Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) said, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Humor is always rooted in truth, which is exactly why it’s so amusing. Looking at the intriguing, yet serious, undertones of Monty Python and the Holy Grail will enrich any audience experience. Now let’s move on before this book’s editors decide to sack the author or—worse—forty specially-trained, Ecuadorian mountain llamas decide to take over.

Why the Pythons Chose Arthur and the Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the top-rated comedic film in Great Britain according to the British Press Association, and the film ranks highly with American audiences, too. In fact, the popularity of the film in America has spilled over into other entertainment venues, notably the musical based on the film, Spamalot, directed by Mike Nichols and written by Eric Idle. As they would later do with their controversial film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the Pythons chose a subject iconic in Western popular culture.

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table stand tall as chivalric heroes in popular culture. The legend arose during a time in Europe when there were four distinct and powerful mythological strands: the classical Roman, classical Greek, Germanic, and Celtic strands. Arthurian and Grail romances developed during 1150 to 1250 A.D., with the help of Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Sir Thomas Malory. Each of these authors crafted different renditions of the quest for the Holy Grail over the course of approximately one hundred years. Like all mythology, these romances reflected their time by assimilating various cultural notions from the four mythological strands. The cultural tapestry of Arthurian and Grail romances is woven from a patriarchal warrior society and what Joseph Campbell, famous for his scholarly work on world cultures and religions, called an “earthoriented, mother-goddess society,” with an overlay of Christianity.44 The romances represent the idea of the individual and the individual path, an idea derived from the four mythological strands. They also combine the Christian notion of community with an emphasis on rules and laws. The result is a powerful and patriarchal cultural stew.

The Pythons, however, changed the recipe. They wrote and produced Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the early 1970s in the midst of a growing movement for women’s liberation. In 1968 Britain legalized abortion, followed by the United States’ legalization of abortion in 1973 and France’s two years later. Britain’s Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 also gave women greater equality. Yet in that same year the movement faced resistance in the United States, for example in the Hyde Amendment of 1976 (which cut federal funding for abortions) and in increased criticism of foreign aid for programs tolerant of abortion. Still, women were gaining political power, with nineteen women elected to the U.S. Congress in 1975 and 604 elected to state legislatures in the same year. Much as the Arthurian legends reflect the cultural and political currents of their time, Monty Python and the Holy Grail reflects these developments.

But there is a twist. Arthurian legend has traditionally been used to maintain and endorse patriarchal ideas and attitudes. From the days of King Edward of Britain in 1286 to the modern Boy Scout movement (its founder, Britain’s Sir Robert Baden-Powell, even inscribed Arthurian legend as historic fact in his Boy Scout manual’s Knight’s Code) the legend has trumpeted the importance of male gender in society. With Monty Python, however, the connective tissue between the world politics of the women’s movement and Arthurian legend in the film is flipped. The Pythons use Arthurian legend to speak to the absurdity of patriarchy and its reverberations in the twentieth century.

Some of these reverberations are philosophical. The Pythons are infamous for their use of philosophy and, in particular, for their attention to analytic philosophy. Monty Python and the Holy Grail has a strong thread of analytic philosophy—a philosophical program that analyzes individual statements. It endorses a kind of atomism—the idea that an idea can be understood best by breaking down the whole to its separate parts, and examining the relationships among the parts. Atomism opposes the philosophical idea of holism, according to which the whole is primary and greater than the sum of its parts. Joseph Campbell finds holism at the core of mythic stories about the hero. Such stories feature a theme of transcendence through which the hero journeys from duality to an underlying singularity and unity with the universe.45 Parmenides (around 515 B.C.-450 B.C.) perhaps set the stage for this kind of quest, famously writing that “All is One. Nor is it divisible, wherefore it is wholly continuous.”

However holistic, Grail romances specifically highlight the significance of the individual’s path. Arthur and his knights receive the call to search for the Holy Grail, and each knight decides to seek the Grail by taking separate paths. The search is not conducted by a group, but by separate individuals—a circumstance that allowed the Pythons to disentangle and highlight different aspects of patriarchal society.

Come On, You Pansy!

Traditional masculine ethics are based on an abstract idea of morality—outside of relationships and emotions.46 This abstract notion of right and wrong leaves no room for negotiation. Negotiating is more common to feminine ethics or care ethics. Care ethics holds that relationships—and not abstract principles—are the motivating factors in moral development.47 Consider the scene in which King Arthur, played by Graham Chapman, and his faithful, coconut-clacking servant, Patsy, “ride” through the wood and come upon the Black Knight. The Black Knight, played by John Cleese, battles the Green Knight in defense of a footbridge, and Arthur is duly impressed.48 Naturally, he invites the Black Knight to join his quest for the Grail. But the Black Knight refuses and challenges Arthur as he and his entourage attempt to cross the footbridge.

Enter masculine ethics. The Black Knight must protect the footbridge, regardless of who tries to cross. There will be, so far as he and his masculine ethics