Monty Python and Philosophy (25 page)

So, in what follows, we will limit our investigation of existentialism in Monty Python to a few influential representatives of existentialist philosophy and literature. In the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre, there are number of intriguing parallels and similarities with general themes in Monty Python, as well as potential criticisms or comments on the plausibility of their various philosophies. In fact, since existentialism was one of the most influential and important philosophies of the twentieth century, and is still enormously popular in the arts and general culture, it would be surprising if Monty Python did not have something existentialist to say.

There’s a difference between the influence of existentialist
philosophy
in Monty Python and the influence of existentialist
literature
. Since existentialism pervades much of twentieth-century literature, we shouldn’t be surprised to find its influence in Monty Python. And, indeed, if one were to look for existentialist literary influences, an obvious source would be the stories and novels of the greatest author of existentialist fiction, the German-Czech, Franz Kafka (1883-1924).

The chaotic and nonsensical world portrayed in Kafka’s writings bears an uncanny resemblance to much in Monty Python. Kafka’s worlds are often a sort of institutionalized or bureaucratic insanity: worlds that put up impossible, illogical barriers to the lives or progress of the main characters. A well-known parable by Kafka, “Couriers,” nicely demonstrates these qualities:

Often, the protagonists in Kafka’s stories are ordinary people who strive to overcome these irrational barriers by using common sense and reason. But, no matter how hard they try, the walls of their unfathomable maze inevitably close in upon them, leading to gradual frustration and anxiety. And it hardly helps that the bureaucratic members who enforce these insane rules and regulations act as if their crazy systems are the very epitome of rational thought and justice!

Similar situations constantly arise in Monty Python. Many of the famous skits from
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
involve an ordinary,
or somewhat silly, customer who cannot overcome the ridiculous barriers set up by a shop owner who doesn’t see the insanity in his rules or regulations. For example, the “Cheese Shop” (Episode 33, untitled) depicts a sustained, but ultimately fruitless (or cheeseless), search for cheese in a cheese shop. The “Dead Parrot” sketch (Episode 8, “Full Frontal Nudity”) involves a customer’s equally futile attempt to convince the shopkeeper of a pet store that his recently purchased parrot is dead.

As with Monty Python, furthermore, one of the strangely entertaining aspects of Kafka’s stories is their “black humor.” The cruel predicament that the main characters experience is, to some extent, comic. One often finds oneself both laughing and wincing at the same time in both Kafka and Monty Python. In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” for example, when the anxious salesman, Gregor Samsa, awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect, he seems more horrified about having missed his train to work! In a genuinely Pythonesque moment, he reasons that he
might
still be able to catch the seven o’clock train, but “to catch that he would need to hurry like mad and his [product] sample weren’t even packed up, and he himself wasn’t feeling particularly fresh and active.”
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Among the writers who have been influenced by Kafka, one of the most important is the French existentialist, Albert Camus (1913-1960). Not only did Camus write influential existentialist literature (most notably, the novel,
The Stranger
), but he also wrote a number of essays on the meaning of life that seem directly inspired by Kafka’s vision of a meaningless world. Camus famously defined the “absurd” as the confrontation between a rational person and an indifferent universe, and his use of the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus has become a famous metaphor for this confrontation: “The gods have condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.”
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The punishment, as Camus goes on to describe, is a “futile and hopeless labor,” a pointless task that never can be completed. As soon as the rock
reaches the top, it rolls down again, and Sisyphus must start the whole process once more, without any hope of completing his ultimate task of placing the rock on the mountain peak.

For Camus, Sisyphus’s fate reveals the long-term or overall meaning of our own lives. Like Sisyphus, we are “condemned” to a life of tasks and projects that seemingly don’t amount to any real, lasting worth or value. We go to work each day, raise our families, and eventually die. And the whole process starts over again with the next generation, an endless cycle that apparently has no ultimate goal or point. This is the problem of the meaning of life as understood by the existentialists.

There are no direct references to Camus or the myth of Sisyphus, but the often repetitive triviality of life is nicely captured in several reccurring characters or stereotypes in
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
. My favorite examples include the tedium of an office worker’s existence, depicted in the aptly named “Dull Life of a City Stockbroker” sketch (Episode 6, untitled), where the joke is that adventure actually occurs all around the stockbroker without his noticing, or the chartered accountant who desires to become a lion-tamer (Episode 10, untitled). These characters share Sisyphus’s fate, although without Sisyphus’s defiance or heroism. The boring monotony of their occupations mirrors the boring monotony of their lives (which were, apparently, of interest to Michael Palin, who plays nearly all of them). The philosophically-inclined viewer may forever after view chartered accountancy as symbolic of the ultimate lack of significance of a person’s life, especially for individuals within our modern, regimented, industrial societies.

