Farcical Aquatic Ceremony
Brown Classical Journal
Volume 1 1984
As Susan Langer says, neither
ethics nor common sense need furnish a comedy.[1] But because they are not
integral parts does not mean that a comedy cannot be both uproariously funny
and crazy, and yet at the same time have at the bottom some form of social
criticism or moral import.[2] Monty Python's version of the Arthurian legends,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, fits the above "funny but
meaningful" category quite well; that is not the only reason that the film
is such a masterpiece of comedy. IT is a face, in every sense of the word. The
fact that this particular farce is also meaningful gives it a much stronger
punch.
To gain a full idea of what
farce is, and what its possibilities are, one must look beyond what the
dictionary states (American Heritage Dictionary): "a theatrical
composition in which broad improbabilities of plot and characterization are
used for humorous effect." One can give a list of its general
characteristics, or one can experience farce first-hand. Though the latter is
more enjoyable, the former is essential for understanding the inner structure
of farce.
First, the farce must of
necessity contain a vitality, an impulsiveness, a
pace; snail-pace farces are hard to find. With this liveliness often comes a
distancing, a situation in which we, the viewers, are shown that what we are
seeing is indeed a preposterous performance, not anything even closely akin
to reality as we know it, and therefore even more laughable. Part of the
previously mentioned "vital force" is the ever-present factor of
violence. As Eric Bentley states in his essay Farce, "farce is . . .
notorious for its love of violent images" (p. 280). Violence, action, and
aggression are often comvined to produce something
that will shock the audience-with humorous after-effects,
it is hoped (p. 285).
Secondly, as Bentley mentions,
farce, and the comedic arts in general, often allow us to see, vicariously act
out in our minds, the thus guiltily laugh at, the inaction of socially
unsanctioned activities. This welcomed release of tension is what
psychoanalysts, and critics, call "catharsis."
On a more specific level,
farce combines sight gags, overblown actions, and impossible situations, in
order to form "the theatre of the surrealist body" (Bentley, p. 305).
All of these comedic tools, Bentley writes, come together to
compose what he calls "a farcical state of mind" (p. 288).
This is a state in which the audience has been manipulated into a position in
which they are able to laugh at even the most insane of things, merely because
they have come to expect the absurd, and desire yet even more absurdity.
Finally, and this again
according to Bentley, we cannot forget the folk roots of farce. To the medieval
folk performance the farce owes three characteristics: a brevity inherited from
sort-skit formats, physical buffoonery (from pantomime), and a propensity for
borrowing from previous material and popular motifs.
Though farce is committed to
all of the above characteristics of form, it is only infrequently
committed to a particular characteristic of content: that in which the
content has a "meaningful message." The fact that a farce frequently
bypasses social commentary, does not mean that social
commentary can never occur. The best farce sets up a precarious balance between
form and content, a balance whose instability ensures an ever-present and
enjoyable structural tension. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in
perhaps a latter-day revival of the old style, complies with all the above
characteristics.
Susan Langer's idea that
comedy is anything that displays vital force, impulsiveness-that is charged
with a "pure sense of life" (but which at the same time maintains a
"phychical distance") fits Monty Python
like a gauntlet ("The Comic Rhythm," p. 120). The movie never slows
down; the vigorously paced lives and the multitude of insane adventures that
the famed (and muddled) Knights of the Round Table go through remind one tat
the knights' life is a quick and spontaneous one. The pace is also important;
without it, the movie would put the viewers into a coma of boredom. Its
vitality proves that the movie is worthy of the age-old title of
"comedy" and is also successful as an almost vaudevillian succession
of quick action skits.
The "psychical
distance" that both Langer and Bergson, in his
essay, mention, is there too; for instance, at various (inopportune and
ludicrous) points in the movie, a somewhat lost-looking Medieval History
professor and his T. A. enter the scene, criticize the knights for the
inaccuracy of the costumes and dialogue, and even get in the way of a
thousand-pound combination of knight and horse that comes thundering in and
lances the poor professor in the gut. Suddenly, with the intrusion of this
twentieth-century figure, we are taken out of the medieval scenario that had
caught our attention, and are reminded that what we are seeing is in no way a
representation of reality. We are further distanced when the agent of the
initial distancing, the professor, is actually killed by the very image whose
reality he was challenging. There is a final distancing at the end of the film.
