Paolo Crepet without filters: "Sinner is good because he lost. Trump is killing thought. Sexual orientation? I don't care"
“I take this opportunity to speak publicly about freedom of thought on this occasion, which I would not like to call a show, because it is a term that brings together a comedian, a rapper, a Shakespeare. In short, it seems to me to be a definition that is a bit too generic, so I prefer to use other terms, perhaps even banal, but not a show, which gives the idea of someone who is a showman and that is not me”. The theme of freedom of thought, today increasingly limited by ideological schemes, self-censorship and new forms of explicit and invisible control , is at the centre of the new essay “Il reato di pensare” that Paolo Crepet is publishing on 17 June for Mondadori. The psychiatrist, sociologist and writer will present these theses on 20 June at 9 pm at the Teatro San Rocco in Seregno in one of the flagship events of La Milanesiana , the festival conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi.
The occasion offers Crepet the opportunity to denounce, through a deep reflection, how free thought, creativity and imagination are endangered by a system that tends to fragment, inhibit and normalize ideas . The crime of thinking is transformed into a way to keep re high the value of originality and intellectual disobedience. A warning against those who would impose ideological dogmas and control the human mind. In this book and in this performance Crepet invites us to reflect on the risk of becoming replicants, incapable of exercising free will and emphasizes how only through the courage of thought can we preserve authenticity and build a free, creative and non-homologated future.
Crepet, why is free thought being pushed into a corner all over the world today?
“I wrote this book when Trump was just a candidate, now they tell me that there is a bad atmosphere at Harvard, like in all of America . I went to Harvard when I was young, I remember my professor. He was extraordinary, he was a free man who spoke about the things he had to speak about. It is strange that now all this has become a reason for who knows what horror , for who knows what contest that wants to silence the thoughts of others. This horrifies me, but if people like it like this what can I do?”.
Are you referring to the people who voted for The Donald?
"Not only those who voted for him: the minority of humanity goes to vote (including Italy, where 50% of the population does so when things go well). There are many people who think, perhaps from an ideological point of view, that they are different, but the idea that everyone has the right to say what they want is annoying, also because, as I was saying, in the end it represents only a part of public opinion".
Unlike a few years ago, does creativity now seem like something dangerous?
“Rock stars and stars of a certain age, like Bruce Springsteen or De Niro, rebel against this, but even fifty-year-olds in Hollywood are silent because they are afraid of losing their jobs. Robert De Niro is not and so he speaks . Even Richard Gere, who came to Milan the other day, spoke about this, perhaps in a different way than De Niro. It's a good thing that there are these fearless artists, because if it were up to us, we wouldn't get very far. They all stay silent because they think that you never know, then they take away your regional aid money and you don't do theater, cinema, you don't do anything anymore. I do theater every day, almost every evening and I fill them, but I know that 80% of other people's evenings are half-hearted. Those who speak for money are not free and therefore are afraid to think, because every thought can be interpreted as anti-something. It's barbaric to think that someone censors themselves, but that's how it is!”
So today in your opinion there is no more freedom of thought?
“Putin has young people arrested who have slightly exaggerated parties, with a bit of rock music and maybe girls with slightly uncovered legs. Two young people were sentenced to a year and a half in prison, because then at those parties they said no to war, because maybe a 20-year-old doesn't want to die in the Donbass . It's strange, but there are young people who don't want to die. Ours don't want to do it either, but they can't even talk and that means something. Even the increase in sanctions against Moscow doesn't matter much because you have to think anyway, because there's the balancing act of democracies. So in fact thinking is a crime, the corpus delicti are words!”
Shouldn't we start rebelling against all this?
"Of course, I grew up with the idea that theatre was Beckett, I grew up with the idea of actors, of great men or amazing women who paid for their ideas. I worked with Franco Basaglia , who paid, then when he died they all became Basaglians, but this is the provincial part of our culture: when someone is a heretic first you beat him, then when he dies you applaud him at the funeral, that's how it works: it's horrible but that's how it works".
For her, is sexuality only male or female?
“The so-called progressives chase diagnoses, but I’m not interested in sexual affiliation. I’m interested in knowing if someone is a poet, if someone has written a good book, if they produce excellent honey. If the beekeeper sleeps with another beekeeper, frankly, I don’t care. It’s well known that Michelangelo lived sexuality in his own way, the same goes for Leonardo. So what changes? I don’t know. We certainly don’t feel reassured by the fact that Raphael was heterosexual.”
What do you think about artificial intelligence?
“If I have any doubts that someone has written a book in five minutes with artificial intelligence , I don't think I'll go to the bookstore to buy it. I don't know how long it takes to write a masterpiece! First years, now minutes. But, it's not a masterpiece! It's a photocopy of something. Let's take an example, I'm from a certain generation, for me the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the best! So, what is the worst Beatles song? I have no doubts: "Now And Then", the one made with artificial intelligence! It sold millions of copies and poor John Lennon is rolling over in his grave! But they did it, they dared to do it, probably with the agreement of the two remaining musicians of the group and I imagine that Yoko Ono said yes! But that song didn't give me any emotion”.
What do you think about the near future?
“Maybe our world will become nice! Maybe a robot waiter will arrive at the restaurant! But I don't go to a restaurant to be served by a robot! In Tokyo a half marathon saw the participation of a robot! I like an athlete who sweats! I liked Elio Petri, who fainted at the finish line. Not a robot that tic, tic, tic, tic, tic, you wind it up to go 38 kilometers per hour and it can do it! What kind of story is this?
Do you claim that Sinner is good just because he lost to Alcaraz?
“Of course! He is more mature now. He is visibly more mature! Not just physically. He has understood what it means to lose! If he had had the arrogance of the winner, as many in politics today are, it would have been worse. You don't win with Alcatraz if you don't fear it! If you fear it and study it, you invent something that comes from the pain of defeat! Sinner is a boy who knows this path very well and therefore he is good! Not like those parents who always want their son to be the best? And they force him to be different from what he is”.
Blessed are the simple souls then?
“The greats had simple parents! Eric Clapton's mother left him when he was 16! And his grandmother left him! And he became Eric Clapton! Well, you know ... It's not enough to buy an electric guitar! Sometimes you grow up in difficult times. You grow up very well! The worst of humanity is the Marchese del Grillo”.
Yet it was celebrated?
“It is a hyperbole, but not a genius! In fact the Marquis del Grillo was a subject! He was not free! In fact he did not go to Paris for the revolution! He said, he said and then he stayed in Rome! He was not the only one to have that attitude. It is a sort of Darwinian selection”.
What do you think about the comfort zone?
“I’ll leave it to you… And I’ll leave you the sofa too…”.
Could the desire to transgress in the 60s and 70s save the prevailing dullness?
“To tell the truth, I have never been excited by those years that also meant terrorism and heroin. It's not that we were impeccable. On the contrary. And, then, it's not enough to belong to a generation to be better. The generation immediately preceding was much better than mine. There is no doubt about it”.
In what sense?
“There were Mastroianni, Fellini, Monicelli, Antonion. It was my father's generation, my mother's more than my father's, and they were amazing. There were an inordinate amount of geniuses, then there was the backlash. Terrorism was not made by geniuses, but by delinquents that we didn't have the courage to call as such. Some said that it was also the comrades who made mistakes and I'll never forget that. Thank goodness I never liked it. I don't think that even the person who threw the Molotov cocktails was a genius, in fact I've known several idiots like few others, really like few others. There was nothing behind it. The revolution that excited me was Lucio Fontana, not the Molotov cocktails. Jackson Pollock was a revolutionary, not those four morons with the P38”.
Luce
