We are the sisters who say Ni! Bring us…a shrubbery.
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily dig into a source of both sisters’ understanding of what is funny, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After 49 years, this film remains super funny, because it subverts our expectations.
With minimal plot, despite the purported quest for the titular grail, it’s basically just a vehicle for a slew of the Pythons’ favorite medieval sketches. A Deep Thoughts look at those vignettes reveals interesting questions about power, authority, and knowledge, nuanced (but not exactly positive?) commentary on queerness and masculinity, and a fundamental playfulness with the medium of film that remains delightful this half-century later. We disagree about how sympathetic we’re meant to feel about the leftist peasants’ self-governance, but we are in complete agreement that the Castle Anthrax scene is improved when we assume the oral sex Lancelot thwarts was to be performed by Galahad, not on him.
Don’t hurt your brain calculating the airspeed of an unladen swallow! Have a listen to our Deep Thoughts about Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Mentioned in this episode:
The article about the zeitgeist: https://www.popmatters.com/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-40th-anniversary-edition-blood-politics-sil-2495463955.html
One gay commentator on queerness in Holy Grail and Spamalot https://epgn.com/2020/12/02/one-joke-too-many/
CW: Discussion of transphobia, homophobia, Woody Allen and male fantasies of sex with teenaged girls
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
We are the sisters who say Ni! Bring us…a shrubbery.
On today’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Tracie and Emily dig into a source of both sisters’ understanding of what is funny, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. After 49 years, this film remains super funny, because it subverts our expectations.
With minimal plot, despite the purported quest for the titular grail, it’s basically just a vehicle for a slew of the Pythons’ favorite medieval sketches. A Deep Thoughts look at those vignettes reveals interesting questions about power, authority, and knowledge, nuanced (but not exactly positive?) commentary on queerness and masculinity, and a fundamental playfulness with the medium of film that remains delightful this half-century later. We disagree about how sympathetic we’re meant to feel about the leftist peasants’ self-governance, but we are in complete agreement that the Castle Anthrax scene is improved when we assume the oral sex Lancelot thwarts was to be performed by Galahad, not on him.
Don’t hurt your brain calculating the airspeed of an unladen swallow! Have a listen to our Deep Thoughts about Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
Mentioned in this episode:
The article about the zeitgeist: https://www.popmatters.com/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-40th-anniversary-edition-blood-politics-sil-2495463955.html
One gay commentator on queerness in Holy Grail and Spamalot https://epgn.com/2020/12/02/one-joke-too-many/
CW: Discussion of transphobia, homophobia, Woody Allen and male fantasies of sex with teenaged girls
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Hi, I'm Tracy Guy Decker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1975 classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my sister, emily Guy Birken, and with you. Let's dive in. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, but others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. Okay, I know you've seen this film. We've talked about it. It was released the year before I was born, so four years before you were born. But tell me sort of what's in your head about the Holy.
Speaker 2:Grail. So I remember the first time I saw it. I'm pretty sure it was the first time you saw it too. It was with our across the hall neighbor. We all watched it together. The final three minutes where it's just a black screen, I remember all of us going like is that really it?
Speaker 1:Do we keep it on what's going on?
Speaker 2:So I remember being quite confused by that. I have a lot of things that are just in furniture of my mind from this movie. I'm not dead yet. I'm feeling much better.
Speaker 2:I feel happy. The background I talk a lot on the show about story construction and creativity and how things are made, and one of my favorite things about movies in particular and anything that is a collaborative effort rather than like a novel, is the happy accidents that occur. The wonderful visual gag of the coconuts came about because I think no one could ride horses and they were too expensive, and so they're like all right, how do we ride around it? And they created something that becomes a through line through the film because of the how fast does a swallow? How do the coconuts get here? All of that. But it's also just a phenomenal joke. It was a happy accident and I was delighted by those Then.
Speaker 2:The one other thing I can recall was I saw this film. I was probably in like fifth grade. In about seventh grade I was reading King Arthur in my English class. I think it was Mallory's Mort D'Arthur, but I don't remember exactly. But it was probably. I'm sure it was a bridged and somewhat rewritten for modern readers, but the fact that the Castle Anthrax scene is canon, not exactly, but I was reading that going like they didn't make that up. That just shocked me, and my seventh grade English teacher was one I did not feel comfortable going to and saying did you know that? They put this in my mind and I kind of looking back. I wish I had, because I'm sure he would have been delighted to talk about it with me, but just for various reasons I did not feel comfortable talking to him. But those are kind of the things that I remember and think about with Monty Python. So those are my memories. Tell me, why are we talking about this today?
Speaker 1:So listeners, Emily and I have a list of potential topics and so recently I've been doing a lot of really angsty things that I've been bringing, or Indiana Jones that really kind of didn't hold up to scrutiny.
Speaker 1:And so when I was- reviewing, like scanning the list, and I was like I need some help with something a little lighter, I need something that is going to be more fun. And my eyes lighted on Holy Grail and I was like, yeah, that's the one, that's the one. But it was on the list because it is so foundational for what I think is funny. I think and I know I'm not alone Like so much of contemporary humor, has Monty Python maybe not this film, but Monty Python to think? I've been thinking about it recently because Michael Palin or Michael Palin made that cameo in stage. Oh, yes, yes, michael Sheen, where he gives them a hard time for all of their improvisation. He's like no, we wrote scripts and we perform the scripts, and he's like kind of a jerk to them. But I just which I also found- and clearly he's playing a bit.