The English and French knights, gathered and fully prepared for a last battle
over the Grail, are brought back to "reality" when police vans roar
across the set and irate bobbies arrest the cast. With
a terse, "Right, that's enough!", the
constable puts his hand up to the camera lens and smashes it. Bang, back to
reality, back to the fact that this is "just a movie," that we are no
longer in the world of the Holy Grail.
The gory crudeness of the
professor's death should remind the viewer that this is not "High
Comedy." Contrary to what Eric Bentley believes,
farce is still alive and well in the violent and zany world of Monty Python's
medieval
In addition to the shock
factor, the numerous sight gags, absurd and profane dialogue, silly puns and
insane scenarios "prepare" the Python audience in a way that is akin
to Bentley's "farcical state of mind" (p. 288), in which the audience
will laugh at anything thrown at them. Where else would you laugh at a vicious
killer rabbit on a string or an unrealistic model of a cow that is thrown over
a castle wall? And mixed in with all that inanity is a lot of profanity and
rib-poking about sacred things (see The Life of Brian for even
more), just what Bentley and Freud would cite as a major contribution to its
humorous appeal. Our inhibitions allow us to laugh at such otherwise offensive
material. Comedy, and farce in particular, seems to be
a special domain in which subjects usually labeled taboo by society are able to
come out in the open. The more unmentionable the subject, the more we laugh
when comedy takes it up; it is our laughter, the fact that we can shrug it off
as "only a joke," that makes it safe to disregard the taboo.
Thus Monty Python and the Holy
Grail serves as an outlet, a chance to let out aggression, anxiety, prejudice
(the incredibly vulgar "Frenchmen" scenes-"You lousy
bum-wipers!"), and pent-up energy. But its roots, just as those of more
theatrical and established farces, are grounded in folklore, something that Stephenson,
in his essay, cites as a very important part of farce (p. 323).
The Arthurian legends are
engrained in the popular folklore of
Practical jokes, proverbs,
fables, mythical beasts, "a turning of the tables,"-all these
elements can be found in the movie (one of the mythical beasts "dies"
when the animator suddenly keels over and has an untimely heart attack during
the scene).
The legacies of the folk
tradition are definitely part of the Python style; shortness, physical
buffoonery, and borrowing from the tradition are all there. There is an
accumulation of quick dialogue and throwaway lines, and lots of skits strung
together in an amazingly complex chain that quickens and quickens, and then
culminates in a breathless end: all of these devices Python holds in common
with the folktale-based farce. Physical buffoonery runs rampant: the chorus
line scene, in which the knights, in the middle of a fight to the death with
the poor inhabitants of an unknown castle, suddenly break into a song-and-dance
routine that entails banging spoons on helmets for rhythm, playing about with
rotten fruit, and some crazy acrobatics done with a tapestry. Borrowing other
material is perhaps one of the major factors in the success of this movie.
Without the famous Arthurian legend and its characters to spoof, not to mention
the great illuminated manuscripts of the middle Ages (several cartoon/animated
collage scenes almost exclusively use manuscripts and classical illustrations),
Monty Python and the Holy Grail would not have existed. The ludicrous
possibilities that the time-revered legends present are great, if not greater
than the possibilities for serious fantasy: the pomp and circumstance, the laws
of chivalry, the fervor of the religious devotion, the sacredness of the values
that Arthur once represented, even the sometimes fanciful adventures that
befell the knights. For the English mind
especially, nothing could be more sure of success than
a delirious trampeling of
But even though the movie is a
light mockery, even though it is absurd, surreal, overblown, and self-mocking,
beneath its muddy (and there is lot of mud in the movie) surface, several
interesting observations are made. Monty Python has no reservations about
showing the dullness and brutality of serfdom and monarchical rule, the at
times useless, absurd and intricate qualities of chivalry and "honor at
all costs," and the frailty of ideals and pious aspirations. In a strange
way, Monty Python somehow manages to be even more realistic in his obsession
with showing medieval life in all its grime and squalor, something that is a
departure from the
Through the use of oxymorons and insane juxtapositions, Monty Python easily
conveys criticism of society. When at one point the ever-diligent Arthur slogs
his way down the squalid and slimy thoroughfare of one of his cities, a serf
sees him and says in awe, "There goes day king!" "'Ow do ye know 'e's da king?" asks another in a typical lower-class
accent. "'E's the only one what ain't got shit
all over 'im!" is the other's reply. And with
the king's image presented in such a light, kingship, and thus the image of
chivalry, goes out the window (or over the walls). One only has to hear the
obscenely ironic ballad of "Brave Sir Robin" to get a humorous but
pointed idea of just how brave some men were in those days. The fact that Sir
Robin denies everything that his faithful and observant bard sings about his
supposed "acts of bravery" ("So he bravely turned his back and
ran / and went and relieved himself in the can") shows how human the
knights were.
