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

Python,” so we’ve included that here, too. Call it a Special Bonus Track.

Okay, That’s All for Now

That’s how it goes. There is no one “deep and interesting” connection between Monty Python and philosophy, it turns out, because there are many. There are bits of Python that are better understood and appreciated by philosophical analysis; there are bits of philosophy that are well served by Python sketches and themes; and the whole, enduring empire of Monty Python has a thing or two to say about the status of philosophy and its role in the world. If you were hoping for something pithier, less obvious, or pythonesque (see?), well, we’re sorry.

We know, much has been left out of this book, too. As Heather Douglas reminds one of the editors daily, there are not nearly enough mentions of the Holy Hand Grenade (even counting that one). Other colleagues, we rest assured, will complain that their personal philosophical heroes had to be left out (“What, no Bosanquet?! No Nicolas de Cusa?!?!”). Who knows—maybe there is room on the shelf for a sequel volume of Monty Python and Philosophy in which the Holy Hand Grenade and other topics can be philosophically analyzed. If you want to see that sequel, make sure you buy at least two copies of this book. Going farther still, one might consider a new academic organization, something like a society dedicated to the philosophical analysis of Monty Python. Those plans, alas, will remain exceedingly tentative so long as a suitably catchy and marketable acronym remains elusive.

And Where the @#$%^& is the Queen?

From the very start, we wanted the Queen to participate. We really did. We tried. And our correspondence with her Highness (displayed at the very start of this book, for we have nothing to hide) shows that we offered her a really sweet deal: unlimited length, no set topic, and not even a real deadline. But, alas, it was not to be, at least if this “Mrs. Gill Middleburgh” is to be believed. Where we went wrong we don’t know, but we’re undeterred. For this volume’s sequel (and have you bought your second copy yet?), we promise you . . . Prince Charles.

Philosophical Aspects of Monty Python

“Welcome to a packed Olympic stadium!”

Scenes from “International Philosophy,” originally produced for German TV and later included in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

2

“Life’s a Piece of Shit”: Heresy, Humanism, and Heroism in Monty Python’s Life of Brian

KEVIN SCHILBRACK

Brian whimpers. He is pushed around by his mother. As a revolutionary, he is incompetent and he cannot compose a proper sentence in Latin, even one composed of just three words. Nevertheless, circumstances conspire so that he is taken to be a prophet or a messiah, revered by a multitude. He nearly inaugurates a new religion.

What exactly is Brian? And what are the Pythons trying to do in telling the story of his life? Many took this movie to be an insult to God; they saw it as blasphemy. But the Pythons were famously interested in philosophical questions, especially about the meaning of life, and if one watches the movie with this in mind, one gets a very different message.

“Blessed Are the Cheese Makers”: The Question of Heresy

Is Monty Python’s Life of Brian blasphemous?

After the success of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Monty Python gang were not sure what to do for their next project. As a lark, one proposed the title: Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. Apparently, the idea for a Biblical comedy was just spontaneous. Once the idea caught on, however, the troupe took their work seriously: they read the Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, trying to see where funny material might be found. After reading about Jesus, however, they came to the conclusion that they respected the things he said and that they did not want to make fun of him. So they shifted to the idea of a thirteenth apostle, perhaps one who would always be late and miss the miracle, and this idea continued to morph until they came to the idea of someone born at the same time as Jesus who is mistaken as a messiah, and this became Brian.

Even before it came out, the idea of a Biblical spoof was controversial. The project was originally financed by EMI, but they backed out of the project, fearing that the script was blasphemous. (The film was eventually financed by George Harrison, the Beatle.) Once the film was made, it was picketed by Christian groups and was banned in Ireland and Norway and in parts of the United States and Britain.

Yet the movie never suggests that God does not exist. It never suggests that God is less than what believers take God to be, or even that Jesus is not the Son of God. Jesus appears in the movie twice—once at his birth and once giving the Sermon on the Mount—and his miracles have left ex-lepers behind him. Throughout the movie, Jesus is portrayed in a respectful and even orthodox way.

The movie satirizes not what Christian believers believe, but instead the way that some believers believe. First, it mocks a certain religious eagerness to believe. Some philosophers of religion have also criticized this. David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the most insightful. Hume complains about “the strong propensity of mankind to [believe in] the extraordinary and the marvellous,” and notes that this alone “ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind.”3 To believe that one has a secret, that one knows something remarkable that others don’t know, can bring a palpable sense of one’s own specialness that is so agreeable that it is hard to resist. According to Hume, the desire to feel this is the primary motivation for gossip—and it is also the motivation to create and to spread stories of miracles. Monty Python’s Life of Brian illustrates this process perfectly, when the