Monty Python Research Articles

The Planning and Care of Data

Questions such as, "How do we secure this data?" work only if you ask them at the start, and not when some lawyers or government officials are sitting in a conference room, rooting through your data and logs, and making threatening noises under their breath. All the things we care about with our data require forethought, but it seems in our rush to create "stakeholder value" we are willing to sacrifice these important attributes and just act like data gourmands, until, like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, we explode, scattering half-digested data all over the dining room.

Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest by Kyokutei Bakin

Reviewed by: Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest by Kyokutei Bakin William C. Hedberg Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest. By Kyokutei Bakin. Translated by Glynne Walley. Cornell University Press, 2021. 348 pages. ISBN: 9781501755170 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Pity the scholar of early modern Japanese narrative with proselytizing ambitions. While our colleagues researching Renaissance England or Golden Age Spain can be reasonably confident that a mixed audience at a Modern Language Association convention is at least passingly familiar with the historical context and plotline of, say, Macbeth or Don Quixote, those in our field are afforded no such luxury. When presenting our research to nonspecialists at conferences, we reluctantly become participants in Monty Python's All-England Summarize Proust Competition, racing our way through tedious but necessary summary in the hope of securing a few short minutes for explication and analysis before we end. Even among peers, the twists and turns, concealed identities, and multigenerational vendettas central to genres such as yomihon, jōruri, and kabuki defy easy summary and require valuable space in our conference talks and publications to adequately contextualize. Confronted with the relentless avalanche of names, titles, battles, and historical allusions found in a baggy monster like Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden, one is initially [End Page 344] tempted to sympathize with the novelist Martin Amis, who in describing Quixote wrote, "The question 'What happens next?' has no meaning, because there is no next … there is only more."1 Or is there? Among scholars of Edo-period literature, one of the most welcome critical interventions of the past thirty years has been the insistent and long-overdue argument that the texts we study are undergirded by a rigorous system of narrative logic that is readily discernible to any reader willing to pay attention to the author's (often heavy-handed) hints about how to read the work. Seminal scholarship by, most recently, Peter Kornicki, Jonathan Zwicker, Satoko Shimazaki, Patrick Caddeau, and Rebekah Clements has directed our attention away from the narrative proper and toward the prefaces, interlineal commentary, illustrations, maps, charts, lists of characters, commemorative poems, postfaces, and advertisements that explained how texts like Hakkenden were meant to be interpreted and that were, for early modern readers, inseparable from the narrative itself. Most of these paratextual features were excised in modern typeset editions of the works, and despite our frequent reliance upon these modern editions, it is a useful exercise to think of them as butterfly specimens that have been pithed and mounted in a display case: readily visible and easily legible, but wholly shorn of the life, movement, and context that gave them meaning as social beings. It is to Glynne Walley's immense credit that he brings the materiality of early modern Japanese fiction to the forefront of his translation of Nansō Satomi hakkenden (The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of Southern Fusa; 1814–1842) and, in so doing, gives us a keen sense of the paratextual density and cosmopolitan dimensions of this text. Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest contains the inaugural volume (shū) of Hakkenden and four chapters of the second volume, sensibly concluding at a natural break in the narrative with the canine Yatsufusa's immaculate impregnation of Satomi Yoshizane's daughter, Fusehime; the release of the embryonic spirits of the eponymous dog-knights; and the beginning of the warrior-monk Chudai's quest to locate and gather the warriors. As Bakin himself reminds the reader in a postface to the final chapter included in the translation, "everything from the 1st Book of the Inaugural Volume through to the end of the present Book constitutes but the opening stage of the whole" (p. 292), and as Walley notes in the translator's introduction, An Ill-Considered Jest comprises less than one-tenth of the complete Hakkenden. Before discussing the translation itself, I must give due praise to its translator for his Yoshizane-esque ambitions in embarking on such a venture, and to Cornell University Press for supporting an epic project and ensuring that the job is done well. An Ill-Considered...

