PYTHON HUMOUR

         Stream of Consciousness

                  a) Gilliam's animation

         It is Eric Idle who had proposed that Terry Gilliam be brought into the group to provide a unifying graphic style, starting with the credit titles. Gilliam's animated collage with dancing heads and distinctive lettering was orchestrated to the strains of Sousa's March, "Liberty Bell", an appropriate and happy choice of tune which has since rendered it difficult for the band of the Grenadier Guards to include it in their repertory at Buckingham Palace without evoking Monty Python to everybody's mind and therefore provoking amusement from the crowd.

         Terry Gilliam has certainly had a greater influence on the style of Monty Python's Flying Circus than one can suppose. Indeed, one of the things that acted as a major influence on the programme was a cartoon that Terry Gilliam had done for Do Not Adjust Your Set, called "Elephants". It followed no logic in thought or progression and ran from one idea to another in a pure stream of consciousness manner. Roger Wilmut gives a description of this animation which, though in a clinical way, underlines the oddity of the cartoon :

      "A man who ignores a sign saying 'Beware of Elephants' is crushed by a falling elephant ; his head, left sticking out of the

 ground, is kicked around by a football team whose heads gradually join his in bouncing around. These heads now recede untill they become mere specks of dirt, part of an advertisement for soap powder presented by an animated Enoch Powell. […]."[1]

            It is from this cartoon that Palin and Jones got the idea that the whole show should be done in a similar manner, with ideas simply flowing on, one to the next, instead of the usual construction of sketches with a beginning, a middle and an end. Although Cleese and Chapman felt less concerned with the general format of the show, they accepted the idea because they thought it could enable them to explore new ground in their sketches.

         This concept was really something new in television comedy and had never been done before - maybe with the sole exception of the Goon Show on radio. Gilliam remembers : "I think everyone's background was in writing ordinary sketch material, so it took longer than we thought to break from it."[2]

         Anyway, the Pythons gradually learned to master this unconventional form of writing and claimed this stream of consciousness approach to comedy which gave the show its tempo and proved very successful. A good example of this concept can be found in the "Spanish Inquisition" sketch, a Python classic, and is in fact at the origin of the idea of this sketch. Palin and Jones were writing the first lines of a sketch in which one of the characters, exhausted by the  insistence of his interlocuter delivers the line "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition." At this stage Palin and Jones felt it was natural that the Spanish Inquisition should enter the scene :

"Lady Mountback (Cleveland):  Come in.

       Enters Reg, cap in hand.      

Reg (Chapman):  Trouble at mill.

Lady Mountback:  Oh no. What sort of trouble?

Reg:  One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.

Lady Mountback:  Pardon?

Reg:  One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.

Lady Mountback:  I don't understand what you're saying.

Reg (slightly irritatedly and with exaggeratedly clear accent):  One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.

Lady Mountback:  But what on earth does that mean?

Reg: I don't know. Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say there was trouble at the mill, that's all. I didn't expect a kind of  Spanish Inquisition.

       Jarring chord. The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal  Fang.

Ximinez (Palin):  Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…Our four…no…amongst our weapons…amongst our weaponry are such elements as fear, surprise…I'll come again. (exit and exeunt). […]"[3]

         This sketch illustrates well this new approach brought into the group by Terry Gilliam that became referred to as the Python stream of consciousness - obviously not to be confused with Virginia Woolf's!  

         Terry Gilliam's animations also gave to the show a unique, strange, sometimes obscure, often violent incomparable touch. Alexander Walker, reviewing the film And Now For Something Completely Different, noted how well Terry Gilliam's animations survived the transplantation from television to the cinema :

         "Blown up to billboard dimensions, the marble busts, cardboard dummies and Victorian worthies have a fie-fo-fum menace, more threateningly funny than ever. He's best when he draws blood…"[4]

         Alexander Walker points out here the paradox that threatening can be funny and that the juxtaposing or collageing of incompatible elements is an important determinant to the fun. This is, in the words of John O. Thompson, "the realm of the absurd".

                  b) Punchlines and links

         In addition to the many artistic applications of Gilliam's animations, it also served a more practical purpose. Those animations served to link sketches that the other five would not be able to link.

