Monty Python and Philosophy (26 page)

Monty Python, of course, loves to present stereotyped characters and, indeed, these characters are some of most recognizable and beloved components of Python. From the aggressive policemen who break into skits intent on arresting anyone and everyone (with their cries of “What’s all this then?!”), to the dull office workers obsessed with petty details and paperwork, to the old housewives (“pepperpots”) whose lives seem to revolve around complaining (in high-pitched voices) and shopping, Monty Python challenges us to re-think our lives by satirizing or parodying the
many ways that people fail to achieve an independence of thought, and thus a freedom to choose. Like Sartre’s waiter, these stereotyped characters seem unable or unwilling to recognize their freedom to pick a course of action independent of their typecast jobs, social class, or milieux. Perhaps these stereotyped people have allowed some social, religious, or other grand concept to determine their proper conduct and behavior, and thereby to decide their life’s meaning for them. Perhaps they are like Brian’s followers, who, after Brian tells them that, “You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves,” shout back in unison, “Yes, yes!! We’ve all got to work it out for ourselves,” which is predictably followed by, “Tell us more!” (p. 72).

According to Sartre, another way that people can manifest bad faith is when they fail to acknowledge that their past choices, taken as a whole, represent or define their character. Since there is no pre-established meaning to life, our meaning can only come from our
actual
choices, and so if my choices display a certain pattern (such as heroism, cowardice, dishonesty, and so on), then that is the type of person that I have freely chosen to become. Many people attempt to deny these basic facts about themselves. They might declare, “I am really a hero, but I was never in the right circumstances to display my heroism,” an excuse that supposedly explains away their many past flights from any potential danger (this example comes from Sartre’s famous play,
No Exit
).
⁸⁰
But, Sartre tells us, there is no deep-down, internal property (essence) of “heroism” that makes a person heroic. Rather, we are what we do, and our actual choices are the only means of determining our character, and consequently the meaning we have given to our lives. Of course, we are always free to become a
new
person if we so choose to act in the future.

Instances of this type of person (who are, as they say, “in denial”) abound in Monty Python. In the “Fish License” sketch, Mr. Praline declares “I am not a loony!,” even though he is pestering a post office clerk for a (non-existent) fish license for Eric, his pet halibut. “I chose him [Eric the halibut] out of thousands. I didn’t like the others. They were all too flat,” he tells the clerk (
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, Episode 23, “Scott of the Antarctic”).
Sartre would accuse Mr. Praline of bad faith: he is definitely a loony!

One of the criticisms commonly raised against Sartre’s concept of freedom is that he fails to take into account the influence, or limitations, of our genetics (nature) and up-bringing (nurture). Is the alcoholic really “free” to stop drinking, or the homosexual to “choose” heterosexuality? Most would say they are not. And this limited scope of individual choice plays a role in several
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
sketches. The timid, subservient, Arthur Pewtey has decided he won’t be “pushed around” anymore, but when he tries to stop his wife’s seduction (by the marriage counselor, no less), and is told to “go away,” he instinctively backs down with a meek, “Right. Right.” (Episode 2, “Sex and Violence”). Is Arthur Pewtey really free to change himself into a confident, aggressive person? Similarly, limitations of a more basic physiological sort persistently thwart Ron Obvious’s ambitious stunts, such as jumping the English Channel, or eating Chichester Cathedral (Episode 10, untitled). The point? Monty Python contains much that is existentialist, but it holds the seeds of some powerful objections to existentialism as well.

I’ve tried to show that Monty Python has some positive, existentialist advice on life. It’s not simply a sarcastic send-up of humanity and the search for meaning. But, Monty Python just wouldn’t be Monty Python if it didn’t also make fun of philosophers and their theories of life! And, indeed, a sketch from
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
involves two pepperpots who go in search of Sartre in order to settle an argument (Episode 27, “Whicker’s World”). Along the way, conversation reveals details about Sartre, especially as they talk with his wife (Betty Muriel-Sartre). Sartre can be a bit moody, for example: “‘the bourgeoisie this and the bourgeoisie that’—he’s like a little child sometimes,” his wife tells us. And he isn’t much fun on holiday: “He didn’t join in the fun much. Just sat there thinking. Still, Mr. Rotter caught him a few times with the whoopee cushion.” The satirical target of this skit is the pompous and self-important philosopher, and the moral, possibly, is that philosophers should not take themselves so seriously. Even
they can be caught by a whoopee cushion. If this last interpretation of the Sartre sketch is in any way correct, then it once again reveals a latent philosophical message in Monty Python. The ability to step back and take an honest look at ourselves, or to laugh at our own pretensions, is a virtue that Nietzsche emphasized: “I will not deceive, not even myself.”
⁸¹

For Nietzsche, the cultivation of personal virtues, such as honesty, is part of the process by which an individual can form a meaningful, authentic life. Nietzsche describes this process on occasion using “artistic” metaphors, as “‘giving style’ to one’s character” (p. 290). This suggests that the creation of a meaningful life is much like the creation of a beautiful, significant art work. The concept of the “will to power” is important in this context: “every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become
more
.”
⁸²
Consequently, by conjoining the striving of individuals to grow or flourish with the creative act of fashioning a unique, virtuous character, we may begin to understand what Nietzsche considered a meaningful life. There is a sense in which Monty Python itself fits Nietzsche’s theory. That is, the history or “life” of Monty Python is marked by a continuous internal development and striving to become more, all under the guidance of a well-conceived, if dynamic, artistic plan. As
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
progressed, the idea of a fluid, “stream-of-consciousness” method of writing sketches and comedic material gradually evolved. Skits with normal beginnings and endings, and with final punch lines, were replaced by an inventive, constantly developing series of bizarre leaps to new material, and yet the material was often cleverly interconnected on many levels.
⁸³
With the transition to movies, the plots became more unified and presented a more consistent theme, and the content became more daring. Yet the members of the group were not content with simply repeating the same strategy of sketch writing that had succeeded in the past. When the episodes began to merely repeat themselves, such that the show was no longer evolving (“becoming more”), the cast members gradually began to leave the group for new projects.
Like the ideal Nietzschean individual, Monty Python was not content with just existing. It strove to grow, to “overcome” its present condition and obtain new accomplishments, all under the control of a critical, artistic vision. For many Monty Python fans, it is this unmatched legacy in the annals of comedy writing that continues to resonate over the years.