Reframing "Nothing About Us Without Us": Comics and Intellectual Disability

Reframing "Nothing About Us Without Us"Comics and Intellectual Disability Susan M. Squier (bio) The slogan "Nothing About Us Without Us" expresses the urgent need felt by people with disabilities for access to voice and control in their struggle against oppression. Dating back at least to 1993 when it was used by Michael Masutha and William Rowland of Disabled People South Africa, who borrowed it from a disability rights gathering in Eastern Europe, this slogan has spread around the world as people with disabilities pressed for their rights (Charlton).1 Most recently, in About Us, an edited collection that compiles personal essays by people with disabilities that were first published in the New York Times "Disability" column, editors Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Peter Catapano explain that their title echoes the "unifying call of our civil rights movement—'Nothing About Us Without Us'" because these "stories are claims to self-representation and recognition that this slogan demands" (xxiii). Comics, too, work well as a vehicle for authenticating discourse, as I will establish in a moment.2 Yet comics addressing intellectual disability (ID) seem to stand in uneasy relation to the demands for voice and control that this slogan expresses. Analyzing three comics about intellectual disability, I will argue that their strategies of collaboration and appeal to multiple literacies recalibrate the claim for authority in representation, so that "nothing about us without us" emerges as a practice that enables—and transforms—both people with intellectual disabilities and the artists and writers who live and work alongside them. But first, let's consider the authenticating power of the comics medium in general. Through the process of what Thierry Groensteen calls iconic redundancy, comics repeatedly represent the protagonist through multiple manifestations of the body on the comics page, as well as through its continuing physical presence in the cartoonist's drawn line (124). The comic thus offers visual testimony that moves beyond abstraction, normalization, and marginalization. As Frederik Byrn Køhlert explores in a fascinating study of comics and marginal identities, comics provide authentication for speakers by drawing on a multiplicity of modes of representation, or "multiliteracies," including "Linguistic Meaning, Visual Meaning, Audio Meaning, Gestural Meaning, Spatial Meaning, and the Multimodal patterns of meaning that relate the first five modes of meaning to each other" (15–16).3 Autobiographical comics in particular rely on a range of strategies for authenticating identity. As enumerated by Elisabeth El Refaie, they include "explicit authentication," "authentication through detail and quoted dialogue," "authentication through documentation," [End Page 117] "authentication by 'making strange,'" and even the strategy of "subverting authenticity" (144, 148, 158, 165, 172). In short, by juxtaposing words and images to both show and tell, to create tension or to confirm, and by playing with temporal reversal and the exploitation of multiple perspectives, the medium of comics links the material with the cultural, enabling an expression that testifies to the embodied experience of impairment, as well as the cultural context within which it occurs. In comics, visual images of the authors' bodies carry narrative meanings. Take, for example, Kaisa Leka's I Am Not These Feet, Peter Dunlap-Shohl's My Degeneration, and Al Davison's Spiral Cage. After Kaisa Leka has chosen to have her painful, congenitally arthritic feet amputated, we watch her—in the guise of her mouse avatar—learn to walk with prosthetic feet. The contrast between Kaisa's fantasy self-image and the technically accurate diagram of her prosthetic leg conveys the emotional tension she must manage after her surgery, accommodating her playful spirit to the iron demands of physical rehabilitation. Such complexity is also key to a page from My Degeneration in which cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl shares some of the walking techniques he has devised to counteract the festination and palsy of Parkinson's disease. The allusion to a Monty Python sketch ("Walk this Way"), the graphic integration of stop motion imaging to capture each increment of his walk, and the visual inclusion of avatars of multiple ages and genders all convey what Dunlap-Shohl calls "the malicious whimsy of this strange affliction" (35). And in Al Davison's Spiral Cage, the "particular and attention-grabbing visuality of the disabled body" (K...

Book Review: And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python

Book Review: And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python

Systems thinking averts apocalypses now and in the future: why we should always look on the bright side of life

ABSTRACT Systems thinking and analysis from the civil and environmental engineering communities have been highly successful in mitigating the effects of natural and man-made hazards. Not surprisingly, the United Nations Human Development Index shows steady improvement for every nation since its implementation in 1990. The world has never been healthier, wealthier, or more educated than at the present. Climate change and sustainability remain as significant challenges to be faced. It will be shown, though, that economic and life-safety losses from climate change are often exaggerated and do not reflect wealth creation, human capital, and new improved technologies. There is an urgent need for systems-led approaches and there is a proud record of accomplishments in the past that should equally as well translate into the future. This paper will discuss these issues, as well as briefly describe the importance of systems engineering in dealing with new and emerging threats, as well as the political imperative. The paper will also highlight that there is much to be optimistic about the future, and in the ability of systems thinking to meet any challenges. And to quote Monty Python we should try to ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.

The impact of multimodal cohesion on attention and interpretation in film

This article presents results of an exploratory investigation combining multimodal cohesion analysis and eye-tracking studies. Multimodal cohesion, as a tool of multimodal discourse analysis, goes beyond linguistic cohesive mechanisms to enable the construction of cross-modal discourse structures that systematically relate technical details of audio, visual and verbal modalities. Patterns of multimodal cohesion from these discourse structures were used to design eye-tracking experiments and questionnaires in order to empirically investigate how auditory and visual cohesive cues affect attention and comprehension. We argue that the cross-modal structures of cohesion revealed by our method offer a strong methodology for addressing empirical questions concerning viewers’ comprehension of narrative settings and the comparative salience of visual, verbal and audio cues. Analyses are presented of the beginning of Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and a sketch from Monty Python filmed in 1971. Our approach balances the narrative-based issue of how narrative elements in film guide meaning interpretation and the recipient-based question of where a film viewer’s attention is directed during viewing and how this affects comprehension.