         Indeed, as we already mentioned, the major step that the Pythons were anxious to make was to free themselves from the necessity of the punchline. Peter Cook, at the time of Not Only…But Also…, had said to John Cleese that he could not resign himself to the fact that  you have to lose a sketch simply because it did not have a clear punchline.[5]

         However, up to Monty Python's Flying Circus it was generally considered necessary for any television sketch to terminate with a strong joke and any idea which did not lead to such an ending would have to be abandoned. The only exception to this rule was, once again, Spike Milligan. In fact with the Goon Show and later his television 'Q' series (Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8 and Q9), Milligan had already escaped from the rigidity of the conventional construction of sketches. Terry Jones remembers :

      "I remember looking at those shows and thinking, "Shit - he's done it!" He just totally ripped up all form and shape - and there we'd been writing three-minute sketches with beginnings, middles and ends - and Milligan started a sketch, and then it turned into something else."[6]

         It was this convention that the Pythons tried to challenge by the use of Gilliam's animations of course, but also by the use of recurring characters who would act as links between two sketches apparently with no relation at all. Thus in the Flying Circus, many sketches that  really have nothing in common are linked by recurrent characters or devices, including the use of captions to interrupt a sketch, interventions by 'the Colonel', or even more peculiarly by 'the Knight with the Rubber Chicken'. The latter would, when the Pythons were getting bored with one of their sketches, simply walk into the sketch, dressed entirely in a metal armour, hit one of the protagonists over the head with a rubber chicken and leave. This was a very silly but very efficient alternative to the traditional punchline. Like the Knight with the Rubber Chicken, the Colonel was another alternative the Pythons had found to the classical punchline to put an end to a sketch. Interpreted by Graham Chapman (One of the few figures of authority not played by John Cleese), he was capable of walking into almost any ongoing scene to change or to stop it, giving orders to the actors or the camera crew :

"African Native (Jones):  Full frontal nudity - not in this part of Esher.

Chartered Accountant (Cleese):  I would only perform a scene in which there was total frontal nudity.

       Cut to colonel.

Colonel (Chapman):  Now, I've noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I'm not having things getting silly. Those last two sketches I did I got very silly indeed, and that last one about the bed was even sillier. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do…except perhaps my wife and some of her friends…oh yes and Captain Johnston. Come to think of it most people like a good laugh more than I do. But that's beside the point. Now, let's have a good clean healthy outdoor sketch. Get some air into your lungs. Ten, nine, eight and all that.

       Cut to two hermits on a hillside."[7]

         More than a mere parody of the army, of authority and of people who try to dominate others, it often acted as a link considered as "very liberating" by Graham Chapman maybe in the sense that it allowed them to stop a sketch whenever they wanted or more likely for the sense of liberation and power that this part allowed him.[8]

         Some elements of absurd visual comedy, the like of which could be found in Gilliam's animations were also used in "live" comedy for a similar purpose. Two obvious examples of this are the 'sixteen-ton weight' and the 'giant hammer', very similar to the giant foot that would fall from the sky and mash everything at the end of the opening titles. Likewise, the 'giant hammer' or the 'sixteen-ton weight' would occasionally swat a character becoming too boring. The Pythons also discovered that explosions could provide radical alternatives to the more conventional punchline. Thus, a number of items were blown up in the course of the series, among which an intermission sign, an entire orchestra performing the exploding version of "The Blue Danube" or John Cleese would simply announce : "And now the BBC will explode", thus putting an end to the sketch in progress.

         Finally the absurdism of Monty Python allowed them to have the protagonists of a sketch simply decide to stop acting :

"Interviewer (Cleese):  This is the silliest sketch I've ever been in.

Badger (Idle):  Shall we stop it?