Speaker 2:He's. That's not who Michael Palin is.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter really. But like and then like and then Michael Sheen is like but I'm a fan. So I felt some like solidarity with Michael Sheen and anything that makes me feel like I'm like Michael Sheen is pretty great, so so that's how, by the way, monday is going to be Michael Sheen's.
Speaker 2:February 5th. It's going to be Michael Sheen's 55th birthday. So happy, happy, michael, sex machine birthday for all who celebrate Sex, my being his middle name.
Speaker 1:But the time this air is, it will be past his birthday. So happy birthday, michael. Anyway so that's why it's on the, it's on the table today and some of the things I want to talk about. I want to talk about humor and what is funny and why it's funny and how that subversion of expectation is also used to lampoon societal structures which I find really really fascinating and interesting and, as we always do, I want to talk about some of the things that maybe didn't age as well or are kind of missing.
Speaker 1:So gender we need to talk about gender. I want to talk about that Castle anthrax scene. I want to talk about the blood and gore and filth in this movie, which I think is also a lampooning of the Romanticism of Arthurian legend. And then, because of the past few years, both John Cleese and Terry Gilliam have aligned themselves with transphobes. Transphobes and and in Gilliam's case, actually like sexual abusers, because he was, he kind of pushed back against me to very strongly. I also want to kind of dig in a little bit to queerness and depictions of gay men in particular in this film. There's not a lot, but there's some, and so I'd like to kind of.
Speaker 1:I'd like for us to talk about that a bit. I'm going to give a very brief synopsis of the film and listeners. I have not seen spam a lot, so I think I need. I need to say that because the queerness thing in particular, I understand, gets, you know, really teased out in greater depth in spam a lot there's also like a whole scene about how, apparently about how you can't do a Broadway show without Jews, which I am not touching. I haven't seen it, I can't speak to how that's done.
Speaker 1:So that's my parenthetical on this, so I'm not going to give like the full plot because, to be honest, the plot such as it is in my mind is just sort of a vehicle for to string together a series of Monty Python skits set in the Middle Ages or yeah, like it's not actually like a cohesion.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, the even, even like the Grail quest is just sort of it's almost like an afterthought. So but the characters that we meet? We have Arthur King of the Britons who is traveling the land to try and recruit more nights for his round table. As you mentioned, this ridiculous and just delightfully funny gag of the, there are no horses, there's like a servant behind him with two halves of a coconut, like hitting them together, like clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, to the sound of them, which is how in radio, radio shows back in those days, that was how they created the sound effects, the sound of horse.
Speaker 2:So like, yeah, they didn't make that up, that came from. You know old techniques in radio show days.
Speaker 1:We meet. The first tonight to join is Sir Bedivere, yes, who is very knowledgeable in science. We see him kind of helping towns. People walk through the logic of whether or not a woman who has a carrot tied to her nose is in fact a witch, and she is based on the like, absolutely absurd logic. So she's first. And then we also collect Sir Lancelot, sir Gala had, sir Robin I think that might be all of the named ones.
Speaker 1:They meet God, who is animated in the clouds, king, who tells them to go seek the holy grail. They have lots of adventures that are ridiculous and bloody and filth stained. There is a killer rabbit. There's an enchanter who can summon fire without Flint, who goes by the name of Tim. There's Sir Gala had, is sees the grail above this castle. He goes in and it turns out it's not there. That's Castle Anthrax, which is populated entirely by women who are all between the ages of 16 and 19 and a half and they are tempting him.
Speaker 1:We also see Sir Robin, who is cowardly and he has minstrels behind him singing about how cowardly he is, which makes him very uncomfortable. We meet the knights who say meet, which hurts people apparently. When you say meet the knights who say me, apparently, when they say it it's dangerous, painful, unclear. Anyway, they send Arthur off on a side quest to go find a shrubbery, I don't know. They're doing some landscaping. We end up on the bridge of death where you have to answer three questions, which could be as simple as what is your name, what is your quest, what is your favorite color? Or as complicated as what is the airspeed philosophy of an unladen swallow who knows there's a castle of Frenchmen who taunt our heroes quite viciously that's a lavash. Come back and I will taunt you a second time.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, we also have like, because this movie is also lampooning like historical documentaries. So we have this famous historian I'm putting quotes around famous historian who's telling us about what's happening to Arthur and his men and then is killed by one of them, lancelot, I believe. And so meanwhile, running through the movie, instead of the historian as a talking head giving us commentary, we see the police investigation of the historian's death. The movie ends when the cops actually catch up with Arthur, interrupt a huge like, tons of extras in chain mail attack of the Frenchmen, again actually to try and get the grail, and then a policeman or a police officer actually like, puts his hand over the camera and that's just the end, as you remember, like that's the end, which, by the way, these guys were such geniuses talk about subverting expectations.
Speaker 1:They were able to do that because they start the movie in the opening credits with these what appears to be Swedish subtitles initially of just subtitles of what we're looking at and then turn into this ridiculous story. Like you should come see Sweden, take a look at this and that and the moose. And then my sister was bitten by a moose once. And then it says no, really she was, but and it's all spelled in these funny ways, with O's, with the like slashes through them.
Speaker 1:And then that stops, and then we get something where the credits it says the people responsible for the subtitles have been sacked, and then it comes back in the actual credits with more stuff about moose, and then they're sacked again and it's a totally different style and now it's sort of Ecuadorian and it's all about llamas. I mean it's ridiculous, but while we, the viewer, were busy like laughing at these jokes in the subtitles, they got all of the credits out of the way at the beginning, so they could just end it with a black screen. So which? So the very first joke and the very last joke are related, which I just love that symmetry.
