John Cleese; is he funny?

Jesus christ what a stupid old cunt

was this generation always like this or did something happen

apart from anything else I don't know how they convince themselves that by repeating the most low effort conservative talking points over and over that they're somehow doing something new and brave and radical

I don't think it's really any different from any other generation - the difference between this and olds in the 60's/70's is cosmetic, half remembered counter cultural norms means they need to cast themselves as edgier, but the substance is pretty much the same, the youth is radical, unthinking, won't listen to them.

wide swathes of gen x already on their way to this too

I always wondered where the jokes about leftism in the python films were coming from - is the butt of the joke the peasant's anarchism or arthur's presumption of ruling him, or both? is the sectarian stuff in brian anything more knowing than "look how ridiculous the left is" which is how it tends to be used? is it ultimately all just the "we all know the establishment is full of shit but look how ridiculous the people who oppose it are" style of elite british satire that gave us hignfy?

I don't expect people with these backgrounds to be sympathetic to the views they're making fun of but there's something almost apolitical in the form-over-content focus of those python jokes - they don't offend me at all (unlike some of the others) and could be coming from just about anywhere politically

idk what I'm saying really just wondering if something curdled or if it was always there just in a cleverer package or whatever

xp tbh I blame gen x (probably unfairly) for making this kind of nihilistic conformism that mainstream conservatism is now converging with seem like something edgy and rebellious. in their defence they had even less to work with than millennials (afaict). but boomers had so much more going on that they really should have no excuse

caveat that maybe cleese isn't actually a boomer and the generation stuff is mostly just a diversion

Not "probably" unfairly.

IMO most of the poking fun at the left in old Python was funny and came from a fair and informed place. Cleese just seems increasingly out-of-it, and acts like he's King Arthur and everyone with a Twitter account is the socialist peasant.

(xxp) In the Arthur film I think the joke is the incongruity of having a middle ages peasant up to his knees in dung breaking into wordy abstruse political theorising - I'm not sure there's any great satirical intent behind it. The various factions in the Brian movie are playing on the proliferation of Palestinian terrorist organizations with very similar names in the 1970s I think

Cleese is whatever the opposite of a Napoleon complex is

The scene in the Holy Grail strikes me as being pure Palin/Jones.

(xp) A de Gaulle complex?

xp And Idle, who was the naif of the group.

tom otm re the peasant in grail. sectarianism joke is p boilerplate even on the left. "what have the romans ever done for us" is the one that bugs me lol. complacent imperial sniggering imo.

what gets me in life of brian is the sustained bit about the hilarious absurdity of a trans woman existing

fwiw I caught the tail end of a Terry Jones history show once and it seemed to be making a "who were the REAL barbarians when u think of it" case

peasant thing can be read as a (presumably accidental) commentary on nationalism and peasant anarchist resistance to incorporation into the national body but I'm sure it's intended to be more incongruous than it actually is (they obviously wouldn't be talking like a student activist in any case)

otm that the romans joke is far more offensive than the others - we built your railways you know etc

Their humor turned vicious in "The Meaning of Life."

what gets me in life of brian is the sustained bit about the hilarious absurdity of a trans woman existing

Not defending this in any way, but I don't think any cis person would've considered mocking trans people problematic or offensive prior to the Millennium. So given Life of Brian was made in 1979 this feels historically revisionist.

sounds like the problem is cis people not revisionism

Their humor turned vicious in "The Meaning of Life"

Which bit, specifically? Mr Creosote?

Guess if you were a devout Catholic you wouldn't much like Every Sperm is Sacred.

sounds like the problem is cis people not revisionism

Of course, you are right, Left, and what's wrong now has been wrong for all of time, and we have the benefit of increased awareness as a result of people affected having the confidence to speak out about the hurt that's been caused. But this thread is specifically about whether John Cleese is funny or not, and I don't see how you can judge this based on what he or anyone else thought about trans rights in 1979 as it wasn't on the map then.

Which bit, specifically? Mr Creosote?

Pretty much all of it. It was an exceptionally mean-spirited film. I remember being taken aback when it came out.

it was? on some maps at least

obviously I'd be far more surprised if cleese and his mates knew or cared than otherwise xp

still I don't buy that no one knew it was hurting people - the jokes don't even work as jokes if they didn't know - they knew they'd get away with it is all. in retrospect it's not surprising how apoplectic the british establishment has become over finally experiencing some mild pushback

My extended family, who are all Catholic, if to varying degrees, love the Every Sperm Is Sacred song. Social bonding for Catholics generally involves laughing at all the ridiculous rules we have (and ignore)

Sure, Camaraderie, but you are arguing from the particular to the general here.