Interviewer:  Yeah, all right. (They get up and walk out)

CAPTION: 'THE END'

CREDITS"[9]

         Thus, even if the Pythons were not actually  the first to avoid the traditionally expected punchline, they brought this concept to the extreme and made the first television comedy series in which the sketches are flowing from the beginning to the end, submitting to no rule but the stream of consciousness of the writers/performers.

                        c) Disruption of television conventions

         As we already mentioned, the advent of television in the 50's and its rapid expansion (1969 was the year when colour television came to BBC-1 and ITV) had a great impact on an entire generation, including the Pythons. The novelty was that the Pythons were among the very first to use the television medium to parody television itself, thus biting the hand that was feeding them. Like anything Python, this criticism was achieved by the absurd. There seemed to be something of an obsession with television presentation and I cannot think of a single episode of the Flying Circus which does not mock the techniques of television.

         The famous "And now for something completely different" was a phrase frequently used by BBC presenters before the creation of the Flying Circus. Apparently devised by John Cleese and Graham Chapman to link their sketches, this sentence came to be said by John Cleese in a variety of unexpected situations. Very quickly, this catchphrase came to be so strongly identified with the group that when writing about Monty Python, newspapers almost inevitably used it.

         One of the first recurring characters of the Flying Circus was the so-called "It's" Man. His interventions were often limited to the uttering of "It's" as an introduction to the opening titles. Michael Palin explained that this character - he himself played, wearing torn, ragged clothing- was intended to be a former smooth TV presenter who had fallen on hard times. This presenter would have been allowed to do long programme announcements in the past but was now allowed to deliver only a one-or-two-word introduction. he would usually appear in various unusual situations, for example, sitting on a cage at the zoo or standing in a bikini.[10]

         In fact the Pythons made few concessions to television conventions. Nevertheless they could not avoid using the opening titles, a basic convention in TV programmes. As they had no other choice than to use them, they managed to use them in as unconventional a manner as possible. Thus, the opening titles, designed by Terry Gilliam, seldom appeared at the very beginning. Sometimes the opening titles would appear in the middle of the show, sometimes even at the end, on other occasions, the opening titles at the beginning would be immediately followed by the closing titles, etc. Opening titles could also serve satire as for instance in this show under the theme that the "Queen Mother would tune in sometime during the show". They announced that they would continue "completely as normal". As one could have expected, the titles were royal and accompanied by "God Save the Queen". Monty Python even carried over this unconventional use of the titles to cinema in their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The opening titles are in eccentric style with faulty subtitles and several interruptions. The credits are even more original for the very good reason that they simply do not exist. In the last scene of the film, Arthur, the knights of the round table and an entire army are preparing to charge a castle occupied by obnoxious French soldiers. Suddenly there is a wail of a siren and a couple of police cars roar round in front of the charging army. The police leap out and stop them. They bundle the knights into the black Maria and the van drives off. The police inspector then goes toward the camera, says "All right, put that away sonny", and puts his hand over the lens. The film runs out through the gate and the projector shines on the screen. No other notice is given to inform the audience that the film is finished, not even the caption "The End". According to certain sources however, in the original version shown in the cinemas, after a blank screen, a caption announced "a new film completely free with the Monty Python film : The Credits." It included the actual credits of the film in a very elaborate animation.  

         Another example of disruption of the techniques of television was the voluntary inappropriate or absurd use of applauding audiences. Most TV shows used a cutaway shot of the audience in the studio, applauding. The Pythons decided to use this traditional, almost

conventional image, but obviously in their own fashion. Instead of filming the real studio audience, they used a stock film clip they found in the BBC library. This black and white film showed an audience of older ladies. They used this clip on several occasions in their parodies of television shows so that the ladies were apparently applauding things they would normally not tolerate.

         Michael Palin said that in fact it was not that removed from reality. As at the beginning nobody knew what the shows would be like, the audience that assembled at the BBC studio was more or less like those old ladies.[11] But their reaction of course was not as enthusiastic as the ladies in the clip. Among other very silly things, the old ladies applauded a man with two noses, a man with a stoat through his head, a man with a tape recorder up his nose or the 'Knight with the Rubber Chicken' we already mentioned. It is interesting to note that the Pythons quickly became aware of the search for sensationalism of the television medium.