Speaker 2:Beautiful construction again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, there's also some animation throughout, not just the God in the clouds, but then there's sort of animated sections throughout that are again in some cases advance what little story there is, and in other cases are just little vignettes. That's Terry Gilliam's animation. So that's the background of the movie. Listeners, if you have not seen this movie, go watch it. It's really worth it. Like I have not done it justice, it is hilarious, I mean just really really funny, Still even these almost 50 years later.
Speaker 1:It's very funny. It's streaming on Netflix, so you don't have to, it's not hard to find. So I actually have a little list of things I wanna talk about. So I'll start with gender, because we so often start with gender. This thing does not pass the back down test. There are more than one named female characters, but they only speak about men. Well, zoot tells one of the other sisters in the castle, anthrax, to go prepare, prepares a room or something, but it's for Gala Head. So, yeah, I'm counting it as talking about men. So it doesn't pass the Bechtel test.
Speaker 1:And that scene which I wanna hear more about the canon version of this, because that scene Gala Head sumbles into this castle, which we learn later that they kind of lured him there, but I don't even know what to do about that. So we've got this spokesperson her name is Zoot, played by Carol Cleveland, who you just let me know was a regular guest with the pythons, and she's trying to keep him there and keeps telling him about how soft and nice their beds are and how wonderful they are. She's the one it's her voice that says that they're all 16 to 19 and a half. He ends up in a bedroom with two doctors. Well, they've had basic medical training. He's injured on his thigh and they're undressing him and he's like there's no need for that. He's pushing away. They're clearly going for his crotch and he's like there's nothing wrong with that and they're like we are doctors. Anyway, he runs away from that temptation, runs back into Zoot, who's not Zoot, she's Zoot's identical twin.
Speaker 1:We realize that Zoot has lured him there with the grail-shaped beacon and she must be punished. You must strap her to the bed, galahad, and give her a thorough spanking. And after that's done, you'll spank me. And then all the girls there's, like you know, 20 or 30 girls in these white robes, and me and me and me, they're all gonna be spanked. And then she says and after the spanking, the oral sex.
Speaker 1:And just as she says that, lancelot rushes in to save Galahad from certain temptation. And Galahad's like no, no, let me face the peril. Lancelot and the other one other night like drag Galahad away. And as they're leaving Castle Anthrax, galahad says to Lancelot something like bet your gay. And that's why he got dragged away from the certain peril, which was oral sex. So this scene when I was a kid, it made me uncomfortable and I'm not even sure I understood why when I was, you know, when we first watched it and my kid watched this movie fairly recently, like within the past two years or so, and I remember sort of not knowing how to handle it, like I knew if I like fast forwarded through it or something, she would just go back and watch it to see what I had kept from her, so I just let it go and decided to answer questions if they came up.
Speaker 1:But the whole treatment of it is just awkward to me as a viewer now, like it's such wish fulfillment like dudes wish fulfillment that it doesn't actually. It's not funny to me. It doesn't subvert expectation, it's just like oh yeah, this is a male fantasy. I think that's part of it. But I'd love to hear from you, since you brought that up when you were like here's the furniture of my mind Like I'd love to hear from you more about your thoughts on that scene in particular.
Speaker 2:The one aspect once I was old enough to understand what oral sex was, because the first time I saw it didn't know what they were talking about. Likewise, Because the way these women are acting towards Gallagher my headcanon was he was going to perform it on them.
Speaker 1:When I watched it just this morning, I actually thought, maybe that I actually had that same. I was like, oh, maybe that which I prefer.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so for part of the reason and I know I was not able to articulate this at 12 or 13, part of the reason why I was so surprised that this is actually part of the King Arthur canon is because it feels like I was thinking of it as a subversion of what is expected of women, and so that there are these women in white who are supposed to be virtuous and who all they can think about is sex.
Speaker 1:Right, right, they definitely are meant to be virginal in all of what that means.
Speaker 2:Yes, Culturally, yeah. So finding out that it was in the canon surprised the hell out of me.
Speaker 1:What happens in the? Can you give us the not tell you don't remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I couldn't tell you the specifics. It does not get into the details like this, but it is. Gallagher ends up at this castle. There's only women there, young women there, who all appear in white virtuous stuff like that, and they tempt him. The specific temptations I am sure were not spoken of.
Speaker 1:Spanking and sex.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it was clear that it was because Gallagher was coded as sexually pure in a way that none of the other planets are yeah. So this was testing his purity.
Speaker 1:You always have something to be younger right?
Speaker 2:I don't remember. Oh, okay, sorry doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:So the thing that got me is like and again, I'm telling you, this is not stuff I could have articulated back then and I'm only really starting to like collate these ideas in my head right now but I thought that this was subversive because that's not something that would occur in the original mythology and it was about like, yeah, don't assume that women are one thing. Finding out that it was part of the original mythology actually shows me that this is. It's not subverting anything, because women are always put in a binary of one thing or another, and so the subversion that they look virginal but they are voracious is not a subversion at all. And it's in some ways kind of reminds me of you know how they talk about how right-wing comedians only have one joke, like, yeah, I identify as a milk bottle.