The Trial The Trail, Act 3 A Virtual Reality Drama Using Intelligent Agents

The Trail is an interactive drama running on an immersive VR system. Imagine Tarkovsky's Stalker, crossed with Alice Through the Looking Glass, crossed with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Now imagine embarking on a guided journey through this warped yet familiar landscape. Your guides are two intelligent agents, Patofil and Filopat. We consider a virtual reality drama to be a scripted play in which the computational agents are actors who have copies of the script, and one human audience member has been drafted to be a participant, but doesn't have a copy of the script. The computational actors must improvise reactions to the human participant's actions, but keep the play moving along in as close agreement to the script as possible. The goal is to provide the human participant with a specific emotional experience.

The Female Burden Visualized: Cinematic Representation of Women during Epidemics

The Female Burden Visualized: Cinematic Representation of Women during Epidemics

Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python

Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, <i>And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python</i>

Giving Away the Game – Scattershot Notes on Social Class and Other Afflictions

One of my earliest jobs was driving for an unregulated car service in New York. In the days before Uber they were called ‘gypsy cabs.’ One night I found myself on the business end of a revolver. Telling the tale to my dispatcher next day, he was staggeringly nonplussed. ‘Ya gotta put up with a lot,’ he said, ‘when you’re tryin’ t’ get ahead.’ ‘Yeah,’ I replied, disgusted, ‘even gettin’ your head blown off.’ Some time later, another driver, an African-American in a similar scenario, didn’t make it, emphasizing how much higher the stakes for a person of color. These are the real wages of work, I thought, and the rules of the game.&#x0D; My dispatcher’s nonchalance bespoke how invested in the game he was; in a set of beliefs, assumptions, and animating myths that keep the wheel of fortune going. Like the Monty Python skit about the collapsing tower, if too few invest in those myths, the entire edifice crumbles.&#x0D; The following is a personal essay that attempts to navigate the game’s parameters - social class, aspiration, and its attendant neurosis - and the myths that animate such notions as ‘getting ahead,’ ‘climbing the ladder,’ and the ‘American Dream,’ my country’s main (ideological) export. The approach is less theory-driven than empirical, phenomenological. Hence the numbered sections, a style popularized by Wittgenstein, Herbert Read and others. Here it doesn’t represent chronology so much as the elusive, episodic nature of the beast.

Return to Action

So we gotta get off our arses and stop just talking about it! Hear! Hear! I agree! It’s action that counts, not words, and we need action now! You’re right. We could sit around here all day, talking, passing resolutions, make clever speeches, it’s not gonna shift one Roman soldier! So let’s just stop gabbing on about it! It’s completely pointless and it’s getting us nowhere. I agree! This is a complete waste of time! They’ve arrested Brian! What? They’ve dragged him off! They’re gonna crucify him! Right! This calls for immediate discussion! (Monty Python, The Life of Brian, movie 1979). If you are haunted by anniversaries, the best thing is to ignore them! However, anniversaries as a periodical strategy of remembrance, sometimes of nostalgic feelings and mourning, may create an opportunity for applying new perspectives on both the past and the present, thereby creating new knowledge. We are more haunted, I believe, by all the inaugural or keynote speakers, keynote lectures and keynote articles, where well-established scholars, flattered by the request, seriously point towards the future, trying to predict trends and to draw the lines for future research by others. This is an overestimated academic genre. It is a genre concerning power over the discourse in the present and at least attempts to exercise this power in the future as well, most often in vain. However, and first of all, why in a multivocal world should we let anyone have a certain keynote status? Do they have a certain authority to lean back on? Or, as I would prefer, do they have good convincing examples to show? Secondly, are predictions about the future of any relevance to the community of teaching and research? Why not just wait and see what happens or clear your own path through the jungle of perspectives, methods and examples – free of authorities? Looking back on

Media Tourism and Its Role in Sustaining Scotland’s Tourism Industry

Popular media, including films, television, comics, videogames, and books, are an increasingly important aspect of contemporary tourism. This is especially the case in Scotland, where popular culture led to the development of Scotland’s tourism industry. In this article, we will describe the phenomenon of media-related tourism in Scotland with respect to three selected case studies within Scotland: First, Glenfinnan Viaduct, made famous by the Harry Potter film series; Second, Doune Castle, used as a set for Monty Python, Game of Thrones and more recently, Outlander; Third, Abbotsford, home of Sir Walter Scott, a classical novelist now celebrating his 250th Birthday Anniversary. In examining these case studies, the article will consider how sustainable media tourism is. This approached is from the lens of media tourism and its impact on rural communities, concerns over local infrastructure, wider understandings of media tourism as a growing sub-sector, and the sustainability of the wider Scottish tourism industry in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.

