Monty Python's Flying Circus - Classic or Dud?

Fwiw my initial comment wasnt meant to imply that the show isnt funny because its racist, just that i dont find it funny anymore - it’s targets (stuffy british ppl, mainly) don’t much concern me or seem so funny as they did in previous times.

It's not racist and it remains very funny and ingenious. And the TV shows are better than the films.

The Goodies was way more 70s casual racist than MP shurely. i’m struggling to even think of a blackface flying circus skit but i prob just don’t remember?

Oh there was that Gilliam bit with the jewish satan and jesuses on the telephone poles but that bit got cut in the first place.

wait no now i remember that jungle one urgh.

Yeah there's a number -- not to mention a lot of yellowface ones too.

Onion A/V Club writers, always talking like a normal human

Okay, we should probably back up a bit. I don’t really want to talk about this, but I’ll give it a paragraph, and that’ll be enough. (I mean, feel free to whatever in the comments, although please be respectful, except when you’re talking about me, because let’s face it, I deserve what I get.) Palin is playing a character named “Mrs. Nigger-Baiter,” and while I don’t know how this was supposed to play at the time, as is, it’s an ugly line with no real point other than to shock. There’s no context, no build, no punchline. It’s just a mean, vile word tossed out without any apparent consideration. I don’t think challenging or hateful language needs to be banned, because that never gets us anywhere we want to go. But when you’re going to use a word like this, it needs some reason beyond itself to be there.

There's a recurring gag about cricket teams, confused about a joke saying the test match is being held in a room and being shepherded out told "it's only a joke, it's a joke". The team appear in black face as the Trinidad team. No-one would do it now but it's not racist.

Are we really going to have to cover why blackface is ipso facto racist in this thread

Are we not just gonna fucking take that as read at this point

I was half-thinking about starting a "Racist art that still holds up" thread (I reckon someone would say Birth of a Nation, though I found it incredibly dull), but then some of these responses give me pause.

The Wikipedia page for Al Jolson contains a lot of carefully sourced “he had black friends” which made me kind of 🤨

xpost TBF, the Venn diagram of 'pre-21st Century art that still holds up' and 'racist art that still holds up' is close enough to a perfect circle to render that project mostly pointless.

(See also: a non-negligible portion of 21st Century art.)

It seems like most older stuff I engage with has at least one or two 'oof'-worthy moments that I can consider within the given context and move on from. And then occasionally I stumble upon something where I'm like 'okay, this isn't really defensible' and I have to kinda shut the door on it. Monty Python is certainly among the former grouping.

(Even just realizing lately how ubiquitous 'retard' was well into this decade! Very little can ever fully avoid being retroactively tainted by progress.)

I do appreciate their casting an actual black jazzman to turn into Scotsman.

Billy Crystal did his Sammy Davis Jr thing in full makeup (for about 5 seconds, on film) the last time he hosted the Oscars. I never worried about it being racist bcz it was never funny. He and Chris Guest played two elderly ex-Negro League ballplayers when they were on SNL in '84-85. I remember that being funny.

The Jolson thing was a phenomenon essays could be written about (and have). He had a base of black fans, including Sammy Davis Jr. For homework, all the snowflakes can decide whet all the black performers who used blackface... oh fergit it.

Wow, guess you just went for it there...

ipso facto racist

Whenever I read the word ipso I think of these tic-tac knock offs and this advert which is also kinda you wouldn't do that now.

https://youtu.be/q4Tww7bcIWQ

The sexism in Monty Python is much much worse than the racism, to open another can of worms. I kind of agree with whoever itt said the TV shows are better than the films, they seem like more of an achievement.

Lots of homophobic/transphobic cheap laughs in MP too - all in line with the popular light entertainment of the day.

Oh yes, of course! There's a reason why Netflix isn't re-running the Goodies - and it's not just to annoy Bill Oddie, though that is a fine and noble reason in itself.

It seems like most of the threads I engage with have at least one or two 'oof'-worthy posts that I can consider within the given context and move on from.

