Christmas: The Revenge

Here's another Christmas one I did. No weird back story to this one. Just sheer wackiness.


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Christmas

Christmas brings out the best in me. Well, the strange and "where the hell did that come from" part of me, at least.

I wrote something called "RUDOLF THE PEOPLE'S REINDEER" many years ago. The idea was "How would the story of Rudolph be told in the 1952 Soviet Union?"
The original idea was to do a tourist guide to one of those old industrial towns in the Soviet Union. But I didn't really have anything to go on after that initial idea. Then it became a tourist guide of Long Beach if it had gone communist. Yeah, I know.
Then I found this old Rudolph book, scanned it, and wrote it. That's it.

There's one more, titled "What About Holiday Safety?" to come soon. Here it is for you now. . .

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Thoughts on Comedy, Part 3

I wrote a paper as a final for my Comparative Lit class(320IC) 120 years ago at good ol’ Cal State Long Beach.
My position was that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was awesome. Better than you think, actually. Funnier than Life of Brian, in my opinion. Some references I make to types of comedy (such as 'inversion') are a reference to Enre Bergson's 7 elements of the comic, which I was studying at the time.
Anyway, here’s most of it.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is quite possibly the funniest and most intelligently written comic adventure in film history. By my count, there are thirty four distinct episodes in the film, all of which have their own thread of humor. In this paper I will examine some of the funniest individual scenes, analyzing them to see what makes them humorous. I will also look at the basic comic elements not previously mentioned and see where in the film they can be found. Monty Python’s Holy Grail is a brilliantly funny movie that deserves to be ranked with the best of all time.
Monty Python was a comedy troupe that was keenly aware of history. This is why they are so adept at mocking historical events. They are also very intelligent. This translated into their humor at almost every level. This brings us to the first scene.


Thoughts on Comedy Part (something)
The “Constitutional Peasant Scene.” This scene occurs when King Arthur (the late Graham Chapman) approaches a castle with the intent of finding out the name of the lord who lives there. When Arthur tries to find out, he runs up against an unusually intelligent peasant (Michael Palin.) The peasants in this scene are actually just toiling in the fields; stacking mud. There is a bit of Bergson’s ‘inversion' here as the lowly peasant berates Arthur for “wielding supreme executive power” without a mandate from the masses.
A female peasant expresses surprise that they even have a king because she didn’t vote for him, and she thought they were an autonomous collective. Now, this type of conversation just DID NOT happen at this time. The intelligence of the humor makes it funny. There are also ‘political’ references here. Palins character goes on and on about living in a dictatorship where there are class differences. The allusions to Modern England are very clear. There is also a bit of ‘mistaken identity’ with nobody knowing who King Arthur is and who he is the king of (“Who are the Britons?” “We all are, and I am your king.”) The scene ends with Arthur becoming upset with the peasant for not shutting up and calling him a “Bloody peasant.” Palin then looks at his fellow downtrodden peasants and asks them if they saw him being ‘repressed.’ The present creeping into the past. The confusion and out-of-time political jargon is what makes the humor.



The next scene to look at is the “Black Knight” scene. Every scene is, of course, a farce and a parody of the quest for the holy Grail stories, and the accompanying heroics which are always included. In this scene, Arthur stumbles along to find a fight between two knights. The battle is fierce and the black knight wins. Arthur asks this brave knight to join him at his court in Camelot. The knight remains silent until Arthur tries to cross the nearby bridge (which seems to span a very small stream). “None shall pass,” says the black knight. They argue and a fight ensues. Arthur chops off one of the knight’s arms. The knight refuses to admit his arm is off and calls it merely a “flesh wound”. The black knight loses another arm and his legs to Arthur’s sword, and throughout will not concede defeat, or even that he is not winning. Finally, Arthur leaves the black knight torso behind and crosses the bridge. This scene succeeds because the black knight suffers from Bergson’s ‘absence of feeling’. His limbs are systematically removed and he has no reaction whatsoever. Also, the way in which the arms just fall off and blood spurts from the body is so silly and unreal as to be funny. This is a great ‘sight gag’. And through it all, the scene is played very straight, as if this were a serious film and not a comedy.


