Word: pythonism
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...MONTY PYTHON'S BRAND of humor always seemed peculiarly suited to the ear, not the eye. The ridiculous inflections of the members' voices, the bizarre intellectual and literary allusions, the often crude, even downright scatological sounds captured on record--all these ingredients first sold me on Monty Python several years ago. Indeed, I credit the comedy troupe's Monty Python's Previous Record with having taught me the true, wrenched-gut meaning of a guffaw. The divine mission to convert friends to the joys of these whacked-out Britons soon followed this revelation; I had heard the true sound...
...airing old re-runs of the group's BBC television series came as very welcome news in those days, and the prospect of being disappointed or even failing to be amused never crossed my mind. Yet disappointment and the nervous giggle did mark my response to that first Monty Python re-run, and the process of a previously inconceivable disenchantment first set in right then and there. What had sounded on the stereo like an irrepressible source of path-breaking humor came off on the screen as just so many English misfits with a limited talent for slapstick antics...
...fault lay not with the players, but with the listener. The two sides of that one record had aroused expectations of unrelenting hilarity from these foreign jesters, and any sensation short of these unrealistic demands was bound to come off as a letdown. Looking back now, this onetime Monty Python groupie realizes what was wrong with that TV re-run; adding the visual dimension to the already warped dialogue of the troupe did not add much to the humor, but it did effectively shatter the mystique surrounding Monty Python stemming from my ignorance of the group's background and appearance...
...Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The British comedy group Monty Python has a sense of humor that shines on record and goes over well on television; unfortunately, a feature-length film can accommodate only so many ludicrous even offensive gags before the well runs dry. Seeing an insolent knight in armor whacked down to a limbless torso may amuse the warped souls among us, but this sweeping satire of the Middle Ages soon exhausts the range of laughable subjects that kicked around in King Arthur's day. Scenes occasionally crop up that deserve a hearty guffaw; too bad they...
Jabberwocky. At the Harvard Square Theater, Friday at 7:55. With Monty Python and the Holy Grail...