[HN Gopher] How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy ...
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How Monty Python and the Holy Grail became a comedy legend
Author : sonabinu
Score : 116 points
Date : 2025-04-09 19:58 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| block_dagger wrote:
| It's not dead yet.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Should be required watching for entry to adulthood.
| john_the_writer wrote:
| My 15year old can quote it. Their teacher said something the
| other day, and she replied from the movie. They both laughed,
| but the rest of the class (apparently) all looked confused. I
| was very proud.
|
| Same thing happened with a FleetwoodMac song. Different
| teacher.
| bambax wrote:
| I first saw it in school, at 15 (a looong time ago). Could not
| believe my eyes. Could not believe one was allowed to even do
| that. The incredible freedom of it all, starting with the title
| sequence, and the incredible irreverence, crazyness.
|
| I think it's fair to say it changed me as a person. I never
| took anything too seriously after that.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| One company I worked for, we used to joke that we should get
| rid of all the software questions and ask what the airspeed
| velocity of an unladen swallow is.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| That would be a terrible interview question, because it
| doesn't clarify whether you mean an African or European
| swallow.
| spc476 wrote:
| But then the interviewer will be launched into the Pit of
| Eternal Peril.
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| That's part of the appeal, the candidate needs to answer
| with a range or ask a clarifying question that uno reverses
| the interview
| riffraff wrote:
| Coincidentally read a comment yesterday on the lines of "strange
| women lying in ponds distributing swords does seem like a decent
| basis for a system of government at this point".
|
| Absolute masterpiece.
| switch007 wrote:
| I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because
| some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me
| away!
|
| --
|
| The text doesn't do the scene justice. Michael Palin is a
| national treasure!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Michael Palin is a national treasure_
|
| ...But for his postman. (Possibly obscure reference from
| Armando Iannucci 's Charm Offensive. Pluri-national,
| international treasures.)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| (...I tired to find the clip and post the transcript, but
| it is unavailable. It was along the lines of Michael's
| postman having been interviewed in 2007, complaining that
| Palin received too many letters. Mark Watson must have
| replied that "It was sad, since Michael Palin speaks with
| high regard about his postman"... And so on.)
| perilunar wrote:
| For those who haven't seen it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qT-C-0ajI&t=129s
| belter wrote:
| "We are an anarcho syndicalist commune..."
|
| "Now we see the violence inherent in the system..." :-)
| n1b0m wrote:
| Funnily enough I came across a similar comment a few days back
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AccidentalRenaissance/s/foguWdeDMY
| ggm wrote:
| I enjoy python stuff but not all of it aged well. A lot of older
| comedy aged better. Jacques Tati films for example. Or Chaplin.
|
| They could be bizarrely homophobic and also celebrate gay culture
| in the same show. They were often very misogynist.
|
| I still laugh at it. I still watch it. But the adulation faded.
|
| No Australian enjoys their take on Australian wine. It's
| wincingly unpleasant. Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Clive
| James fed cultural stereotypes which died out when earl's court
| became too expensive for Australian backpackers. The abos armpit
| thing comes back to me far too often from naive British friends
| who would never use the N word, or make jokes about Irish being
| stupid. They don't know what they're saying.
|
| Eric Idle complained he had to do Spamelot to get some retirement
| income. George Harrison made bank on the films.
|
| The situationist surreal stuff, Terry Gilliams pasteup animation,
| very good. Dressing up as ladies.. tiresome.
|
| There's a line from pythons dressing up as working class women to
| little Britain making fun of incontinent old women.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think the cosplay was quite challanging at the time? Like,
| there was very little kicking downwards. Little Britain lacks
| taste in comparison.
| ggm wrote:
| Yes it was hugely transgressive. As was the nudity. John
| Cleese presenting the fake 6 o clock news wearing nothing but
| a bow tie, Gilliam playing the piano starkers.
|
| I'd say there was a bit of kicking down. The gumbies and the
| three Yorkshireman a bit (that predates python, they brought
| it in with them, they'd written for something like "that was
| the week that was") mainly they kicked middle class values.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| True, but do you (HN readers) look on transgression only
| with nostalgia? What would be usefully transgressive today?