Speaker 1:Now, yeah, I can't even imagine that joke, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of, like the subversion of, like this sweet, innocent girl who's really voracious, is the same sort of joke that you see over and over and over and, over and over and over again. So that's where I land with this. The other thing, as you mentioned, carol Cleveland plays Zoot, and her identical twin sister, carol Cleveland, I believe, appeared in pretty much every episode of Flying Circus. She was a regular collaborator with the pythons but she was almost exclusively used as a sex object whenever she was in there, and she's a very talented comedian. She has, like, excellent timing. She has.
Speaker 2:I don't know if she was in any way part of the writing process, I suspect not. And she is gorgeous. I mean, she's a beautiful woman. So, you know, considering the fact that the pythons would dress as women for lampooning different aspects of femininity, I kind of understand, like, okay, we need someone who looks hot, we'll use Carol. So if this were a movie that was directed, written, made by women, this scene, well, for one thing, the 16th and 19 and a half Now, granted, 50 years ago, that joke was fine.
Speaker 1:I mean I guess, so I don't know 16? Come on.
Speaker 2:I know it was common is the thing it was very common In, I think, Annie Hall. There's a scene where Woody Allen's character in an emergency needs to get picked up at the airport or something by a friend of his and his friend is complaining because he had twin 16 year olds at home with him. Can you imagine the mathematical possibilities available to me?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, okay, okay, and like I don't think Woody Allen should be our role.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, no Like ultimately appropriate regarding young girls, Like he goes bad. I'm not saying that that is culturally appropriate. What I'm saying is that it was accepted by people as like, oh, that's a joke. Yeah, If you know what I mean. So anyway, that scene, the idea of voracious women and a nervous man as a kid I saw that as like women taking control of their sexuality in a way that I've seen in me. Uncomfortable, but not in a like I wish it weren't. In this movie scene it was more just like this is too grown up for me. And then, as I got older, I appreciated it. I appreciated the idea that these women have this agency, the sexual agency that makes Galhatt uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that, oh sorry.
Speaker 2:But it's all part and parcel, because King Arthur is a very Christian myth. It's all part and parcel of the idea that women cause good men to stumble.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, though another wrinkle on this scene in this movie is that at one point, when we meet the identical twin sister, who's also played by Carol Cleveland, one of the things that she sort of breaks the fourth wall and says I really like this scene, I'm really enjoying this scene, this scene is going really, really well, and then we see we cut to like all the other characters at one point or another, going get on with it, including like the huge field of extras from the very final scene yelling from a distance get on with it, which is subversive of the medium because, it breaks the fourth wall and then has characters from who are not in the scene kind of commenting on the scene and also is like a little subversive of what you're talking about right now, because the woman is like, yeah, this is cool, I'm digging this, and everybody else is like all right, already.
Speaker 1:Right, like get to the sex or whatever. I'm not actually sure that is in fact. I think that's, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That is not an uncommon Python joke, in like the breaking the fourth wall, yeah, that kind of. Get on with that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean the breaking of the fourth wall, it's almost not. I mean, when she says I really like the scene, it's almost like a meta commentary on what we're watching. Like there's one scene where Bedivere and Arthur meet with this like really wild looking old man who's meant to be somehow magical, which is just called scene 24. And in fact we see like there's the conceit of this like illustrated manuscript, that kind of shows that pages turn throughout and it says scene 24 in this.
Speaker 1:You know very flowery calligraphy, so that kind of thing also, which I don't, it's not quite breaking the fourth wall, like right, like Fleabag Phoebe Waller-Bridges when she talks to the camera, to me that's quintessential breaking the fourth wall. She's talking to me directly, that's not quite what's happening. It's more of like a almost like an anachronistic meta commentary on what we're watching.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that's called.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, castle Anthrax scene stood out to me in the rewatch as one that like, unlike others, that I can dig into and have deep thoughts about, and I'm like, oh yeah, look at this kind of Marxist commentary on power, this one, I'm like I don't quite know where you're going with this. And I'm not, I don't know. It just left me kind of a little squiggy, maybe in part because there's almost no women in the movie at all, and then these are so hyper sexualized. So anyway, that's all I have to say really about.
Speaker 2:Castle Anthrax, I will say and this is not necessarily true of all of the pythons, but I don't know that the pythons in general necessarily have a great track record for treating women like people. For example, there is a like a compilation thing that I think it's on Netflix, of I think all the Python stuff is on Netflix. There's a compilation of each pythons greatest hits and each one has that Python do like as of when it was recorded, which is, I think, about 20 years ago, but still, you know, several, many years on from when the Flying Circus was on, do an introduction, and Eric Idle's introduction includes scantily clad women for no reason whatsoever. The other I've been thinking about this recently my husband and I watched Brazil, which is a Terry Gilliam film that I don't know if you remember watching it with dad, yeah, dad loved it.
Speaker 2:We should put that on the list.
Speaker 2:We should put that on the list, and Gilliam's goal with that film was to create a movie where the happy ending is the main character going completely mad and so he's living in his own delusions. There is the point where you can tell that he's in his own delusions. You know he gets this like wonderful happy ending with the woman that he's been in love with the whole time. When I watched it again, most recently the 12 hours before, in the film, this woman who he's been obsessed with, who has every time she's seen him been like get away from me, you're awful, I don't want anything to do with you Seeks him out, puts on because she's got very short blonde hair. She puts on this wig and a like a white nightgown and he has like fixed things so that she is legally dead and she's like how do you feel about necrophilia? And they make love.