One might be tempted to counter Camus’s interpretation of life by inviting religion, society, or some great philosophical theory to rescue some meaning from our seemingly meaningless lives. For instance, someone might declare that God, or our nation, provides an overall meaning for our day-to-day existence, since our lives gain a meaning by being part of a divine plan or a larger process.

Yet the existentialists were for the most part very skeptical of the use of any higher “being” or universal plan to find meaning. The great German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900) famously declared that “God is dead,” by which he meant that the modern scientific world had made belief in God no longer acceptable to the rational person, and so our purpose in life couldn’t come from a supernatural source. But the problem can also be stated more generally: What provides the meaning of these larger entities, like God or the State? If the answer is that God or the State provide their own meaning, such that nothing else is required to give them meaning, then why couldn’t our individual lives be just as meaningful all by themselves (and thus nothing else, like God or the State, would be required to give our own lives meaning, too)?

All told, one of the most important themes in existentialism is the fate of the individual in acquiring his or her own answer to the meaning to life. Camus called this quest, “living without appeal.” It can be understood as a rejection of the quick and easy answers that our societies, religions, and philosophies often use to resolve our existential worries. The celebrated French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) made the same point when he declared that our “existence precedes our essence.” We are not born with a pre-established essence (a definition, purpose, or goal) provided by some higher power or institution; rather, we must provide our own, freely-chosen purpose to life. We exist first, and we must then determine our meaning or essence.

This individual-centered component of existentialism is strongly endorsed by Monty Python, particularly in a well-known scene from
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
. In an attempt to dissuade a horde of would-be disciples, Brian argues:

The importance of this scene cannot be overemphasized in attempting to locate an existential message—or indeed any philosophical message—in Monty Python. It is without a doubt one of their rare moments of open and direct expression of a philosophical idea, although it fits naturally into the plot and scene. The Monty Python members have repeatedly stated that
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
is one of their finest achievements
due
to its consistent theme—and the theme, of course, is the (existentialist) plea
for a little “critical thinking” on the part of the individual. In various interviews, they have made the following comments on the film’s message:

Nietzsche too warned of the negative effects of most (if not all) social institutions, traditions, and customs, on the development and freedom of the individual. With respect to morality, he argued:

Nietzsche’s analysis of moral traditions even helps to explain why
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
aroused so much anger among certain
religious groups, Christians especially. At some point in the development of the traditions of many religious societies, it became unacceptable to philosophically investigate (or make a comedy about) religion—even though one of Jesus’s main goals was to get people to re-think their religious commitments and values.

Moreover, the Pythons have repeatedly claimed that they were not poking fun at Jesus in
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
, but rather at the social movements that were, and still are, formed to interpret Jesus’s teachings. As Terry Jones put it later:

Religious groups and movements, like all social groups, have all too often become dogmatic and rigid, inhibiting the individual’s exploration of the religion (quite aside from the obvious fact, mentioned above, that these religious groups constantly inhibit each other by way of verbal and physical attack). Nietzsche made many similar criticisms of Christianity. While he admired much of the teachings of Jesus (since Jesus approached morality in a thoughtful and individual way), Nietzsche was very critical of the many followers, most notably Paul, who converted the parables and sayings of Jesus into a “religion,” with all of the “dos” and “don’ts” common to religions.

And it’s not just religion. The existentialists and Monty Python both refer, frequently, to the negative effects of most (if not all) other social institutions on the development of the individual. Whether it is politics, the military, science (especially medicine), or the arts and the media, Monty Python has produced a body of work that is unmatched in its savage, and hilarious, sendups
of the illogic and stupidity that underlies so many of our social institutions.

Though the existentialists place the burden of life’s meaning on the individual, they are under no illusions. Most individuals are not up to the task. Rather than honestly confront the situation, many people attempt to deny their freedom to make this choice—and the
freedom
of the individual is one of the key concepts of existentialism. Sartre calls this denial of personal freedom or choice “bad faith”; a simple example would be a person who accepts that he is a “sinner,” or an “alcoholic,” and therefore believes that he is not free to change his actions (for he is determined, and therefore cannot stop being a sinner or alcoholic). A more subtle example is presented when they take on the identity of a stereotype or “role,” such as a doctor, policeman, scientist, and so on, and let the stereotypical manners and behavior of the role determine how they should behave and think as individuals. Sartre gives the example of a waiter in a café who displays all the mannerisms of the waiters one sees in movies or reads in books. He has an overly kind or slightly condescending attitude, voice, and use of words (“How are we this evening, sir?”), a stiff, automaton walk and quick bodily movements. On Sartre’s view, this person is denying his freedom to be a person who just happens to have the job of a waiter. One can be a waiter without having to follow a stereotyped code of behavior.
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