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".
(...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.)
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).
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.
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.
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.
I was somewhat disappointed to learn that there's a lot less Monty Python on Youtube than there used to be. You can still find the Cheese Shop, Dead Parrot, or Silly Walks, but about 15 years back it seemed like nearly every sketch from Flying Circus was there. Most of which were uploaded by the official Monty Python youtube channel.
Now, about 90% of them have been taken down. Which is a shame, as this is how I discovered them. Another loss for kids these days.
I have an embarrassing confession to make. I absolutely hate Monty Python and don't find them funny almost at all. The jokes are childish, obscure and lazy from my Gen X point of view.
People have told me "you need to like British humor to enjoy it" but I've seen a lot of funny jokes in British movies... And I know many funny people from the UK.
So, PLEASE... Could anyone tell me what's funny about Monty Python?
Not trying to oversimplify the appeal, but I personally found their juxtaposition between the absurd and highly intelligent social commentary endlessly entertaining because deep down it felt like they were saying something is really really wrong with society and existence in general. They wrapped it up in comedy, because what else can you do in the face of an existential crisis but laugh at it? They always felt like a group of very angry young men trying to disrupt the stuffy old system from within. Very subversive stuff, especially for it's time. It really resonated with me as an angry/angsty (and relatively intelligent) adolescent male.
Go watch Brazil and tell me that Gilliam isn't furious with humanity and the state of things in the world.
Nothing to be embarrassed about, different strokes for different folks.
However, Monty Python was far from lazy, they cleverly deconstructed a repressive British culture at the time, they mocked class and authority, uptight education institutions, pointless bureaucracies, religious hypocrisy, and violent glorification of British history.
Their humor can be pretty crass by today’s standards, but if you approach their work as an absurdist, subversive satire, they’re one of the best that have ever done it.
I’ve always found their underlying message to be “don’t take things too seriously and enjoy life.”
As for what’s funny, they’re just absurd. A flying bunny that rips knights head off, an accidental messiah who just points out basic common sense which is interpreted by the masses as direct edict from God, brilliant deconstruction of bullshit bureaucracy in form of ministry of silly walks. Things like that.
But if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, that’s okay too.
Well the simple answer is that humor is subjective and that the things which were considered novel, topical, subversive humor in 1970s might not hit the same for everyone today. I'm not even sure the "British Humor" aspect has that much to do with it, since I think Monty Python has a bigger following in the US than in the UK. It might just not be your brand of humor.
That being said, the good sketches from their show are still funny and memorable today. But as with any sketch show, there's a mixture of quality. Holy Grail has its intergenerational staying power among nerds and theatre kids for a reason, even if the quoting and references to it have become pretty trite in my view.
Life of Brian is probably the best thing they've done, and is definitely one of my favorite comedies ever.
Silly Walks isn't just funny because it's a grown man flopping his legs around like a kid, but also because there's apparently a department of the government to manage such activity. That's absurd.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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) :)
I wouldn’t say just Reddit. It’s counter to just about every other online forum out there. HN is pretty unique in its strongly enforced taboo against humor and silliness.
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.
HN doesn't hate humor in general. Many of us just know what happens if you don't downvote away the easy jokes: all comment sections become more comedy than discussion. It's just too easy to make joke comments compared to the difficulty of making a comment that contributes to the discussion.
in the olden days of slashdot, this was addressed by decoupling "insightful" from "funny". you wouldn't get karma for being funny but you weren't punished for it either.
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.
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.
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.
There are lots of examples of comedy comparable to Monty Python over the years, but with so many media outlets you kind of have to seek it out or stumble across it. Here are a few random ones that immediately spring to mind:
Green Wing [1], Channel 4 television series (UK)
Aunty Donna, Australian comedy troupe that has a lot of surrealist humour. A good introduction is this sketch [2] and their Netflix show "Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun".
The Frantics, a Canadian sketch comedy troupe. They are most known for their sketch "Boot to the Head", but their CBC radio series which ran from 1981-84 was (to me) very reminiscent of Python.
I'd imagine fans of The Mighty Boosh and Python intersect quite a bit.
The Mischief Theatre Company - the ones behind the "Goes Wrong" theatre shows, e.g. "The Play That Goes Wrong", the "The Goes Wrong Show" on BBC, etc.
Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans, BBC Radio 4 pastiche on Dickens (2007-2012) - one of my favourite pieces of comedy in any medium. Here's the first episode [3] on YouTube.
I've seen a lot of live comedy that reminded me of Python at places like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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)
The best stuff I’ve seen lately has all been in person unrecorded. The room gets slap happy over anything and so there are no filters unlike stuff packaged for streaming
> Is there anything even remotely comparable in quality to Monty Python right now?
I suspect that, like most things that we now recognise as classics, much of Monty Python wasn't recognized at the time as a classic. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai... suggests that, while reception was generally positive, there wasn't the sense we'd now expect of a great treasure having just been unearthed.
All of which is to say that, whatever is comparable right now, we probably think of it as so-so, and will have to await retrospective critical appreciation to find out what we should have been treasuring.
