various piles and adding them up. If I'm unexpectedly reminded that my soul and body are capable of being totally swept up in a pursuit and an activity that pigs, flies, wolves, lions and tigers also engage in, my normal picture of myself is violently disrupted.
The whole thing is brilliant, witty and fascinating, but I think I especially liked this:
It can only be seen as funny that men buy magazines containing pictures
of breasts, but not magazines with pictures of knees or forearms. It
can only be seen as funny that demagogues give speeches denouncing men
who insert their penises into other men's anuses - and then go home to
insert their own penises into their wives' vaginas! (One might have
thought it obvious that either both of these acts are completely
outrageous, or neither of them is.)
RTWT.
(Via Sign and Sight.)
UPDATE: This made me think of a classic scene in "Heaven Help Us" that features Wallace Shawn as Father Abruzzi, giving a commencement speech for the inaugural coed high school dance. The theme: Lust - the beast within you.
BTW, one of the commenters on the youtube thread notes that Shawn has "been around alot. He was in a Chaka Khan Video called "It's My
Night" and he also played a friend of Cliff on The Cosby Show."
