When did ‘And now for something completely different’ become ‘And now for more of exactly the same’?
The Python’s arrived on a wave of Sixties Pop sensibility, in the era of Warhol’s Factory, the boutique, high street fashion, the disposable dress, the 3 minute hit forgotten in a week, everyone’s 15 minutes of fame; when a new world must have seemed as fresh and alive with the potential of each new morning. Now those sketches of the early TV series, conceived in a minute’s laughter and delivered with a throwaway abandon have been preserved, fossilised on disc (like the ‘disposable’ Bubblegum soundtrack of the era) and are now, half a century on, re-presented on stage by pensioner Pythons; but not just the sketches, the actual, religiously scripted words. These words (‘This parrot is deceased’ ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition’), however, are barely in need of formal scripting as they have long since ascended from throwaway humour into a litany mouthed by the faithful; that seriously ‘mad’ mob (of the ‘You’ve got to be mad to work here’ genre of insanity) who love nothing more than a sense of ritual to help them find security in the world. You can see them dressed in wigs, basques and stockings at Rocky Horror revivals, in full battle dress in Star Trek conventions. Bereft themselves of spontaneity, originality and humour, they worship at the altar of an iconoclastic TV programme, memorising the words with the conscientious focus of an autistic Catholic altar boy; disputing any variation in the text as avidly as bishops over an ecumenical matter; their ritual adulation turning the energy of innovation into a stale museum exhibit.
This familiar toddler critique of their bedtime storytellers (‘No, uncle Tel, Cheeky Monkey cracked the policeman’s head, not the detective’s), the same words in the same order, confirming all’s well with the world so they can place their insecurity in the tidy box and fall asleep in peace, is the pantomime chorus barking from the stalls. How far is this from the original impulse of a sketch show intended to wake up the world (well, at least the world of TV light entertainment).
Seeing the sketches again is, actually, a depressing experience. How much better to leave them as a warm glow in the rosy distance? Comedy rarely transcends the decades, especially if it is simulating spontaneity. We change, we build upon the work of the innovative pioneers, we rise on their shoulders to greater, more sophisticated heights (we hope), we reflect our own world, our own context. In retrospect, isolated from their time, there is no intrinsic humour in any of those early pieces (a man complains about being sold a dead parrot, a Canadian Mountie sings of the joys of a transgender lifestyle – it’s the stuff of Oxbridge reviews). It was always about context (a childish rebellion against a stuffy, sexless conservative world commanded by a hollow authority and ripe for change). The humour came from the shock value, the strangeness of a series of pointless, (accidently) Dadaist and moderately anti-establishment vignettes; strange at least to the average couch potato conditioned to absorb a diet of Eric and Hattie and Terry and June (even the names sound time-bound, pre-watershed, pre-sexual enlightenment). It was the Sixties, it was about being different and challenging; the only real strangeness being how such an attitude became confined to only one decade.
Don’t Look Back was the title of Pennebaker’s Dylan movie (opening two years before the first Python show). Don’t Look Back. Why? Well, because we might become a nation dependent upon tribute bands and the geriatric Stones for our entertainment. Dolly Parton might even headline Glastonbury. What does that tell us about our present level of creativity? Surely, we should be inspired by the past, not slavishly recreate it.
And what of the Python’s themselves? These once vibrant, free spirited innovators gave up comedy (quite wisely) years ago (only Cleese persisted, unwisely, beyond the 70s) and set off on tangents of varied success before settling all too easily into the role of national treasures, like the generations of public schoolboys who followed them (does anyone really find Stephen Fry funny now? Did they ever?). It’s a canny career move which requires no new material, no comic timing and no more response than the hum of polite, reverential laughter.
The reunion is a mistaken concept: the body without the idea, the bodywork without the engine. You can’t recreate the past. It’s gone. That’s why we call it the past. It’s like exhuming a former lover, inserting a voice box into her rotting carcass, providing it with recordings of all her lovely, ordinary, memorable words and replaying them over and over until whatever joy, exuberance or poignancy they retained (most vividly after her death) evaporate into meaningless ennui. Death is natural and there are good reasons to bury the deceased. It is the memories which will live, if we don’t kill these too.