>much of Monty Python wasn't recognized at the time as a classic
Monty Python was a huge success in its day - which is why it spawed multiple seasons, movies, comedy albums, books, and of course multiple careers (for all involved, even the mere non-speaking ...cartoonist), and even live shows. And that's just in the 70s and early 80s.
Its funs where younger demographics. Mainstream reviewers of the time were notoriously out of touch. Hardly anybody more square than Ebert (at least he did gave it 3/4).
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
I noticed this movie is heavily gendered, I’ve watched it with female relatives / friends / girlfriends / etc. and they never seem to find it funny, whereas male friends all find it hilarious. Could be a coincidence, could not be. It’s interesting to me though because if it isn’t a coincidence, I can’t think of a good reason why. I’ve seen some comedies that were obviously catered to a specific demographic but Holy Grail isn’t that, so why the discrepancy?
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
For those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qT-C-0ajI&t=129s
"We are an anarcho syndicalist commune..."
"Now we see the violence inherent in the system..." :-)
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!
> Michael Palin is a national treasure
...But for his postman. (Possibly obscure reference from Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive. Pluri-national, international treasures.)
(...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.)
Funnily enough I came across a similar comment a few days back
https://www.reddit.com/r/AccidentalRenaissance/s/foguWdeDMY
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...
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).
It’s a hard business, being a shrubber, that we must all acknowledge.
He's NOT the Messiah, he's a VERY NAUGHTY BOY!
Should be required watching for entry to adulthood.
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.
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.
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.
That would be a terrible interview question, because it doesn’t clarify whether you mean an African or European swallow.
That's part of the appeal, the candidate needs to answer with a range or ask a clarifying question that uno reverses the interview
But then the interviewer will be launched into the Pit of Eternal Peril.
It's the question that Screaming Bee used for gauging your voice profile for the MorphVOX voice changer!
I was somewhat disappointed to learn that there's a lot less Monty Python on Youtube than there used to be. You can still find the Cheese Shop, Dead Parrot, or Silly Walks, but about 15 years back it seemed like nearly every sketch from Flying Circus was there. Most of which were uploaded by the official Monty Python youtube channel.
Now, about 90% of them have been taken down. Which is a shame, as this is how I discovered them. Another loss for kids these days.
And there was much rejoicing! :)
Those poor minstrels.
It's not dead yet.
I have an embarrassing confession to make. I absolutely hate Monty Python and don't find them funny almost at all. The jokes are childish, obscure and lazy from my Gen X point of view.
People have told me "you need to like British humor to enjoy it" but I've seen a lot of funny jokes in British movies... And I know many funny people from the UK.
So, PLEASE... Could anyone tell me what's funny about Monty Python?
Not trying to oversimplify the appeal, but I personally found their juxtaposition between the absurd and highly intelligent social commentary endlessly entertaining because deep down it felt like they were saying something is really really wrong with society and existence in general. They wrapped it up in comedy, because what else can you do in the face of an existential crisis but laugh at it? They always felt like a group of very angry young men trying to disrupt the stuffy old system from within. Very subversive stuff, especially for it's time. It really resonated with me as an angry/angsty (and relatively intelligent) adolescent male.
Go watch Brazil and tell me that Gilliam isn't furious with humanity and the state of things in the world.
Nothing to be embarrassed about, different strokes for different folks.
However, Monty Python was far from lazy, they cleverly deconstructed a repressive British culture at the time, they mocked class and authority, uptight education institutions, pointless bureaucracies, religious hypocrisy, and violent glorification of British history.
Their humor can be pretty crass by today’s standards, but if you approach their work as an absurdist, subversive satire, they’re one of the best that have ever done it.
I’ve always found their underlying message to be “don’t take things too seriously and enjoy life.”
As for what’s funny, they’re just absurd. A flying bunny that rips knights head off, an accidental messiah who just points out basic common sense which is interpreted by the masses as direct edict from God, brilliant deconstruction of bullshit bureaucracy in form of ministry of silly walks. Things like that.
But if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, that’s okay too.
Well the simple answer is that humor is subjective and that the things which were considered novel, topical, subversive humor in 1970s might not hit the same for everyone today. I'm not even sure the "British Humor" aspect has that much to do with it, since I think Monty Python has a bigger following in the US than in the UK. It might just not be your brand of humor.
That being said, the good sketches from their show are still funny and memorable today. But as with any sketch show, there's a mixture of quality. Holy Grail has its intergenerational staying power among nerds and theatre kids for a reason, even if the quoting and references to it have become pretty trite in my view.
Life of Brian is probably the best thing they've done, and is definitely one of my favorite comedies ever.
Silly Walks isn't just funny because it's a grown man flopping his legs around like a kid, but also because there's apparently a department of the government to manage such activity. That's absurd.
Have you seen them at Graham Norton's?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhaBIU9TcJ0
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.
Wasn't that in Life of Brian?
It was.
With the raffia-work base
Well what is it?
I thought that was more in the spirit of "Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things"
It forever burned Castle Anthrax into my memory.