         However, the real novelty brought by Monty Python was what is sometimes referred to as the "format sketch". It consists in taking the format of something like a television quiz programe, a talk show, or anything with a strong and recognizable style of presentation and then emptying it of its content and replacing it with something absurd.

         Documentaries and talk shows proved to be among the easiest targets, along with game shows, sports broacasts, etc. The topics of the documentaries could range from "crime" to "life-and-death struggles" ; from "wildlife" to "the sexual perversions of mollusks". Sometimes, two documentaries would occur at the same time, playing havoc with the presenter. In fact they could do almost any type of documentary, provided it differed from the conventional image it usually bears. A perfect example of this is "The Mouse Problem" sketch, a talk show which could have been, in a more conventional way, about homosexuality or drugs :

"CAPTION: 'THE WORLD AROUND US'

CAPTION: 'THE MOUSE PROBLEM'

Linkman (Palin):  Yes. The Mouse Problem. This week 'The World Around Us' looks at the growing social phenomenon of Mice and Men. What makes a man want to be a mouse.

       Interviewer, Harold Voice, sitting facing a confessor. The confessor is badly lit and is turned away from camera.

Man (Cleese) (very slowly and painfully):  Well it's not a question of wanting to be a mouse…it just sort of happens to you. All of a sudden you realize…that's what you want to be.

Interviewer (Jones): And when did you first notice these…shall we say…tendencies?

Man:  Well…I was about seventeen and some mates and me went to a party, and, er…we had quite a lot to drink…and then some of the fellows there…started handing…cheese around…and well, just out of curiosity I tried a bit…and well that was that. […]"[12]

         Monty Python's Flying Circus also starred a variety of real newsreaders even though not necessarily from the BBC. Those real-life appearances on the show served to make the Python parodies particularly effective. Thus Peter Wood of ITV appeared in the fourth series to report that "the Second World War has entered a sentimental stage". Likewise, Richard Baker of the BBC's Nine O'Clock News appeared in the thirty-third programme, sitting at the traditional news desk and delivered a silly piece of information as well as a silly question relative to the content earlier in the show. Again, this sequence was immediately followed by another unconventional ending true to the Python style :

"Richard Baker:  We've just heard that an explosion in the kitchens of the house of Lords has resulted in the breakage of seventeen storage jars. Police ruled out foul play. (pause) Lemon curry?

       Fade out. Fade up on film of seashore, waves breaking on the beach.

SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'INTERLUDE'

       The film goes on for quite a long time. Eventually the announcer, dressed in medieval Spanish soldier's costume, walks into shot.

Announcer (Cleese) (to camera):  Um, I'm sorry about the…the, er pause, only I'm afraid the show is a couple of minutes short this week. You know, sometimes the shows aren't really quite as er, long as they ought to be. (pause; he looks round at the sea) Beautiful, isn't it. (he walks out of shot; long pause; he walks back) Look there's not really a great deal of point in your, sort of hanging on at your end, because I'm afraid there aren't any more jokes or anything.

       He walks out of shot. We stay with the film for quite a long time before we finally fade out." [13]

         What is most surprising when looking at those examples is to see how aware the Pythons were, already in 1969, of the rapid expansion of television, of the conventions it was going to develop and, more important, of the failings it could imply such as scurrility or sensationalism. The subsequent years, up to today, would only confirm the predictions of the Pythons. Thus, all the critiques and parodies the group made about television almost thirty years ago were imitated by shows like Not The Nine O'Clock News, ten years after the Flying Circus. They are still valid today and television still has a significant impact on our culture. This probably accounts for the modernity of Monty Python and explains why people of my generation, that is to say, people that were not even born at the time of the Flying Circus can appreciate the show without any impression of it being outdated.