Monty Python and Philosophy (22 page)

Good evening, and welcome to the Epilogue! We have seen several arguments for the existence and attributes of God criticized (by Hume) and ridiculed (by Monty Python), but what are we to conclude from all this? In the end, not much. Both Monty Python and Hume seem to be in agreement that when it comes to questions at a remove from our experience—the origin of the universe, the existence and attributes of God, and while we’re at it, let’s toss in the afterlife—we are simply out of our element and any conclusions we draw will be sketchy at best. We would like to have useful empirical information on these questions, and the Pythons (in
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, Episode 36, “E. Henry Tripshaw’s Disease”) sure try, assembling, for example, a noted panel of the corpses of three professors to answer the question, “Is there life after death?” Their answers? No, no, and no. As for the existence and nature of God, after exposing the flaws in the positive arguments of others, Hume himself offered no clear answer, but rather counseled humility and suspense of judgment on such questions. For that matter, what good would an appeal to the authority of Hume do us anyway? His entire point was that
nobody
can be an authority on God. For their part, the Pythons suggested alternate ways of settling these questions. Why argue over the existence of God at all? Why not simply wrestle over it? And so we see, in
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
(Episode 2, “Sex and Violence”), Monsignor Edward Gay, author of
My God
, square off against secular humanist Dr. Tom Jack, author of
Hello, Sailor
, to decide the question in the ring. In the end, God exists by two falls to a submission.

MICHELLE SPINELLI

I mean, some people think I’m mad. The villagers say I’m mad, the tourists say I’m mad. Well, I am mad.

—Kevin, a village idiot (“The Idiot in Society,”
Monty Python’s
Flying Circus
, Episode 20, “The Attila the Hun Episode”)

 

S
ome might say that “madness” is synonymous with Monty Python. After all, what makes the Pythons so funny is the extremes to which they take characters and situations. Everyday occurrences become ridiculous, bordering on the insane. But, how do the Pythons really see madness? How do they portray the mad? Can we learn anything from them about madness?

The Pythons’ most comprehensive portrayal of madness is their sketch entitled, “The Idiot in Society” (
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, Episode 20, “The Attila the Hun Episode”). In it, the Pythons explore the role and character of the “village idiot,” a term that can be traced back to the Middle Ages. “What is called the ‘village idiot’,” the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1926-1984) writes, “did not get married, did not participate in games, and was fed and supported by others.”
⁶⁵
In fact, the village idiot was considered quite mad.

But the Pythons, doing what they do best, use humor to turn our expectations upside down. In the sketch we are introduced to three village idiots, and all seem anything but mad. In fact, getting past appearances, they all seem quite sane. Arthur Figgis, an idiot and the focal point of the sketch, expresses his view of the idiot in society just as a sociologist might. He tells us that, “there is a very real need in society for someone whom almost anyone can look down on and ridicule.” So, Figgis is not mad. Yet others see him as mad. What does that tell us about notions of madness?

Foucault would say that madness is a social construct. Its definition is fluid, changing over time as culture changes. What we, as a society, understand to be madness one day is not what we might consider to be madness the next day. Nor, Foucault writes, does madness itself exist apart from its definitions: “Madness cannot be found in a raw state. Madness only exists in society. It does not exist outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it and the forms of repulsion that exclude or capture it.”
⁶⁶

The madness of Monty Python’s village idiot is not the same as the madness of the asylum inmate of the nineteenth century. The Pythons’ idiot lives in
contemporary
society and is judged mad by
that
society, while the asylum inmate is judged, perhaps differently, by his or her own very different society. Once a definition of madness becomes available in a society, people within that society become free to use that definition to label individuals as mad. The label “village idiot,” which imputes some kind of madness, is meaningless outside the society that created it, in much the way that ‘hysteric’ was common in Freud’s day, but is no longer in ours.