Humour and Antiquity in Film: Roman Scandals and Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Antiquity appears in films from the very beginning of cinema. As in other examples of reception, the presence of antiquity depends on the context of reception, the specificity of the medium which includes the relationship with the audience, as well as the personal mark of the author. The subject of this paper are two movies set in antiquity: Roman Scandals (1933) and The Life of Brian (1977). Both films are comedies, the plots of which are set in the ancient past, and both are satirical, meaning that they have a contemporary social sting. Also, both comedies belong to the genre of swords and sandals (if we take this as an umbrella term for all films related to antiquity, and not only the epic sagas of the mid-1950s and 1960s), revealing a similar, parodic attitude to the mentioned genre. The film Roman Scandals, a musical comedy with elements of burlesque, is set both in contemporary America (the midwestern city of West Rome) and ancient Rome, constructing the complex process of identification and differentiation with ancient Rome. All this has to do with the remarkable usage of Rome in American culture and history, especially since the time when America started to break ties with Britain. This is explicitly marked in the scene of the exhibition in the Museum of Rome, which, as it is emphasized, belongs to the period of the Roman invasion of Britain. Humorous twists are numerous, being constructed in language, in problems of adaptations and dialogues between cultures, and in the parody of the genre and its motifs. The Life of Brian also parodies the genre of swords and sandals and its subgenre – biblical and Christian movies. Although both films are set in antiquity, the humorous procedures construct the satirical tone, which always bears a contemporary social sting. The anachronisms, and overlapping of history and contemporariness are constructed differently in those two films. However, they both raise, among other things, a question crucial for the research field of classical reception (to which this paper belongs), and that is the way in which antiquity is used in the invention of tradition (Hobsbawm). The paper also gives attention to the genre of parody, which already appeared in antiquity, continuing its existence through the Middle Ages, especially regarding the sacred texts and forms which, according to Bakhtin, all had their parodic version. In view of the fact that both films construct humour in numerous ways, the paper focuses particularly on the humorous procedures set in the context of antiquity, which among other things, raises the question of the attitude towards antiquity that these films pose.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

As we closed out a memorable 2020 and look to the New Year, we might say that not much good has come out of this year. But as a Monty Python fan, I love the ditty from The Life of Brian movie, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." While the pandemic has taken much, it has also provided opportunities to explore new ways of learning, working, and being in community. For me, the pandemic has highlighted a fact I think we have all long suspected: the current journal peer review process is broken-it's unsustainable.

Monty Python and the Probability of Winning the Holy Grail

Many popular games that people play at home, such as board and card games, provide a basis for interesting problems that can be solved using combinatorial analysis. When thinking about activities s...