| Much subversive humour is Socratic in just asking (pointing
| out) hard questions.
|
| In that vein, TBH I find it hard to square a post
| celebrating famous British humour on a site where _any_
| humour, whether good or in poor taste, is mercilessly
| punished by downvoting and faux outrage. I 'm not calling
| hypocrisy, just pointing to an odd juxtaposition of values.
|
| Do y'all delight in things the Python team said precicely
| because you wouldn't tolerate it or have the personal sense
| of security to say it today?
| Joeboy wrote:
| As per other comments, women being played by men was and
| is a venerable tradition in British comedy and not
| actually very transgressive at all. It feels more
| "transgressive" now than it did then, I think because we
| imported US culture war stuff in the last decade or so.
|
| I don't think HN actually hates humour, it just has a
| relatively high bar. Some of my most upvoted comments
| have been jokes. But I like to think they were reasonably
| good ones.
|
| Regarding the Pythons and transgression, I think for me
| it's probably a case by case thing. There's obviously
| "good" transgression and "bad" transgression, but I
| suppose you have to have some support for the willingness
| to transgress, if you want positive social change to be a
| possibility.
|
| Regarding specific things the Pythons said, the most
| actually transgressive-at-the-time thing I can think of
| is probably Graham Chapman's overt homosexuality and
| support for gay rights, which was no small thing in 1970s
| Britain.
|
| Edit: Or you could make a case for it being the
| "blasphemous" Life of Brian, although I don't think the
| public outrage about that was really in step with
| mainstream opinion.
|
| Edit2: I'm wondering whether Some Like it Hot, Milton
| Berle etc were considered transgressive in the US? Were
| these things not actually quite mainstream in the 20th
| century, even in the US?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| That's insightful though I wasn't pitching that so much
| as humour being just part of life and removing/excluding
| it distorts discourse. I've heard many fascinating
| accounts of how sensitivity to humour indicates the
| "health" of a society, and when it vanishes that is
| prelude to conflict, even war.
|
| Yes, I think us Brits defused many of our internal
| tensions as a mult-cultural AND classist society in the
| 70s and 80s with the transition from vaudeville racism to
| new-wave "alternative comedy". It didn't change the
| status-quo but it did move the dial toward more
| progressive ideas.
|
| I do think HN is an odd place in it's intolerance of
| humour, and I don't see that "high bar" because TBH it's
| the lowborw geeky "knob-gags" that make the grade here in
| my observation. I think it's actually the old struggle of
| poets and philosophers (see Republic 2, 3, 5 [0]) is at
| play. HN adapts to filtering what it can't process. It's
| a bit like that AI brain in Blake's Seven that Villa
| causes to explode by feeding it riddles. I'm noticing
| even this "meta" talk about humour is being downvoted
| (and I hope those doing so are getting a good ironic
| laugh from that) :)
|
| [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I do think HN is an odd place in it's intolerance of
| humour
|
| I've always seen this as a counterculture to Reddit, not
| as intolerance of humour.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Reddit, but assume it descended
| into total clownery. Hence the rules "don't comment that
| this place is starting to get like Reddit" I guess.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > any humour, whether good or in poor taste, is
| mercilessly punished by downvoting and faux outrage.
|
| I've made my share of (attempted) humourous posts on HN.
|
| The main pushback I've gotten has been from people who
| want to keep the conversations focused on "serious"
| discussion.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| Everything is of it's time. They pushed the barriers back in
| their time so that we could enjoy a better world now. They
| never claimed to be omniscient and that is to all our benefits.
|
| Casual racism has and always will be there. No point in
| worrying about it.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Casual racism_
|
| Intentional joking, with the understanding that it should be
| taken as a joke. Often about the reaction of the triggerable.
| "Dear BBC..."
| wiredfool wrote:
| I really don't think that the blackface in the Philosophers
| sketch is about the reaction of the triggerable.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Remind us of the clip. The Bruces? The football? Where
| did you see it?