(xposts, as I'd hope would be obvious)

yanks as a rule think the gilliam stuff is what mattered thats how you know not to mind too much what yanks think about mp

Monty Python's That Shit Doesn't Fly Any More Circus

You know what does hold up? The sketch where Hitler, Von Ribbentrop and Himmler are hiding out in a British b&b.

"No, no, you've got the wrong map there, this is Stalingrad, you want the Ilfracombe and Barnstaple section."

yes, as with all things from 1970, comedy was much more sexist.

with 1930, at least you have Groucho, who made sexism hilarious.

xp i liked it when hitler disguised as mr hilter was holding a political rally and a woman in the crowd complained, ‘i gave him my baby to kiss and he bit it on the head’

Also the mountaineering expedition sketch, "... Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it is up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply".

(thread descends into a succession of 'funny' quotes)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Stomp.gif

yanks as a rule think the gilliam stuff is what mattered thats how you know not to mind too much what yanks think about mp

― old yeller-at-clouds (darraghmac), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 5:44 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe if those other guys had ever done anything after Python instead of fading into obscurity we would feel differently.

Wait, I take it back, I guess one of them was in The Great Muppet Caper. The exception that proves the rule.

You mean you never saw Terry Jones' "Barbarians" documentary series? That was v. good.

Poor Americans haven't had the pleasure of watching Eric Idle's 'Breakaway' adverts

I dont' think the intention was ever racist, but the presentation certainly...doesn't age well. That said, the golden moments of the show do not involve any of those sketches. The best sketches are still funny. ARgument Clinc, Parrot, that hilarious sketch where they classify words as 'woody' or 'tinny'....I'd say a good 1/3 of this entire series is out of the part brilliant and holds up. The rest varies from 'very good' to 'wtf'.

"He and Chris Guest played two elderly ex-Negro League ballplayers when they were on SNL in '84-85. I remember that being funny."

this is one of the best SNL bits in history (as is most of that season IMO).

With the possible exception of Kids in the Hall, I don't think there's a sketch show in existence with a hit/miss ratio that far exceeds 50/50. I'd say MP hits that threshold. Despite being a half decade older, it at least holds up better than the 'classic' era of SNL.

The sketches with the merchant banker being asked to give to charity; and the man undergoing the bizarre job interview (with Cleese playing the banker and the interviewer, respectively) are probably in my top 5, are still extremely funny, and have none of the "problematic" stuff. Some of y'all are crazy.

Yeah I've never met an American MP fan who felt that Gilliam was the main attraction. Guy just got a lot more ink over the years because his work outside of Python was significantly higher profile.

xps

Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess.

Yeah darragh have you met someone who was like “I only liked the cartoons?” I cannot imagine such a person into being

Insurance Assurance, oof

"Yeah flying circus has some pretty racist bits, but have you rewatched Spike Milligan's Q.. series recently?

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length)"

"less racist than Q" is setting the bar real, real low.

"The Wikipedia page for Al Jolson contains a lot of carefully sourced “he had black friends” which made me kind of 🤨

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby)"

yes this is extremely wikipedia, i recall the wikipedia page for "coal black and de sebben dwarfs" being the same way

"Lots of homophobic/transphobic cheap laughs in MP too - all in line with the popular light entertainment of the day.

― Ward Fowler"

yeah for me personally their contribution to the (long established) british tradition of comedy transvestism is the worst thing about them

having made all these ancillary complaints i will point out as is my wont that "monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era there is and i will always love them for that

It was a prologue, not an epilogue – shown before TMoL, or the first part of it if you will.

xps

I think you have been read that xps too fast.

monty python and the holy grail" is one of the most historically accurate movies about the medieval era

I find the prevelance of coconuts unlikely tbh.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

it may have been british ilxors on this very thread who the fucknose

It's always anglophile Americans I come across who love MP the most and the grotesque 'Britishness' is obviously a big part of the appeal.

"Wait, was Monty Python responsible for that weirdly-long epilogue to my favorite Gilliam movie, The Crimson Permanent Insurance? That was pretty good, I guess."

that is from a Monty Python film, yes.

xpost Yes, as per usual, that was just me being a total dipshit.

― Fantasy Eyelid (Old Lunch), Wednesday, November 28, 2018 9:04 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It helps to know that the prologue was very much Gilliam's thing.