Foucault developed his thesis that madness is a social construct in his
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
, in which he examined the history of the Western world’s interpretation of madness and the ways in which that changing
interpretation over time has resulted in changing conditions for the mad. Now, Foucault, of course, was French and perhaps thereby subject to all kinds of abuse in the name of the Pythons (remember the avalanche of insults hurled on poor Arthur by John Cleese’s castle guard in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
?). But it turns out that these French theories of madness are relevant to the Pythons’ treatment of the topic. The dialogue we might construct between Foucault and the Pythons is even civil and productive. Understanding Foucault’s theory of madness can help us understand the Pythons’ interpretation of madness.

First, Foucault tells us that the modern history of madness in the West has been one of exclusion. The mad have lived on the periphery, often scorned and ostracized. But, up until the mid-seventeenth century, they were generally tolerated and allowed to roam freely. Individual families and townships took responsibility for them and, starting in the fourteenth century, a few were admitted to hospitals to exist among those who were physically ill.

In the early seventeenth century, European society actually became “strangely hospitable, in all senses, to madness.”
⁶⁷
This is the time when the “fool” played an important role in literature. In Shakespeare’s
King Lear
, for example, it’s the fool who illuminates what Lear cannot see for himself. Fools are used as literary devices—their madness has a purpose, and authors imbue fools with wisdom that is absent in other characters. During this period, Foucault writes, a
dialogue
existed between reason and unreason. The mad, being seen as curiously wise or simply comical, interacted with society. In those and other ways, society listened to them. Reason and unreason talked.

Things changed drastically for the mad around 1656, when what Foucault describes as the “Great Confinement” began. The dialogue abruptly ended, and a
monologue
of reason emerged. Around that time, starting in France, madmen began to be sequestered together in large internment houses. These institutions held not only the mad, but criminals, beggars, the sick, and others who were considered idle. The ability to work became very important in the newly industrial and urban society. As historian
Roy Porter puts it, “previously, the mad had exercised a particular force and fascination, be it as the holy fool, witch, or as a man possessed. Half-wits and zanies had enjoyed the license of free speech and the privilege of mocking their betters. Institutionalization . . . robbed madness of all such empowering features and reduced it to mere negation, and absence of humanity.”
⁶⁸
The mad, who were at the mercy of those with power, were silenced, deprived of autonomy, confined, persecuted, and punished.

In the eighteenth century, the mad began to be confined as a group, by themselves, in asylums. At this point, Foucault writes, madness acquired a new, medical definition. Madness, still subject to the monologue of reason, was now something to be studied. “The science of mental disease, as it would develop in the asylum, would always be only of the order of observation and classification. It would not be a dialogue” (
Madness and Civilization
, p. 250). In asylums there was an established hierarchy, with the “insane transformed into minors” (p. 252). Like children, the mad had to live under a set of strict rules. Those who deviated from the rules were punished.

In contemporary society, medicalization has persisted. Today, the mad are “mentally ill.” They are to be diagnosed, treated, and managed by doctors—by psychiatrists and “medical professionals.” Foucault refers to psychiatry as “condescending philanthropy” (
Foucault Live
, pp. 8-9) because society’s dialogue with the mad remains a monologue. Psychiatrists speak to and about their patients, but they do not listen to the unreason articulated by them. Foucault writes, “What is called mental illness is simply alienated madness, alienated in the psychology that it has itself made possible.”
⁶⁹
Today, drugs are commonly used to “treat,” “cure,” or simply silence unreason. The mad, at least in the United States, continue to be excluded. Many are homeless or have been relegated to group homes, mental institutions, or prisons.