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Dressing up as ladies.. tiresome.
|
| I've heard that before and I don't get it. They were just
| playing characters like any other they played, but some were
| women so they wore woman's clothing.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm not English so I get it, it's not that they dressed up as
| women specifically, it's that they did it _constantly_. After
| the Nth time it got a bit old. I know that men dressing up as
| women was a UK comedy staple at the time, but it always
| looked a bit too trite to me (even when I was a teenager).
|
| It has nothing to do with feminism (for me, at least), it's
| just that I didn't find it funny.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _it 's that they did it constantly_
|
| That amounts to objecting to representing females. Rule
| was: "female unless awkward - one of the pythons; when
| awkward - Carol Cleveland".
|
| The point was that the writers would also be the
| performers.
| card_zero wrote:
| The Kids in the Hall did it too, extensively, in the 90s.
| crtasm wrote:
| and again in 2022
| nkrisc wrote:
| But the joke wasn't that they were men dressed as women.
| Typically they played it completely straight. The joke was
| the character they were portraying, a type of character
| that was often a man or a woman.
|
| When femininity was an important part of the sketch, they
| often had Carol Cleveland or other women play the role.
|
| If you don't find it funny that's fine.
| Angostura wrote:
| "Dressing up as ladies" was just a massive part of British
| comedy that went back to music hall. See also Les Dawson, Dick
| Emery etc etc.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My understanding, is that it went back to Shakespeare. In Ye
| Olde Days, women weren't allowed to act. Men dressed in drag
| to play the parts of women, and used those shrill voices.
|
| As it was, I think Connie Booth was the only proper lady that
| showed up in Python stuff.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Monty Python was hardly the only show that featured men dressed
| as women. Drag has actually been part of British entertainment
| for a long time. And, honestly, I don't really see the big
| deal, as long as it's not done with a hateful agenda.
|
| Little Britain's poor taste jokes would've happened regardless
| of Python, because of its centuries long history of
| crossdressing.
|
| Many of their takes also involved kicking back against society.
| Put a man in a woman's position and suddenly the things women
| endured daily become absurd. Have a man make a crass suggestion
| towards another man like an asshole would to a woman, and
| suddenly it becomes absurd and weird. In isolation those events
| could be considered homophobic, but between an animated
| politician eating the queen and a farmer explaining that his
| sheep are flying into trees to nest, I don't think such
| pessimism is warranted.
|
| My take watching Python is that the actors very much knew that
| misogyny and homophobia are stupid as a concept. They didn't
| shy away from portraying society as it was (and unfortunately,
| still is), but they weren't necessarily trying to take anyone
| down.
|
| The fact many Python sketches are offensive these days says
| more about how society has aged than Python, in my opinion.
| When Python has a man in a dress, it's just a silly character,
| but when in modern media it has become necessary for such
| things to be a statement for (or, even worse, against) basic
| human rights.
|
| I think the strength and weakness in Python is that they'd make
| fun of anything and anyone. That include sensitive topics that
| haven't changed as much as they should have in the last
| century.
| bambax wrote:
| > _A lot of older comedy aged better. Jacques Tati films for
| example. Or Chaplin._
|
| As a Frenchman I should be defending Tati but by God I have
| never found him funny. Poetic, maybe (maybe!) but funny?? Not
| in the least IMHO. One can guess what he means, immediately,
| there is no subtext. "Modernity is dehumanizing." Yeah, well,
| it probably is, but we all know that now, don't we? (Same thing
| with Chaplin BTW.)
|
| Monty Python is incredibly funny, and still is, because it's
| often absurd, and absurd stays absurd forever.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| while it hasn't aged the best, it is quiet entertaining
| ghaff wrote:
| I never totally connected with Holy Grail though I liked/like
| it a lot. I probably to put Life of Brian at the top of the
| heap although it's probably somewhat less known.
| nosianu wrote:
| No no, The Meaning of Life is the best one, how can there be
| any doubt of that!
|
| "Every sperm is sacred..." (https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk)
|
| or
|
| "Can we have your liver?" (https://youtu.be/Sp-pU8TFsg0)
|
| :)
| riffruff24 wrote:
| yes it has
| Joeboy wrote:
| This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction.
| lancefisher wrote:
| No it isn't.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes it is.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| don't really understand the down votes, but I am very open to
| hearing why it seems to be a controversial statement. the show
| has some bigoted scenes and I am not defending that, obviously.
