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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd i 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Critical Approaches to Monty Python Edited by Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iiiiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12.5 pt Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 7515 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 7517 4 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 7518 1 (epub) The right of Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock to be identifi ed as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iivv 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM CONTENTS List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors ix ‘It’s . The Introduction’ 1 Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock PART ONE SITUATING PYTHON 1. Six Comics in Search of a . : Monty Python and Absurdist/Surrealist Theatre 23 Rick Hudson 2. ‘None shall pass’ and ‘The skull beneath the skin’: Monty Python, the British Class System and Death 39 Gina Wisker 3. Der Ver Zwei Peanuts: Depictions of a Distant War in Monty Python’s Flying Circus 57 Anna Martonfi PART TWO PYTHON’S PRACTICES, FORMS AND MEDIUMS 4. The Royal Philharmonic Goes to the Bathroom: The Music of Monty Python 75 James Leggott 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd v 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 5. The Disruptive Metamorphoses of an Impish God: Gilliam’s Satiric Animation 91 Paul Wells 6. Figures Traced in Shite: The Scribe, The Illuminator and Monty Python’s Holy Grail 107 Ewan Wilson PART THREE CONTEXTS AND REPRESENTATIONS 7. Grannies from Hell, Daring Bicycle Repairmen, Upper-Class Twits and ‘Make Tea Not Love’: Monty Python’s Flying Circus and 1960s British (Popular) Culture 125 Caroline Langhorst 8. The Parrot, the Albatross and the Cat: Animals and Comedy in Monty Python 141 Brett Mills 9. ‘Political Correctness’, Reversal and Incongruity: Dynamics of Humour in Life of Brian 155 Kathleen J. Cassity PART FOUR CULT, FANDOM AND PYTHON 10. Philosophy, Absurdity, Waste and The Meaning of Life: A Cult Film, of Sorts 173 Ernest Mathijs 11. In Praise of Silliness: The Cult of Python 189 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 12. Memories of Connecting: Fathers, Daughters and Intergenerational Monty Python Fandom 207 Kate Egan Index 227 vi 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd vvii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM FIGURES I.1 Michael Palin’s ‘It’s’ Man: Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969–74) 2 I.2 Cleese shows Undertaker Chapman his mother in the sack: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 26 (1970) 6 10.1 Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): joie de vivre éclatante 179 10.2 Hyperbole and waste at work in The Meaning of Life 183 10.3 The end of The Meaning of Life: A solid rant on entertainment today 186 11.1 Just a fl esh wound: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) 197 11.2 Møøse control: Monty Python and the Holy Grail 201 11.3 Arthur confronts the Knights Who Say Ni: Monty Python and the Holy Grail 202 12.1 The higher percentage of 18–35-year-olds in the ‘Dad Memories Group’ compared to the Monty Python Memories database as a whole 210 12.2 The higher percentage of female respondents in the ‘Dad Memories Group’ compared to the Monty Python Memories database as a whole 211 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd vviiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank everyone at Edinburgh University Press, particularly Gillian Leslie and Richard Strachan, for their guidance and investment in this book project, and Ernest Mathijs for suggesting that we work together as editors on a book on Monty Python! Kate would also like to thank Sian Barber, Martin Barker, Beck Edwards, Russ Hunter, Stephanie Jones, Paul Newland, Tim Noble, Lisa Richards, Jamie Sexton and Justin Smith for their feedback and encouragement. viii 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd vviiiiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Kathleen J. Cassity holds a PhD in English from the University of Hawaii- Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. She currently serves as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at Western Oregon Uni- versity in Monmouth, Oregon, USA. Dr Cassity has published and presented several papers and book chapters relating to humour, including a recent article on Life of Brian published in the Journal of Religion and Film. She is also co- editor of an anthology of Anglo-Indian writing, Curtain Call: Anglo-Indian Refl ections. Her scholarly interests include liberal arts advocacy, writing peda- gogy, life writing/memoir and Anglo-Indian narrative. Kate Egan is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at Northumbria University, UK, and the author of Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Mean- ings of the Video Nasties (2007), Cultographies: The Evil Dead (2011) and (with Martin Barker, Tom Phillips and Sarah Ralph) Alien Audiences (2015). She is also co-editor (with Sarah Thomas) of Cult Film Stardom (2012). She is currently conducting research on the local censorship of Monty Python’s Life of Brian throughout the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and is writing up her fi ndings from an international audience project on audience memories of Monty Python. Rick Hudson has written professionally since leaving school and has had his fi ction not only broadcast by the BBC, but widely published in collections and professional magazines. He has written experimental literary fi ction, ix 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iixx 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT popular genre fi ction and work that sits somewhere between these two poles. Rick also works in game design and has produced game materials for com- puter game companies and table-top role-playing games. In addition, Rick is an English Literature academic who lectures on fantasy/SF and horror fi ction, TV and fi lm. His previously published academic work includes chapters in: Christopher Shaberg (ed.) Deconstructing Brad Pitt (2014) and Lynn Whit- fi eld, Paul N. Reinarch and Robert G. Weiner (eds) Python Beyond Python (2016). Caroline Langhorst holds a BA in Film Studies and British Studies and a MA in Film Studies from the University of Mainz, Germany. She is currently work- ing on her PhD thesis on male rebellion and rebellious actors in 1960s British cinema at the Cinema and Television History Research Institute (CATHI), De Montfort University Leicester, UK. Her main research interests include British and American cinema, television, popular music and culture, gender studies, star studies and acting/performance studies as well as the ‘long’ 1960s and the counterculture. James Leggott is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Northumbria Uni- versity, UK. He has published on various aspects of British fi lm and television culture. He is the author of Contemporary British Cinema: From Heritage to Horror (2008), and the co-editor of No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris (2013), British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays (2011) and Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey (2019). He is also the principal editor of the Journal of Popular Television. Anna Martonfi completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia, UK, examining transnational aspects of Jewish humour in British and Hungar- ian fi lms in the inter-war era. Her research interests include British radio, television and fi lm comedy, transnational humour, Hungarian comedies of the inter-war era, and Jewish comedy; and she has also published on how the translation and transcreation of audiovisual texts, including animation, impacts the cultural complexities of interpretation. She currently works as Lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and as Visiting Lecturer at Uni- versiteit Leiden. Ernest Mathijs is a Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He researches cult fi lm, genre cinema and European fi lm. He has written on the reception of digital cinema and fantasy (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), on Belgian cinema, The Room, and on the activ- ism and acting of Delphine Seyrig. He has also published 100 Cult Films, Cult x 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd x 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Cinema, The Cult Film Reader and Alternative Europe, among others. He is the author of monographs on David Cronenberg and Ginger Snaps, and the co-producer and co-writer of the two-part documentary The Quiet Revolution (2019), on Canadian genre fi lm since the 1970s.