Monty
Python's cutting wit work is most passionately when it comes to dispelling
myths or deflating pretentious and self-righteous readings of history. The fact
that the Arthurian legends date back so far does not hinder Monty Python's
relevance. The same problems, although with differing intensities, are still
present today: despotism and dictatorships are just as numerous as (or more
numerous than) they were in King Arthur's time; and chivalry, or so some think,
is dead. Poverty and class differences are perhaps even more prevalent today-if
not in intensity, then in number. Courtly love has suffered the same fate and
chivalry and honor, succumbing to sex in advertising, teenage liberation, and
an overall change in moral values. People are also just as egocentric,
prejudiced, and stubbornly opinionated as the witch burners were in the movie
(perhaps more so, since the technology of communication and travel has mad the
world smaller and differing people are exposed more to one another). Monty
Python, while poking fun at the optimism and undying faith of the men of yore,
observes that our own idealistic visions of the past are just as ludicrous and
overblown as those spawned by the minds behind Arthur; moreover, when we
compare our lives with those in the movie, we see that nothing has gotten
better, but that nothing has gotten much worse, either, except that now the
follies and blind beliefs of men and women can have world-wide repercussions.
Modern individuals all have their Grail, just as Arthur did in his day.
Although faith in the future, in equality, in honor, has to struggle for
existence, it can still be found, at least as part of our consciousness.
Whether we express amusement because we realize we are guilty of idealizing the
past too much, or whether we express amusement because the past is too much
like the present, Monty Python has communicated with us.
After sitting through a
screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one is aware of more than just Bergson's theory of automatism (pp. 66-67) o r Freud's
tendentious sex/aggression jokes, or Bentley' "farce = violence and
inhibition" clause. What lies under the leering and at times grotesque
mask of Pythonesque farce is more than just comic
method. And this underlying meaning sometimes surfaces in some of the more
serious scenes, as well as in the humorous ones. The eerie forest scene before
we see "the knights who say ni,"
or the "Death" or "Mr. Universe" scenes in The Meaning
of Life are good examples. But the rarity of these scenes is in no way an
indication of the merit of Monty Python. Why is Monty Python and the Holy
Grail a cult movie? Why do so many people memorize the lines? Python blends
its seething, scathing, energetic wit with just the right amount of social
commentary. Just enough to jog the mind and tickle the funnybone. No doubt the forces at work in Monty
Python are the same ones that made the theater-goer
in the sixteenth or seventeenth century laugh at a
farce of his day. Take heart, Bentley: 1927 was not the year that farce died-it
is still alive and kicking about in the occasionally lucid minds of Monty
Python.
Notes
[1] Susan Langer, "The
Comic Rhythm," p. 119.
[2] This paper was written as
the final essay in a Modes of Thought course called Comedy in Theory and
Practice, which was taught in the spring of 1984 by Elli Mylonas.
He course centered around major comic works: The Birds, The Acharnians and Lysistrata
by Aristophanes, The Mostellaria, and Amphitryo by Plautus, The
Second Shepherd's Play, Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and
Twelfth Night, Moliere's Scapin
and finally some film comedies of the Marx Brothers, Keaton,
Chaplin and Fields. These were studied in conjunction with some of the better
known theoretical works on comedy such as Bergson,
Freud, and Langer as well as J. Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Paul Radin on the
American Indian Trickster myths. In discussion the class attempted to look at the
comic theories in the light of the actual works, as well as to understand the
role of each comedy in the society in which it was written and performed. As a
final assignment, each student had to write a short essay on a comedy or
comedian of their choice, and discuss how he/she/it works as comedy. The
analysis had to include references to some of the theoretical works as well as
comparisons to the comedies studied in class.