Python just HAD to include a scene where someone might be burned at the stake. This is the case in the May We Burn Her? scene. Villagers bring a young girl to Sir Bedevere claiming she is a witch. They have obviously dressed her up as a witch. But, keeping in line with the Pythonic ways, they still go through the process, of trying to find out, logically, how they can tell if she is a witch or not. If she weighs the same as a duck she’s made of wood, and since both wood and witches burn, she would , naturally, be a witch. Absolutely ridiculous logic. Beautifully funny. This scene makes a farce out of ancient knowledge. It also has a little of the ‘mistaken identity,’ as the young girl looks like a witch and is subsequently burned. The humor comes from the fact that it is VERY obvious that she is innocent, (with one villager actually says “burn her anyway”) and from the strange process that proves her guilty.



One of the most overlooked scenes, in terms of people acknowledging its humor, is the A Blessing From the Lord scene. In this scene, Arthur and his knights are traveling along when they get an animated message from the Lord. The Lord, in a booming, majestic voice, calls to “Arthur, King of the Britons.” Then, as Python likes to do, they give the Lord a very human side to him. He, the Lord, sort of stops being his booming majestic self to step aside and be cross at Arthur for groveling. He then becomes upset at Arthur for saying he is sorry, averting his eyes and goes on to complain that “those miserable psalms. They’re SO depressing.” And after being angry and oh so human, the Lord becomes regal again and continues his grand oratory, directing Arthur and his knights to find the Holy Grail. Very funny when you break it down. The “language” used, as in many other scenes, is modern in its nature and easy to identify with. A very short scene, but one that has some mimicry and some great parody of divine intervention.


A peculiar scene comes far later in the movie when, led by the very strange Tim the Enchanter, the knights approach a cave guarded by “a creature so foul, so cruel, no man has fought with it. . .and lived!” This foul creature is later seen to be an ordinary looking white rabbit. The scene is played VERY straight, which creates the humor. The rabbit turns out to be as vicious as advertised, and the knights call upon Brother Manard and the Holy Hand Grenade. This is uproariously funny. Like a sacred religions ritual, the jewel encrusted grenade is presented to Arthur. The Book of Armaments ( a great ‘allusion’ to holy scriptures) is consulted. In language that is of the time, the grenade and its uses are described: “And Saint Atilla raised the hand grenade up on high saying, ‘O Lord bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.’ And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and. . .” The brother goes on to describe, in wonderfully TOO MUCH detail, how to throw the weapon. The use of the old English with the odd references from the present day (the grenade, breakfast cereals, etc) bring the humor forth. When the rabbit attacks it is a great ‘sight gag’, much like the Black Knight scene.

There are other comic elements not mentioned, yet still in the movie. One is the ‘chase scene.’ After entering the cave, the knights must flee from the Legendary Black Beast of Aaaggghhh. This is all done through animation and the knights are saved from almost certain death “when suddenly the animator suffered a fatal heart attack, and the quest for the Holy Grail could continue.” Not much of a chase scene, but it was probably meant to be that way. ‘Romance’ almost makes it in the movie, although only in one scene. It is when Sir Galahad, sworn to chastity, goes to Castle Anthrax (a funny incidental name for a castle) to find the Grail, and is then surrounded by “eight score blonde and brunettes, all between the ages of 16 and 19 ½” who spend their days “dressing, undressing, and making exciting underwear.” Galahad is just about to give in to the hoard of beautiful women when he is saved by Sir Lancelot from the peril of oral sex (“Let me go back in there and face the peril.” “Nope, it’s too perilous.”) There is a Bergsonian ‘repetition’ when Arthur continually mistakes the number three for the number five. It is seen in the Holy Hand Grenade scene and the Bridge of Death scene. There are far too many sight gags to mention, but the film is chock to the brim with them. And, finally, there is a ‘coincidence’ when the knights all meet up in the forest with the Knights Who Until Recently Said Ni!

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a beautifully constructed comedy which uses intelligence and farce to bring about the humor. Modern times intrude on the past. Not every aspect of the comic is included in the film, but they don’t seem to be needed. Even the ‘happy ending’ is discarded as being too conventional, and the movie does not suffer for its loss. Holy Grail is at every level a top notch comedy that should be appreciated even more than it is now, which is saying something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZafURKRLPg&feature=related