Speaker 2:And watching it this time I was like that is so gross because she is not interested in him. She would not see him out. There's absolutely no reason for any of this. And so in my head, canon which I don't believe is what Tara Gilliam intended is that that is part of his delusion, like he's already been captured, and because that is the only way for that to be okay for me, because she is acting completely and it's all wish fulfillment. That's something that I have had to come considering how much I love Money Python that is something I've had to come to terms with over the years is realizing like they're gonna look at me and see boobs. If I'm lucky at this point, they're gonna look at me and see nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I do think related to that, considering the fact that the punchline kind of as Lancelot gets Gal had out of there is Gal had saying I bet you're gay.
Speaker 2:I do think it's interesting to talk about queerness, and particularly since, before we started recording, I mentioned to you, which you did not know, graham Chapman, who plays King Arthur and who is the most like Hollywood handsome of all of the pythons, so he often played the protagonist was gay and I believe at the time of this movie he was out to the pythons.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned to Tracy before we started recording, I believe it was John Cleese, but I might be misremembering, it might have been Michael Palin was talking about, because Chapman passed away in the 80s, was talking about after his death, saying like when he came out to the pythons he wasn't upset but he was shocked, but not in a bad way, just in the way that like it just didn't fit with what he knew of this person, because it never occurred to him that he could be gay and the example he gave is like it would be as if he told me that he were Chinese. That had never occurred to me, anyway. So but in that way, to say like it is something that is very different from my knowledge of the world, but I recognize that exists and I don't have any negative stereotypes about it. I just don't understand it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's talk about queerness in this film, though. So the early ish in the film they say they're gonna go to, so before cancel castle anthrax, they say they're gonna go, he has all the nights and they're gonna go to Camelot. So they get to Camelot and they're outside the doors and are outside the castle. They're looking up this big giant castle which is only a model one of the series. That's what I said.
Speaker 2:And-. And isn't it Patsy who tells us?
Speaker 1:I think it is Patsy.
Speaker 2:It's definitely one of the series. Yeah, and I think Patsy is Terry Gilliam. I believe, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:And then we cut to what's happening inside Camelot, and that's sort of what I think of as Spamalot it's a bunch of men in chain mail singing and dancing like rockettes style.
Speaker 2:We like to push the pramalot.
Speaker 1:That's the final line. Yeah, so, and we see this scene with them dancing and on tables and accidentally kicking servants as they walk by. It was just really really absurd and ridiculous Rhyming with Camelot. So we eat ham and jam, a lot and stuff like that. And on this rewatch I noticed that one of the lyrics near the end of the song, the final stanza, is in World War, tough Enable, quite indifatigable. Between our quests, we seek to invest and impersonate Clark Gable. It's a busy life in Camelot. That's the final stanza before I have to push the pramalot. So that line between our quests, we seek to invest and impersonate Clark Gable is clearly queer coding of these dancing and singing nights. After that scene, 30 seconds after that line is sung, arthur shakes his head and says you know what? Let's not go to Camelot. It's very silly, to your point about, it's just outside of the, it's not like let's not go there. There's no, there's a slur used right, they just say it's silly.
Speaker 1:And silly is an adjective that applies to the pythons always.
Speaker 2:Always yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:So there's that. The other example of queerness in this film is, you know, fast forward, we meet Herbert and the Swamp King. So Herbert's about to be married, he's the prince of the swamp and he's gonna be married to a woman who has huge tracts of land and he does not want to be married. He's very effeminate, definitely meant to be read as gay, shoots an arrow out the window with a note that says please save me on being forced to marry against my will, which Lancelot retrieves and believes is a princess. So Lancelot like barges into the swamp castle and kills anybody in his way, including the father of the bride, and like wedding guests. And you know, I mean it's gory, it's horrible, like leading to, and then he finds Herbert in the tallest tower and is like oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, like this deadpan. So part of the joke was this sort of deadpan, sorry, sorry. Part of it was, you know, lampooning the chivalry as an excuse for psychopathic behavior. But Herbert was also, I think, a butt of the joke.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Especially in so far as he's like I'm ready, like, like, let's escape Lancelot. And he, like, throws the he made a rope out of sheets or something and he starts to climb out the window and the dad realizes that Lancelot's from Camelot and like, cuts the rope like to let his son fall to his death. So Herbert is not unsympathetic, but he's a joke and he's definitely meant to be read as a gay man. So it feels a little gray to me Now, remembering that this is 50 years ago. It doesn't feel culturally inappropriate, homophobic, if you know what I mean. Like for the time, but it doesn't feel good in 2024. How about that?
Speaker 2:It's also interesting that Lancelot is played by John Cleese, who we talked a little bit about, how he and Terry Gilliam in particular have been really disappointing in terms of transphobia and in terms of very progressive views. So one of the jokes is like so Herbert's father cuts the rope and then he, like Lancelot, is like, oh, I'm sorry about all the dead people. And Herbert's father is like ah, come, let's have a beer or something like that. I mean like they clearly are like oh, you're a good one, You're a good one, you know, they recognize like to like in that. And so there is a bit of the satire and the lampooning of the fact that people are willing to accept awful behavior from people they recognize as being like them.
Speaker 1:And there was also a lampooning of capitalism in that, because the Swamp. King is very interested in real estate. I mean like it's really about money for him. This marriage from the beginning is about money. Part of his appreciation for Lancelot is in fact Camelot and how valuable that land is.
Speaker 2:And I recognize that like it's a both end, because there is definitely a lampooning of, like the chivalry, like you're talking about the violence, that you're talking about the even. Like the arranged marriages, how they're not good for anyone in the way that we knew them in Europe. I know that there are cultures that have arranged marriages. Where they are they work really well, but in this sort of like consolidating land, I have nothing to do with, I think, marriages arranged for power.
