pythonesque

[cimorene]

Starting a couple of weeks ago, I rewatched all of Monty Python's Flying Circus for the first time since I was in high school. There was a lot that I didn't remember. Some of it was cringeworthy, but it's easier to eyeroll or fastforward with stuff from the ten years before I was born - I don't really expect 70-year olds, or tv from the 1970s, to realize that blackface and yellowface is racist. (After all, my sister and I have tried to explain that white people dreads is cultural appropriation three times to my parents, most recently ending in both of them yelling at us for being so insensitive as to think making jokes at your mother's expense is okay while making jokes at the expense of an entire language is not. Before that we hadn't even realized that our parents also think those fake 'Chinese' 'ching chong' noises aren't racist either. "But you always agree that it's a distasteful joke?" "That's because it's not funny!"). And sadly, in many ways the female characters in Flying Circus are no worse (and occasionally better) than in most tv I've seen from the period, even though in interviews the Pythons freely admit they were basically sexist caricatures or completely absent and that this was because women were essentially foreign to them at the time.

Watched The Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life while I was at it, as I'd never seen them before. Got curious and read up on them on Wikipedia, then watched some documentaries and interviews on YouTube, then felt like I really just wanted to watch more of the same style of humor but none of the other streaming comedy seemed similar enough, so I rewatched the first three seasons of it right away (but with prompter fast-forwarding through the racist bits). I am really dismayed that I'd never seen the video from "Every Sperm is Sacred" before. The choreography was masterful. And "Galaxy Song" is now my favorite song for this week. (The updated expanded 2012 version too.)

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

It is totally dated, but totally amazing and brilliant all at the same time. It was formative for so many parts of my taste. I have a boxed Best Of set I need to break out. And maybe over Christmas rewatch Holy Grail, which has almost as many one-liners as Hamlet in the culture.

Well, not really. But you see what I mean.

Cheese shop! Silly Walks! The penguin on the telly! :)

[cimorene]

And when you watch the entire episode at once, there are all these stupid recurring jokes that actually don't mean anything, and are only funny because they repeat them so much, and over time they build up, also quite brilliantly.

[phosfate]

I decided to give their drag characters a little slack when I saw a photo of Terry Jones' mom, and she looked exactly like him, down to the carrying a little purse with both hands.

[cimorene]

Hahaha!