Wasp

It seems that most people avoid making friends with wasps. A scientific study published in the journal Economic Ecology revealed that most people in a survey described wasps with negative terms such as “sting” and “annoying.” As the author notes, humans consider wasps with “the same lack of empathy they feel for spiders and scorpions.” The best-known feature of the wasp is its sting, which can be mild or powerfully painful. Pain may fade quickly or cause a throbbing ache lasting several days. Wasp venom gives wasps a bad reputation, but actually honeybees are more dangerous.Wasps belong to the insect order Hymenoptera (membrane wing), having four transparent wings with no scales. This order also includes the bees and ants. The name “wasp” is often used confusingly for many hymenopterans. This book contains a full discussion of which ones are correctly identified as wasps; those that belong to the family Vespidae, which includes social wasps (yellow jackets); and paper wasps. There are about 4000 vespid species worldwide, carnivorous predators on other insects and grubs and a significant source of protein as prey for frogs, crabs, skunks, and many small birds. Their nesting and colony behaviors are complicated and include a caste system. Although not widely known in this regard, wasps are also pollinators for many flowers.Readers will enjoy the ingenious descriptions of the wasp sting, its construction and action, as a “complicated piece of biological machinery” that is, among other things, a factor in defending the wasp nest. Also very interesting are the profound accounts concerning wasp venom, its chemistry, effects on humans, connections to historical eras and historical figures including Pliny the Elder, Cleopatra, and Plutarch, and the various remedies used to treat wasp stings. There is even the possibility that wasp venom might eventually be used to fight cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and other conditions.A fascinating chapter on wasp colors discusses their evolutionary significance, their protection from predators, and their emphasis on black and yellow, among other things. When most people reflect on wasps, they think of their nests, described as a “marvel of ingenious industry.” There is much beauty and variety in the charming paper structures fashioned by these colonies of vespid artists. A delightfully illustrated chapter reveals how these nests are created and used. Jacob C. Shäffer, the first person to make paper from wood, was inspired by wasps.Wasps are found in more places than paper nests. These include numerous paintings, trading cards, playing cards, striking poetry, folk songs, Jimi Hendrix’s “Hornets Nest,” embroidered samplers, family coats of arms, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the observations of Aristotle, Aristophanes’ play The Wasps, an anatomically correct wasp costume for 1907 London play The Wasp Woman, a 1959 movie about a wasp/woman chimera, and a Monty Python hymn parody.The book is not funny, but light humor and captivating wit are found scattered throughout its pages. A clever wasp limerick, other humorous poetry, a mention of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons, and a comical cartoon involving a wasp at a nudist beach are some of the amusing features to be found.A sampling of items the reader will find in this book includes the following:the connection between wasps and warning signs for explosives, electric shocks, and slippery floorsa noteworthy discussion of the reproduction of wasps, including mating, genetics, and life historyhow a wasp sting might induce an anaphylactic responsewhy diesel locomotives, race cars, warships, aircraft carriers, and a musical instrument were called waspsthe biblical references supporting the idea that wasps are sources of pain and miserythe warning alarm from a wasp sting that enlists other wasps to help protect the nestthe connection between wasps and women’s fashion in the 1800show wasps air condition their neststhe surprising results of studies when Israeli researchers gave LSD and amphetamines to waspsconnections to wasps in the literature of Geoffrey Chaucer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charles Dickens, and Jonathan SwiftWasp, packed with fascinating information, is a well-researched, brilliantly written, and lavishly illustrated book of the type you don’t want to put down. The incredible amount of detail suggests an appropriate alternate title, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Wasps but Were Afraid to Ask.” It is suitable for high school, college, and adult readers. In addition to an index, the book includes a time line, a detailed list of citations, a bibliography, and a list of associations and websites.

The End of Ideology, the Ideology of the End

When in 1989 Francis Fukuyama launched his thesis about the “end of history,” it rhymed perfectly with another fashionable suggestion about the “end of ideology.” This paper attempts to examine what could be called the ideology of the end, of which both of these trendy phrases partake. It looks particularly into the predominant modality both of these so-called “ends” display whereby the end is paired with its apparent opposite: repetition or continuation of what it is supposed to end. Taking its cue from a couple of comedic examples in film and literature (Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience), this essay attempts to make some philosophical and political points that could help us orientate today when thinking about ideology and its alleged end.

‘The Film That’s Banned in Harrogate’: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Local Censorship, Comedy and Local Resistance

This article investigates the banning of Monty Python’s Life of Brian by 39 local councils in the United Kingdom in late 1979 and early 1980. Focusing on three of these local areas – Harrogate, Dudley and Swansea – it draws on discursive analysis of local newspaper debate generated by both editors and readers, and the various arguments and strategies they employed to question the right of the local council to remove Life of Brian from their communities, including arguments relating to consumer choice and freedom and local trade and cultural reputation. Through doing this, the article foregrounds an approach that has yet to be explored extensively within the emergent body of work on local film censorship in the UK, advocating for the fruitfulness of a community-based historical analysis of resistance to local film regulation as well as the more commonly employed council-based analysis of local government files and archives. The article also considers the Life of Brian case study as an example of local film controversy where the themes and features of the film itself were drawn on by local resisters of the ban in a range of creative and productive ways.

Religious Satire and the Crucified Christ

Abstract This article discusses the relationship between religious satire and Christian theology to explore the possibility of satiric theology. It takes its departure from the proclamation of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:27) to demonstrate that the Crucified Christ can be a source for satire. To accomplish this, Paul Simpson’s analysis of satire is used to analyse the notorious crucifixion scene of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Subsequently, by way of Stanley Hauerwas’s theorising of irony, it is argued that satiric theology is theology in iconoclastic fashion. Hence, satiric theology supplies alternative comical stories to estrange people from the familiar and challenge misconceptions, thereby offering a valuable contribution to theological debate and Christian practice.

Skyfall: The "Aliens Sequence" in Monty Python's Life of Brian

Skyfall: The "Aliens Sequence" in Monty Python's Life of Brian