DG 2014
The Python’s arrived on a wave of Sixties Pop sensibility, in the era of Warhol’s Factory, the boutique, high street fashion, the disposable dress, the 3 minute hit forgotten in a week, everyone’s 15 minutes of fame; when a new world must have seemed as fresh and alive with the potential of each new morning. Now those sketches of the early TV series, conceived in a minute’s laughter and delivered with a throwaway abandon have been preserved, fossilised on disc (like the ‘disposable’ Bubblegum soundtrack of the era) and are now, half a century on, re-presented on stage by pensioner Pythons; but not just the sketches, the actual, religiously scripted words. These words (‘This parrot is deceased’ ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition’), however, are barely in need of formal scripting as they have long since ascended from throwaway humour into a litany mouthed by the faithful; that seriously ‘mad’ mob (of the ‘You’ve got to be mad to work here’ genre of insanity) who love nothing more than a sense of ritual to help them find security in the world. You can see them dressed in wigs, basques and stockings at Rocky Horror revivals, in full battle dress in Star Trek conventions. Bereft themselves of spontaneity, originality and humour, they worship at the altar of an iconoclastic TV programme, memorising the words with the conscientious focus of an autistic Catholic altar boy; disputing any variation in the text as avidly as bishops over an ecumenical matter; their ritual adulation turning the energy of innovation into a stale museum exhibit.
This familiar toddler critique of their bedtime storytellers (‘No, uncle Tel, Cheeky Monkey cracked the policeman’s head, not the detective’s), the same words in the same order, confirming all’s well with the world so they can place their insecurity in the tidy box and fall asleep in peace, is the pantomime chorus barking from the stalls. How far is this from the original impulse of a sketch show intended to wake up the world (well, at least the world of TV light entertainment).
Seeing the sketches again is, actually, a depressing experience. How much better to leave them as a warm glow in the rosy distance? Comedy rarely transcends the decades, especially if it is simulating spontaneity. We change, we build upon the work of the innovative pioneers, we rise on their shoulders to greater, more sophisticated heights (we hope), we reflect our own world, our own context. In retrospect, isolated from their time, there is no intrinsic humour in any of those early pieces (a man complains about being sold a dead parrot, a Canadian Mountie sings of the joys of a transgender lifestyle – it’s the stuff of Oxbridge reviews). It was always about context (a childish rebellion against a stuffy, sexless conservative world commanded by a hollow authority and ripe for change). The humour came from the shock value, the strangeness of a series of pointless, (accidently) Dadaist and moderately anti-establishment vignettes; strange at least to the average couch potato conditioned to absorb a diet of Eric and Hattie and Terry and June (even the names sound time-bound, pre-watershed, pre-sexual enlightenment). It was the Sixties, it was about being different and challenging; the only real strangeness being how such an attitude became confined to only one decade.
Don’t Look Back was the title of Pennebaker’s Dylan movie (opening two years before the first Python show). Don’t Look Back. Why? Well, because we might become a nation dependent upon tribute bands and the geriatric Stones for our entertainment. Dolly Parton might even headline Glastonbury. What does that tell us about our present level of creativity? Surely, we should be inspired by the past, not slavishly recreate it.
And what of the Python’s themselves? These once vibrant, free spirited innovators gave up comedy (quite wisely) years ago (only Cleese persisted, unwisely, beyond the 70s) and set off on tangents of varied success before settling all too easily into the role of national treasures, like the generations of public schoolboys who followed them (does anyone really find Stephen Fry funny now? Did they ever?). It’s a canny career move which requires no new material, no comic timing and no more response than the hum of polite, reverential laughter.
The reunion is a mistaken concept: the body without the idea, the bodywork without the engine. You can’t recreate the past. It’s gone. That’s why we call it the past. It’s like exhuming a former lover, inserting a voice box into her rotting carcass, providing it with recordings of all her lovely, ordinary, memorable words and replaying them over and over until whatever joy, exuberance or poignancy they retained (most vividly after her death) evaporate into meaningless ennui. Death is natural and there are good reasons to bury the deceased. It is the memories which will live, if we don’t kill these too.
DG 2014