Speaker 1:I can say without hesitation that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're bad for everyone. So other other types of arranged marriages I think can certainly work. But the ones where it's like it's about power and it doesn't actually have to do with compatibility or anything, it's not going to be good.
Speaker 1:Not about as best for the two people getting married, but for their families power.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So like there's, all of that is in there, but then it's also like Herbert doesn't get to live, you know, and we're supposed to be okay with that, yeah.
Speaker 2:And granted, like yeah granted, it's not like this movie has like heroes, exactly Like we follow King Arthur and the Knights all throughout and at the end they're they're arrested, right. So like it's, and because they've done something awful, right. But in every joke there's a kernel of truth, or a kernel of belief, but rather than truth of belief. So, which is why, like the repeated right wing joke of like oh, I identify as a fighter jet is what I mean. It's not funny, and they believe that they are lampooning something when all they're doing is repeating bigotry. So in jokes that work, you can both be lampooning something and be perpetuating unconscious biases.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which could be bigoted Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about lampooning then. So there's, I was doing a little bit of reading this morning and there's actually it was the year before I was born, and so my really comprehension of the culture, the zeitgeist, is historical. The person that was reading this morning was talking about like post-Vietnam, post-nixon era. There's, there's some lampooning of that reality, like the result of that reality, lampooning power and war. This person was saying that the when Arthur faces the black night, and Arthur ends up like cutting off all four of the man's limbs, and he's still like come back, I'll bleed. You know, come back, I'll bite your kneecaps off. And you know, arthur's like what are you going to do? Bleed on me. And this person was like that is kind of the experience of the US and Vietnam, like the much greater military power, not understanding why the other side wouldn't just give up. If that is there, miss it Still, don't I just going to have to take this person's word for it. What I do see, though I don't need to know the zeitgeist in order to see the real take down of power and what you know, sort of the idea of a meritocracy and like what power is you know, when Arthur, one of the very first scenes with anybody else.
Speaker 1:Arthur, like calls, actually calls Michael Palin old woman, and he's like I'm not a woman. He says sorry, old man. He says I'm 37. Well, I can't just call you man? Well, call me Dennis. Anyway. Dennis says to Arthur like well, who made you King? Why are you King? And he's like well, the lady of the lake gave me Excalibur. He says you know random women in bodies of water, and handing out swords is not a way to establish power and authority. And it's funny as heck. And there's also something like deeply powerful and true in the like questioning where does authority come from?
Speaker 2:and why do?
Speaker 1:we allow folks to wield it. So I think, that's really interesting and powerful and that was something that, watching it now with these eyes for our project, I was like right on.
Speaker 1:You know like that's actually very cool, that that's a part of it. And so lampooning power and authority, lampooning sort of the entitlement that you know, arthur's so impressed with his own kingship. He said I'm king of the Britons and the people that he's talking to are like what's a Britain? We're all Britons. They don't care about nation states and boundaries and whatever, they're just trying to make living. And there was something really almost charming about that line of humor.
Speaker 2:Do you think, because I have always felt that that's undercut in a little bit by when Dennis starts explaining how they self-govern and he's like we're a board that changes every other week and going into like extreme detail of something that would be very difficult to maintain, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 1:Possibly, possibly. I don't actually think what he describes is completely unreasonable. I mean, it was a very frequent and maybe this is just revealing how left-wing radical I am. It didn't sound actually that absurd to me. It sounded very part of that moment of Dennis explaining what they do to govern was overwhelming Arthur, who is not that bright a bulb. That was more of. My takeaway was that Arthur's just not that bright and so those details were. He just became sort of deer in the headlights, like stop talking.
Speaker 1:Because he just doesn't get it, which is part of it, and you may be right that the writers were also sort of lampooning radical lefties like me, but Arthur's not. I mean his right to kingship, even. He even has God talk to him directly, but it's still kind of absurd. Perhaps it was a suggestion that, like all forms of government are subject to absurdity.
Speaker 2:The other aspect of that scene is when he gets frustrated at Dennis and starts like manhandling him and Dennis is going help, help, I'm being oppressed. I took that as also like kind of the center right view of people on the left let's talk about like microaggressions or things like that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know, I didn't take it that way at all.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:It works. Arthur's gonna I mean, who knows what Arthur's gonna do, but he's. He is putting hands on him and is like dragging him away from the dirt farming he's doing, and Dennis, like kind of yelling, like the other folks in the field, start coming over and Arthur leaves him alone. I didn't read it that way.
Speaker 2:I always took it as the movie saying that Dennis is overreacting, but I like your interpretation better. I'll have to rewatch it with that in mind, because I have I don't know, maybe I'm just watched it with a very cynical eye.
Speaker 1:You could be right. That is not the way that I read it, in part because Dennis's whole like a woman handing weaponry out from a lake is not a way to govern. It's like so concisely said and perfect. Yeah, true.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That you know my lefty heart is like right on Dennis, and so maybe that's my unconscious bias.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so.
Speaker 1:I certainly didn't read it. I did not read it that way. I read that actually as Arthur being overwhelmed by the, by the perspective. The details of real governing and the perspective of Dennis, like sort of calling him out for his bad behavior.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting. So both of my boys are really into fantasy right now. They like fantasy novels and they're watching TV shows, and so they'll. They'll tell me about stuff like, yeah, and that's how you know, this kid became king and like, in some ways, like I'm perfectly glad to be doing this. In other ways I'm like I'm I'm ruining their childhood before they're even out of it. I was like, really the best way to choose a leader I think he's going to be, you know, any good at doing that?
