Laughing at the Abyss

Today marks the 40th birthday of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  Yesterday was the 20th anniversary Graham Chapman‘s death.

It’s time for a Python Post.

I can’t say I’ve been a longtime fan of the Pythons.  I grew up a sheltered kid in rural America, and so never even heard of the Monty Python until I made it to college (just a few years after poor Graham Chapman left us).

But once there, I ran into a veritable army of geeks who seemed to speak a different language.  They’d been allowed to go off to Renaissance Fairs when they were teenagers (while I only heard about them on t.v.).  Heck, even my t.v. viewing was limited.  They’d gotten to watch t.v. shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 (while my family was some of the last hold-outs against cable television).

But nothing made me more isolated than when they spoke this odd language of theirs.  High-pitched fake English accents yipping (sometimes drunkenly)  “We are the Knights Who Say Ni!  Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.”

Then they’d laugh.

I’d found out over time that the lines were from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.  In college, I’d watched The Holy Grail along with its superior successor, The Life of Brian.  I liked The Life of Brian, but didn’t know what the fuss was about.  What was it that led people to be so devoted to this stuff that they memorized the lines?

I thought the Python fans were just a brood of geeky histrionics united by their broken sense of humor.

Fast forward to this past summer.  My husband bought a boxed set of the BBC’s Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1/2 off at our local bookstore).

This was what the big deal was all about.

When I watched Flying Circus, I realized that I was enjoying an absurdist’s banquet.  I don’t want to take anything away from the Pythons later work (much of which I’ve yet to sample, to be honest).  But I’ve found that Flying Circus remains, some 40 years after its debut, the smartest program on television (okay, on DVD on television, but well, you get the point).

Yes, a lot of the humor is lost on me, as an American.  Flying Circus was, at its heart, a satire of the BBC (circa late-60s).  Some of the references must sail over my head.  Yet at its heart, the show was, I think, about taking any sacred cow and exposing it to a high-IQ, low-brow, absurdist roast.

In the world of Flying Circus, Great historical figures abound (often playing soccer football against each other, or competing in game shows, or making odd appearances in courtrooms).  Bishops strut around their neighborhood turf like Mafia dons, surrounded by an entourage of Luca Brasi-esque Priests.  CIA agents have their brains transplanted into dogs to perfect their disguise. Dysfunctional families compete for the honor of being the nation’s “Most Awful” brood, judged by a celebrity panel that would have made “The Gong Show” proud. Pantomime horses face a “life or death struggle” due to an economic downturn.

Skits stop without punch lines.  The fourth wall comes down.  Characters and situations reoccur out of place in the narrative.  Segues between skits blur reality and take storytelling in the fractal direction.  All of this decades before deconstruction became all the rage.

Such was the genius of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Which brings us to the late, great Graham Chapman.  Fans of Bizarro fiction should take note that it was Chapman’s influence that contributed the quality of high weirdness to much of Flying Circus. Chapman’s contribution to the writing of Python sketches was often to rev up the oddity to such a degree that it stopped being a change of degree and became a change of kind.

I consider Chapman a huge influence on the fiction I’ve begun to write as an author of Bizarro fiction, so I feel the need to give him the space he deserves.  Stay tuned for a Graham Chapman tribute in the next few days.

For more information on what the Pythons are up to these days, check out Python Online