ROSALIND CAREY

 

 

I
magine getting a cramp in your head—a cramp not in your body, but in your
mind
. That’s philosophy!

It’s the feeling that you
ought
to be able to answer certain (philosophical) questions but just can’t see
how
: a kind of mental cramp—or so says the great, strange, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

The following sketch from
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, “Spectrum: Talking About Things” (Episode 12, “The Naked Ant”), illustrates his point. The scene opens on the set of a talk show going on air. Cameras roll. To his audience and guests the presenter (Michael Palin) says:

Not surprisingly, the cricketer (Eric Idle) is at a loss for words. After all, what kind of a question is “What is going on”? Can
anyone
answer it? Can you? Of course not! But he’s got to answer, right? Because it’s “one of the major problems in the world
today”—and you don’t back down from a challenge just because of a little cramp in your ’ead.

Welcome to philosophy, Mr. Cricketer.

The presenter’s behavior is equally instructive. Since he’s stumped his guest, you’d expect him to back off, rephrase the question, e-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e more clearly, that sort of thing. Instead, he steams ahead:

The compulsive piling up of questions is another symptom of philosopher’s cramp, according to Wittgenstein. According to him, the philosophical mind needs to smooth out and relax, and as a kind of therapeutic mental massage he recommends engaging in philosophical exercises.

We’ll return to “
Spectrum
: Talking About Things” in a moment. Let’s look more closely at what Wittgenstein says. First, why
does
philosophy give you mental pain? Second, if philosophy is what put your head in a twist, how can more philosophy unwind it?

To the first question, Wittgenstein has the following response. Our trouble, he thinks, comes from naively taking philosophical questions and statements at face value; they appear to be perfectly good questions and statements, and assuming that’s what they in fact
are
, we try to address them as such.

In a sense we’re right, says Wittgenstein: from the perspective of grammar and structure, philosophical sentences
are
exactly like other perfectly good sentences. However, from a different perspective, philosophical sentences are quite unlike other sentences and are in fact nonsensical—meaningless. Philosophical headaches, in short, stem from language.

To the second question, about how philosophy can be both the cause and the cure of mental distress, Wittgenstein says this. Properly understood, philosophy is an activity, not a set of Truths.
Properly understood, that activity is an exercise, a therapy, that traces when language makes sense and when it’s nonsense. In the end this activity lets us shed the assumptions and habits about philosophy that gave us pain. That is why thinking about philosophy can sooth the distress caused by, well . . . thinking about philosophy.

In his work as a young man and in his later work Wittgenstein views philosophical headaches as a consequence of language, but his reasons for that view and his conception of the remedy evolve throughout his career. The young Wittgenstein’s account of philosophy, compared to his later view, is both more ambitious and more, um,
peculiar
. Let’s turn to the peculiarity first.

Consider the typical opener to episodes of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, the sentence “It’s . . .
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
.” We experience this sentence as a series of sounds. Specifically, the sound of Michael Palin, as “The It’s Man,” saying the word ‘It’s’, followed by a second voice, saying “Mon-ty Py-thon’s . . . ” and so on. These sounds form an auditory fact, the sentence ‘It’s . . .
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
’, and this fact depicts another fact: that an episode of a
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
is about to begin.

This is the position twenty-something Ludwig holds in his first book,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
. According to him, it is
possible
for sentences to mean facts because sentences are facts (relations among sounds, in the case above), and sentences must represent facts to have meaning.

Depicting facts is what sentences do. Period. Thus sentences make no sense when they (attempt to) depict what goes beyond the facts. Period.

This is bad news for philosophy. Sciences like physics, geology, and biology talk about the facts that make up the world, but philosophy talks about what makes
any
world,
any
fact, possible; and it talks about what makes
any
of them possible only by talking
about
none
in particular, that is, by transcending the facts of this or any world.

Since on Wittgenstein’s view we make sense only when we talk about facts, it follows that philosophy make no sense in talking about what transcends facts and makes them possible. Sure, philosophers can move their lips and utter sounds, but if sentences make sense only when they concern other facts, any use of sentences to go beyond the facts makes no sense. What philosophers say, in short, is nonsensical.

In addition, philosophers typically believe not only that they
can
talk significantly about what makes the world possible but that they
need
to do so: how else to make such issues clear? But Wittgenstein also thinks we don’t
need
to use sentences this way. The conditions that make sentences (and facts in general) possible are implicit in their structures.

For example, in using the sentence ‘My brain hurts’ we exhibit different words (‘hurts’ and ‘brain’) having different functions (denoting a property, standing for an object, and so forth) and occurring in a particular kind of structure (a subject-predicate one). What functions and structures occur on any occasion will vary according to the language used, but in any language there are
some
that are constant, and this shows us something very general about what makes facts, and a world of facts, possible.