Speaker 1:You know. So one more point on this, and then we should probably think about wrapping up, because we've been talking for a minute. But on this point in the column of the movie makers are kind of on Dennis's side, possibly. I want to talk about Bedivere and knowledge in general. Mm, hmm, right, so in the witch trial scene, which is absolutely ridiculous, just as like actual witch trials were just as ridiculous- it's not that far off.
Speaker 2:I mean, they actually would throw them in the water to see if they. If they sunk, then that means that they were human, and if they didn't, then that meant they were a witch. So it didn't matter, you were dead either way.
Speaker 1:Right. So the absurdity is is not far off right from and Terry Jones was in fact a medievalist that sort of lampooning of knowledge and science, because Arthur and Bedivere refer to one another as men of science, right, mm, hmm, and. And then Bedivere just keeps messing it up. Right, like with the Frenchman, they build a Trojan rabbit, and then Bedivere is explaining how the. After the rabbit gets pulled inside the French castle, bedivere is like, yeah, after nightfall, then Lancelot and Galahad and I will jump out of the rabbit. He as the smartest one is lampooned again and again which I think is kind of a mark in the column of Dennis being just smarter than Arthur in his like I'm being oppressed kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't die on this hill, but I would offer it as an interpretation.
Speaker 2:What I'm wondering about and this is like thinking about something that was made in 1975 and 2024, but in the past 25 years, definitely. I know that you and I have seen the erosion of trust in experts and so the lampooning of someone who is an expert. It hits oddly. Now, that's not to say that there aren't idiots who are experts, and knowledge is not always beneficial. When knowledge is based on, you know, bad faith and bad science and is unwilling to question itself is really what it comes down to Just knowing the political leanings of at least two of the pythons. Now it's something that I wonder about Now. Terry Jones. He passed away a couple, three years ago and I remember being really sad about it, the way that when he died, I saw someone on Twitter say like yeah, he's one of the few pythons who hasn't tripped over his own dick lately. Terry Jones and Michael Palin are the two pythons who consistently seem to be good guys, or they at least know to keep their mouth shut.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, yeah, it's not the same thing. Not the same thing, but that's one of the things that infuriates me about John Cleese and Terry Gilliam is like I have such reverence for your work. If you just shut the fuck up, you can hold onto that reverence for your work without feeling conflicted about it and like because nobody asked you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really none of your business. I think that's a very good point. And there's something going on in this movie about the idea of experts and knowledge and sort of. There's something about the entitlement of the Knights that I do think is intentionally being lampooned, which is not the same as expertise and sort of fake news ideas.
Speaker 1:Because, like when Arthur first meets, like the very first cast that he comes to, and he's like you don't even have a horse, you're hitting coconuts together. Where did you even get the coconuts? It's a tropical. And then, like Arthur rides I'm putting quotes like that rides away with Patsy, while those guys are still arguing about how two swallows maybe could carry, like they're trying to do the physics and the biology and the math to determine whether or not swallows could carry a coconut from warmer climbs, which Arthur thinks is ridiculous, it's absurd in wasting his time, but actually is what saves Arthur in the end, because he knows that there's such a thing as an African and a European swallow. So there's something, there's a problematization, there's something going on about sort of knowledge who keeps it, what the entitlement is like, who's entitled to knowledge, what is useful knowledge?
Speaker 1:I do think that there are questions being suggested in there which is more complicated than just a sort of that expert is inconvenient. I'm not interested in that expertise because it counters my worldview which is what I see in sort of right wing lampooning and erosion of expertise.
Speaker 2:It's also interesting because we are firmly on the side of the witch in that scene the so-called witch, and the fact that no one will listen to her because she's a woman, the fact that one of the her accusers is clearly lying, like she turned me into a noot, and he's clearly not a noot well, I got better. So we are being shown that knowledge being used to deny someone's humanity and like knowledge, as my 10 year old says, quotation marks. So anytime he uses finger quotes, he's like did you see my quotation marks, mom? I wanna make sure you saw my quotation marks. It's adorable.
Speaker 1:Anyway.
Speaker 2:I think that that's also interesting and adds to like. There is also this sense of like, positioning modern people against the like man. Weren't they dumb back in the middle ages?
Speaker 1:Yes, that is definitely happening. That's what, and that's what Dennis does actually. Yes, yeah, there's definitely an anachronistic piece of it as well. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:There was a study a long time ago well, I say a long time, like 15, 20 years ago about what kind of humor each country finds the funniest, and so, like they had different jokes, I could not tell you the joke for the UK. In France, the joke that they found funniest was a dog goes into a telegraph office and says I wanna send a telegram. And they're like okay, what do you want it to say? Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. And the telegraph operator says well, you know, for just five cents more you could do two more woofs. And the dog says that would be ridiculous. So that's the French idea of humor. In America it's man calls 911, 911 operator says okay, what's your emergency? Like, oh, I'm out hunting with my friend and I accidentally shot him. And so the 911 operator says, okay, well, can you go check and make sure? Is he dead? The operator hears a gunshot wound or a gunshot go off and the guy comes back and he's like okay, he's definitely dead. Now what? Now what?
Speaker 1:That's what.