There are Jewish people who love the Two Ronnies' "insurance against becoming Jewish" sketch I link to below. I am sure there are others who find it offensive from start to finish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZzTTICHrAI

speaking only for myself, I only met someone who was transgender for the first time in 2006, and in the years following, made several other friends who were transgender. I knew very little about the community prior to this, partially due to my own (unintentional) bubble, partially because the mainstream media (at least around me) largely ignored them as if transgendered individuals were a fringe novelty and not human beings, so the only exposure I had was the occasional derisive jokes in movies/television. So I too wound up saying some things that I'm now ashamed of, that were hurtful, because of my own unintentional ignorance and also being a naive youth.

that doesn't mean that nobody who made these mean-spirited jokes were aware of the hurtful nature of them, or that knowing what we know now, we shouldn't cast some of this stuff to the ashheap of history, but trans awareness isn't something everybody had not that long ago (some of us still have a ways to go, myself included).

does anyone still watch Fawlty Towers and think John Cleese being an asshole and treating everyone like shit is funny?

He's meant to be a terrible person! The Manuel character, however, has dated pretty badly.

f.hazel- yes, but then I would regard your take on the show as somewhat reductionist.

What Matt #2 says about Manuel is obviously correct.

When did Cleese cease to be funny? Probably the 80s? I can't recall him being funny since then. He's just been relentlessly appearing on talk shows and in the press and doing his tiresome Grumpy Old Man routine. Anyway, he was never funny *on his own*, but as part of an ensemble cast, he was.

Cleese outlines his political philosophy in this 1985 party-political broadcast he made for the SDP, basically sensible-centrist right and left are as bad as each other, smart thoughtful people like me are politically homeless stuff, this seems pretty consistent with his views these days, though maybe he's gone a bit more in the complaining about there being too many non-whites in London these days direction recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKp7HDv01hk

I mean, the man did start doing corporate training back in the. . . 70s? 80s? A while ago.

it's interesting that he argues people become political 'extremists' because they are filled with rage and frustration and seek out enemies to direct that rage at, when Cleese himself seems like someone filled with rage and frustration, it's what 90% of his comedy is about, and it's led to him becoming a self-described moderate, feels like he's projecting his own issues.

(didn't Cleese have therapy at some point in the 80s, and himself attribute the drop off in quality in his work to the fact that he was now better adjusted and less angry?)

Cleese going from the SDP to GB news is more evidence that fascism is a political movement of the centre rather than the right (or left)

xxxp

Person who is a dick unsurprisingly good at portraying a character who is a dick.

― Being cheap is expensive (snoball), Sunday, 6 March 2022 12:28 (seven months ago)

I found him pretty funny as an addled romantic lead in A Fish Called Wanda but I might be the only defender of that one these days; he's at his best when performing silly shit like stripping while reciting Russian.

He's meant to be a terrible person!

Yeah, but the show is meant to be a comedy. It isn't funny.

answer to thread question still out of reach

Someone upthread said it best. Cleese alone = generally not funny. Cleese as part of the Pythons = funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_7DMk3oeOE

Me saying that the transphobia in Life Of Brian gets me angry does not equate to historical revisionism (I said nothing about thinking it's atypical for its time) nor does it have anything to do with whether I think Cleese is funny or not. Don't think my expressing an emotional reaction merits all this laywering tbh

Fwiw tho when I was in middle school I said something homophobic and my dad (who also introduced me to Monty Python) sat me down and gave me a talk about why bigotry is wrong that did indeed include trans people. I am aware that is not particularly common but still, maybe let's hold off on sweeping statements like "I don't think any cis person would've considered mocking trans people problematic or offensive prior to the Millennium."

Good thing nobody said that then

I don't think trans people were a complete unknown in the 70s. Jan Morris had a bestselling memoir about her transitioning for a start.

Even in 1970, when I was 15 and resources like wikipedia were a utopian pipedream, I knew who Christine Jorgensen was.

I always thought all the left stuff in Python was the result of them(Terry Jones especially) encountering it at university, and the various Trot splinters that were going on, esp by the 70s

Christine Jorgenson was referenced a number of times on 70s Match Games.

"does anyone still watch Fawlty Towers and think John Cleese being an asshole and treating everyone like shit is funny?"

yes

I don't think trans people were a complete unknown in the 70s. Jan Morris had a bestselling memoir about her transitioning for a start.

― Zelda Zonk, Monday, October 10, 2022 11:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

And Michael Palin did an excellent profile of Morris for the BBC about a decade ago, which included a sensitive discussion of her transition. He at least seems not to have curdled in his views in the way Cleese has.

Good thing nobody said that then

It's a literal quote from upthread dude.