| I am simply talking about how I like the creative premises of
| the absurdist comedy
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _the show has some bigoted scenes_
|
| Such as.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| oh I see, I am talking about The Flying Circus, not the
| movie. The casual use of slurs is jarring to me personally
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Still cannot remember of any bigoted use of slurs in
| Monty Python's work.
| bambax wrote:
| The downvotes are probably because there's no justification.
| If you want to say that some masterpiece from the past
| "hasn't aged well", you need to back that opinion with some
| arguments or facts.
|
| Also the typo ("quiet" instead of "quite") and the absence of
| capitals at the beginning of sentences, or points at the end,
| give out a general impression of carelessness.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| apologies, I am talking about the Flying Circus, not Holy
| Grail, which I should have clarified on my original comment.
| obviously the group has done some groundbreaking work and I do
| love that, but sensibilities have definitely changed since
| then. I don't hold that against them, but it can be jarring to
| see
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Are you sure that being sensitive in those terms would be a
| good idea, and not instead be giving value to lower
| reactions?
|
| You should judge a fair assessment of reality, not a self-fed
| "sensation".
| dvh wrote:
| Can someone decipher what one of the prophets was talking about,
| the "thing with attachment", it always struck me as a perfect
| portrayal of a prophet that somehow seen future, but because
| himself being from a distant past cannot really comprehend or
| explain it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Wasn't that in Life of Brian?
| nkrisc wrote:
| It was.
| Oarch wrote:
| With the raffia-work base
| dvh wrote:
| Well what is it?
| sorokod wrote:
| I thought that was more in the spirit of "Society for Putting
| Things on Top of Other Things"
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Funny coincidence, I believe a few hours earlier I read a comment
| from Dang who called some complaints a "Help, help, I'm being
| repressed".
|
| Gives you a proportion of the extent...
| dang wrote:
| I have to force myself not to use that line. It's too sarcastic
| for a good mod comment, but it's also so perfect, it pains me
| to edit it out. So other few words fit!
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lStcwT_RGrQ#t=50).
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| It's a hard business, being a shrubber, that we must all
| acknowledge.
| jspash wrote:
| Just curious. How does the leading word "How" get missed off from
| the headline to the submission headline? Its a totally different
| sentence now. Is there a word limit to HN headlines?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| There is a pattern recognition and transformation mechanism in
| place that rearranges bad title forms, such as "12 ways to
| serve Spam".
| ginko wrote:
| I loathe this automatic editing of titles on HN. "How X
| became Y" and "X became Y" has a completely different
| meaning.
|
| If there's submissions with stupid titles like "12 ways to
| serve Spam" then these should just be flagged by the users.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _automatic editing of titles_
|
| You _can_ modify them again if the automated result is
| unsatisfactory.
|
| > _these should just be flagged_
|
| No, we submit articles, not titles. (Which in journalism
| are often not even the product of the same author.)
| ginko wrote:
| >You can modify them again if the automated result is
| unsatisfactory.
|
| The original submitter can for a limited time. Often they
| don't, leading to butchered titles like this one.
| dang wrote:
| Anything is loathsome when you only count the cases it gets
| wrong!
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&qu
| e...
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| And there was much rejoicing! :)
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Those poor minstrels.
| metalman wrote:
| Cleese on a talk show with Taylor Swift is evidence of how
| efortless it is for him to totaly take over a situation, poke
| horrible fun at someone, without giving cause for offence, charm
| the hell out of woman 25% his age ,while talking about his own
| wife and her cat he's old now, but still formitable buddy got to
| work with him
| sema4hacker wrote:
| It forever burned Castle Anthrax into my memory.
| omega3 wrote:
| Is there anything even remotely comparable in quality to Monty
| Python right now?
| biophysboy wrote:
| Stand-up has been hegemonic lately, because it lends itself
| well to podcasts/streaming/short-form, but Dropout (formerly
| CollegeHumor) is a new thing that I think does a good job with
| alternative formats (sketch, improv, game show)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Have you seen them at Graham Norton's?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhaBIU9TcJ0
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