Monty Python showcases the contradictions and ironies inherent in common stereotypes. In dramatically amplifying what we believe to be true, the Pythons force us to reconsider it. Or, they depict situations that are completely incongruous with what we believe, to the same effect. Consider the sketch, “Hermits,”
⁷⁰
in which two hermits (Eric Idle and Michael Palin) serendipitously meet on the side of a mountain. Palin says to Idle, “Hello. Are you a hermit by any chance?” Idle responds, “Yes, that’s right. Are you a hermit?” And, the two proceed to talk about what they’re escaping (“the usual—people, chat, gossip”), the hermit lifestyle, the difficulties of properly insulating a cave, and fellow hermits (“Oh, well. Mr. Robinson’s cave’s never been exactly nirvana, has it?”). All the while other hermits pass by, greeting one another by name. At the conclusion of the sketch, Idle complains that he feels “cut off ” because his cave is half way up the mountain. Palin responds, “Still, there’s one thing about being a hermit, at least you meet people.” “Oh, yes!,” Idle agrees, “I wouldn’t go back to public relations.”

The irony is that these hermits engage in behavior contrary to that of “real” hermits, whom we take to be loners or misanthropes. Hermits are not mad, necessarily, but they do represent that aspect of madness, seclusion, or isolation that lies at the core of Foucault’s analysis of madness. The Pythons give us hermits woven into the fabric of modern society.

So it goes with “The Idiot in Society,” a sketch where the Pythons lead viewers to a similar conclusion about the mad. A voiceover tells us, “Arthur Figgis is an idiot. A village idiot. Tonight we look at the idiot in society.” We first see Figgis sitting on a wall in a contemporary rural community. He has rosy cheeks, disheveled red hair, and wears a dirty smock and straw hat. He is the embodiment of madness as it existed, in Foucault’s analysis, before the Great Confinement. This sketch is entirely modern, though. It is a mock documentary in which Figgis is a most serious and rational commentator. He speaks to us directly and rationally, and interrupts his analysis only when various members
of the village walk by. Then, he makes funny noises, rolls his eyes, and moves his body in odd ways. When Mr. Jenkins, a fellow idiot, walks by, however, Figgis is his serious self again. He and Figgis are dressed exactly alike, a hint at where this sketch may be going. For the moment, however, Figgis has some work to do. “Oh, excuse me,” he tells his interviewer. “A coach party has just arrived. I shall have to fall off the wall, I’m afraid.”

Figgis is not the type of madman that Foucault traces through most of Western history: this madman has a voice. Not only does he have a voice, but he has an audience very willing to listen—us, the viewers. By speaking directly into the camera, Figgis needs no interpreter, no intermediary, no doctor to get his points across. He has direct access to us, and we are listening. In fact, we’re eager to listen.

Most importantly, Figgis is keenly aware that he plays a role within society. He explains that “There is a very real need in society for someone whom almost anyone can look down on and ridicule.” In fact, idiots like him provide a “a vital psycho-social service” for the larger community. Unlike Foucault’s assessment of madmen as variously compartmentalized or ostracized by reasonable society, these madmen are socially integrated. Figgis is right that he is serving an important social function. As Porter writes, “All societies judge some people mad . . . it is part of marking out the different, deviant, and perhaps dangerous” (
Madness: A Brief History
, p. 62). Figgis is performing that job in his society.

But, as the sketch continues, we learn that Figgis and the other idiots are perhaps not as different or deviant as Porter implies. “Arthur,” our narrator tells us, “takes idioting very seriously. He is up at six o’clock every morning working on special training equipment designed to keep him silly.” As we watch Figgis exercise, he finally knocks himself out by ramming his head into a ball apparatus. We also learn that Figgis is quite fastidious about keeping up his appearance. He works carefully on getting his hair just-so, and then jumps into a pond to splash mud on his smock.

Despite the way he looks, the more we get to know Figgis, the more we see that he is not so strange after all. In fact, the narrator compares him to other professionals in the village, such as the doctor, blacksmith, and carpenter. Figgis does things that all villagers must do, like banking. In the sketch, we see Figgis at a teller
window depositing things like moss, a dead bird, and wood (which, the bank manager tells us, are deposits involving very complicated rates of interest). The bank manager, moreover, takes Figgis more seriously than others who laugh and point at Figgis as he passes by. The manager explains, “Well, nowadays, a really blithering idiot can make anything up to ten thousand pounds—if he’s head of some industrial combine. But, of course, the old-fashioned idiot still refuses money.”