Its only a model.
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.
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.
> 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.
“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.
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.
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.
> Casual racism
Intentional joking, with the understanding that it should be taken as a joke. Often about the reaction of the triggerable. "Dear BBC..."
I really don’t think that the blackface in the Philosophers sketch is about the reaction of the triggerable.
Remind us of the clip. The Bruces? The football? Where did you see it?
Checked the sheep dip?
I think the cosplay was quite challanging at the time? Like, there was very little kicking downwards. Little Britain lacks taste in comparison.
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.
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?
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?
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/
> 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.
I wouldn’t say just Reddit. It’s counter to just about every other online forum out there. HN is pretty unique in its strongly enforced taboo against humor and silliness.
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.
> 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.
HN doesn't hate humor in general. Many of us just know what happens if you don't downvote away the easy jokes: all comment sections become more comedy than discussion. It's just too easy to make joke comments compared to the difficulty of making a comment that contributes to the discussion.
in the olden days of slashdot, this was addressed by decoupling "insightful" from "funny". you wouldn't get karma for being funny but you weren't punished for it either.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
The Kids in the Hall did it too, extensively, in the 90s.
and again in 2022
You have a problem with drag, eh?
Misogyny in comedy is still real. Just saw SNL fully taking the piss out of an actress' teeth this weekend, in fact.
Is there anything even remotely comparable in quality to Monty Python right now?
There are lots of examples of comedy comparable to Monty Python over the years, but with so many media outlets you kind of have to seek it out or stumble across it. Here are a few random ones that immediately spring to mind:
Green Wing [1], Channel 4 television series (UK)
Aunty Donna, Australian comedy troupe that has a lot of surrealist humour. A good introduction is this sketch [2] and their Netflix show "Aunty Donna's Big Ol' House of Fun".
The Frantics, a Canadian sketch comedy troupe. They are most known for their sketch "Boot to the Head", but their CBC radio series which ran from 1981-84 was (to me) very reminiscent of Python.
I'd imagine fans of The Mighty Boosh and Python intersect quite a bit.
The Mischief Theatre Company - the ones behind the "Goes Wrong" theatre shows, e.g. "The Play That Goes Wrong", the "The Goes Wrong Show" on BBC, etc.
Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans, BBC Radio 4 pastiche on Dickens (2007-2012) - one of my favourite pieces of comedy in any medium. Here's the first episode [3] on YouTube.
I've seen a lot of live comedy that reminded me of Python at places like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Wing>
[2] <https://youtu.be/a5FGOaz__W0>
[3] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdyYQeLR1kA>
It is my unhumble opinion that Western Civ hit a local maximum with Monty Python, Project Apollo, and Woodstock.
And PDP11, Lisp, and Unix.
Second tier, and not followed by clear decline. (IMHO, YMMV.)
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)
The best stuff I’ve seen lately has all been in person unrecorded. The room gets slap happy over anything and so there are no filters unlike stuff packaged for streaming
> Is there anything even remotely comparable in quality to Monty Python right now?
I suspect that, like most things that we now recognise as classics, much of Monty Python wasn't recognized at the time as a classic. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai... suggests that, while reception was generally positive, there wasn't the sense we'd now expect of a great treasure having just been unearthed.
All of which is to say that, whatever is comparable right now, we probably think of it as so-so, and will have to await retrospective critical appreciation to find out what we should have been treasuring.
>much of Monty Python wasn't recognized at the time as a classic
Monty Python was a huge success in its day - which is why it spawed multiple seasons, movies, comedy albums, books, and of course multiple careers (for all involved, even the mere non-speaking ...cartoonist), and even live shows. And that's just in the 70s and early 80s.
>For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai... suggests that, while reception was generally positive, there wasn't the sense we'd now expect of a great treasure having just been unearthed.
Its funs where younger demographics. Mainstream reviewers of the time were notoriously out of touch. Hardly anybody more square than Ebert (at least he did gave it 3/4).
Life of Brian is also a gem.
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
I noticed this movie is heavily gendered, I’ve watched it with female relatives / friends / girlfriends / etc. and they never seem to find it funny, whereas male friends all find it hilarious. Could be a coincidence, could not be. It’s interesting to me though because if it isn’t a coincidence, I can’t think of a good reason why. I’ve seen some comedies that were obviously catered to a specific demographic but Holy Grail isn’t that, so why the discrepancy?
I have watched it with plenty of women, and I have not seen any difference.
while it hasn't aged the best, it is quiet entertaining
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.
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)
:)
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
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".
yes it has
This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction.
No it isn’t.
Yes it is.
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
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.
> the show has some bigoted scenes
Such as.
oh I see, I am talking about The Flying Circus, not the movie. The casual use of slurs is jarring to me personally
Still cannot remember of any bigoted use of slurs in Monty Python's work.
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?
There is a pattern recognition and transformation mechanism in place that rearranges bad title forms, such as "12 ways to serve Spam".
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.
> 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.)
>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.
Anything is loathsome when you only count the cases it gets wrong!
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[flagged]