Speaker 2:Americans think is funny. Ew, ew, ew. I know, I know I so much prefer the woof, woof, woof. The analysis that I read said that Americans find things that make them feel superior, funny, and that's a very common aspect of humor. That joke allows you to feel superior to the accidental and then intentional shooter and the 911 operator for speaking so poorly. I would love to and I'll see if I can find the studies find out what the UK is. That British humor tends to be a little more absurdist than American humor, but not quite as absurdist as woof, woof, woof, woof. French humor, I think, tends to be incomprehensible to most English speakers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, that is one aspect of it as well, which is why I think part of the reason why it appeals to American audiences is we get to be like we're so much smarter than those stupid middle ages people.
Speaker 1:Apparently, Cleese has said that life of Brian is actually their most popular film in the UK and the Holy Grail is the most popular among Americans.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting yeah yeah, Okay, we've been talking for over an hour, so let me see if I can give some salient points and then we can wrap up. So Monty Python and the Holy Grail still hilarious almost 50 years later, so so funny. It is funny because it subverts our expectations. That's where the humor comes in and that's also where the social commentary comes in. There's some weirdness around expectations that are subverted, that are and aren't that betray, unconscious bias, especially around gender and women's sexuality, with the Castle Anthrax scene, and around gay men, in particular with poor Herbert.
Speaker 1:Though it's not cut and dried, this is not a black and white sort of like. This is homophobic. It's much more nuanced than that and complicated, which makes sense for this troupe of comedians. This thing doesn't pass the Bechdel test. There's some disagreement, even between you and me, about whether or not the lampooning of the divine right of kings with a sort of Marxist leftist form of government is in fact, also lampooning that Marxist leftist government. Maybe. I'm not 100% sure. It has been revealed that at least two of the pythons who are still living are a little bit more products of their time than I would have liked, especially around oh, what I've expected. Yeah, yeah, especially around transgender issues, Also women being treated as humans.
Speaker 2:The Castle Anthrax scene is improved if you assume that the oral sex is going to be received by the women rather than given. Yeah, I agree, which honestly is the only way that makes sense, considering there's like 20 women and one man and one of you.
Speaker 1:yeah, agreed, yeah, yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. There's an interesting thing that this movie does that is not quite breaking the fourth wall. It's kind of in that direction because it's like a meta commentary upon the medium. Where we see this is scene 24, where the Arthur and his knights escape from a monster because the cartoonist dies.
Speaker 2:The illustrator died. The animator dies.
Speaker 1:So things like that, and we also have that weird, not weird that fascinating mix of timelines where the movie ends because Arthur's arrested Again. It's not a breaking of the fourth wall, but it is playing with the medium and with the conceit of what it is that we're watching the use of the coconuts as just such a perfect example of happy accidents and allowing limitations to set you free with your creativity.
Speaker 1:And also sort of using the use of the credits and the subtitles and the jokes in the subtitles so that the end can be that like wait, are we done? So? That is another example of like using the medium itself to tell a joke and a subversion of expectations that way, so that's also worth noting.
Speaker 2:That's why they're brilliant. I mean, they really, really are brilliant.
Speaker 1:They truly are so products of their time, no doubt, and also just really, really brilliant.
Speaker 2:And also Carol Cleveland appreciation. Yes, I want to. For those of you listening, go watch anything the Python's did and she will be there when they were still Python's. I mean, like once they're doing individual projects, no, and she's phenomenal and does not get enough credit.
Speaker 1:Probably didn't do it, justice. Go watch it. Share your thoughts with us. What did I miss? Like what is brilliant or problematic or insightful, or just what's your favorite bit, because there are so many, so many funny things Let us know what.
Speaker 1:What is it about the Holy Grail that you want to make sure that you know? We know that you're thinking about. You can let us know via email, guygirlsmediacom. Go to the listeners forum on our website I'll put a link in the show notes or just go to guygirlsmediacom. Sign up for our emails and you can reply to one of our emails. Sign up at guygirlsmediacom for our emails. We send emails every week. Oh, I need to send one today. Find us on social media. We send emails every week. If you really love us, we love you too. Please come and be a patron. Be a patron.
Speaker 1:It helps make this possible. Please, please, join our family. I guess that's enough of a commercial for us. So next time, m, it's supposed to be your turn, but actually we're gonna have a guest. So Jonathan Shore is a friend of mine and a retired media studies professor, and he's gonna come talk to us about reporters and journalism in pop culture. I'm not sure which film he's gonna lead with, but I'm pretty excited to hear what he has to say. So that'll be next time, and then we'll go back to our regularly scheduled alternating sisters after that, and in the meantime, I think you have some listener comments.
Speaker 2:I do. I have some fun listener comments. One is from Ava who, on listening to our episode about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, said I thought the white savior stuff you were talking about with the little bloompas was satire. But I guess I never really analyzed any of the rest of the movies. And she has a smiley face. I'll have to go back and watch it now. Then one day later I got this message from Ava oh my God, jake, who's Ava's husband, showed me pictures from the original book and she has a shocked face. Probably not satire, yikes, yeah, yeah. So. And then I got another great comment from Malia on how we have realized that we have this tendency to ruin our own childhoods with this project, and she explains the moment in Gremlins where she says at Christmas, some people are opening presents and others are opening their wrists. That was not what I remembered, so I have not seen Gremlins since childhood. Me neither.
Speaker 1:We should put it on the list.
Speaker 2:It's apparently. It is even darker than.
Speaker 1:I remember. Thanks, malia. Okay, well, I look forward to seeing you next time. Do you like stickers? Sure, we all do. If you head over to guygirlsmediacom, slash, sign up and share your address with us, we'll send you a sticker. It really is that easy, but don't wait, there's a limited quantity. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember up. Culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?