Monty Python's Flying Circus

Cover

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CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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pp. vii-viii

The Flying Circus and the Wide World of Entertainment

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pp. 1-4

In 1975, a compilation of episodes from Monty Python’s Flying Circus was scheduled for broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company’s (ABC) Wide World of Entertainment. The Pythons’ American manager, Nancy Lewis, was verbally assured that episodes....

The Pythons

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pp. 4-15

The first season of the Flying Circus, containing thirteen half-hour programs, began airing on BBC television on October 5, 1969. The second and third seasons also contained thirteen programs of the same length as the first, whereas the fourth contained only...

The Flying Circus in a Changing British Culture

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pp. 15-19

The specific cultural moment of the show’s appearance was also intrinsic to its success. The particular irreverence and radical forms of the Pythons’ performance on television flourished in the social and political climate of the 1960s and 1970s. This milieu-...

The British Broadcasting Corporation

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pp. 19-25

The style and motifs of the Flying Circus are closely tied to the changing character of the BBC during the 1960s, its “increasing break away from the cosy image of the 1950s.”¹⁷ The BBC had long been a major influence in the development of radio and...

The Pythons and American Television

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pp. 25-30

Monty Python’s Flying Circus represents a significant moment in the study of the crossover from British to American television, but, as J. S. Miller in his discussion of connections between British television...

Antecedents and Influences

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pp. 30-35

The comedy of the Flying Circus, although distinctive, did not arise by spontaneous generation: it had important antecedents in the music hall and in British cinema. The series relied on existing...

Situating Comedy

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pp. 35-39

The Flying Circus struck at the heart of what certain critics have termed postmodernity via the “society of the spectacle,” where the image and the sound byte reign and are seemingly unchallenged by “reality....

Television Time

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pp. 40-44

Beyond the Pythons’ explorations of the various forms of programming, the overall form of the series is con-“E. Henry Thripshaw’s Disease,” “The Spanish Inquisition,”and “Njorl’s Saga”). The chronological or linear sense of the of experience.”59 This “flowing river” is characterized also by the segmentation of units of time and by “interruption,” all...

Television Forms and Genres

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pp. 44-62

The comedy of the Flying Circus relies on the tropes of explosions and physical mutilation that expand in meaning to include dismemberment of cultural forms. The...

Animals, Insects, Machines, and Human Bodies

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pp. 62-70

In keeping with the propensity of Python comedy to focus on the physical body, and particularly on cultural taboos and restraints on language and behavior, many of the Python sketches involve images of and allusions to nudity, sexual practices, and forms of censorship.-...

Cross-Dressing and Gender Bending

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pp. 70-79

In the context of British comedy, drag is not unusual, but in the 1960s and 1970s, during what has come to be known as the “sexual revolution,” the use of cross-dressing took on a spectacularly subversive...

Hyperbole, Excess, and Escalation

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pp. 79-83

Melodrama is excessive, relying on d�cor as well as vverbal and visual cues to communicate a superfluity of affect, escalation, and overstatement of wrongs perpetrated against innocent victims. The Flying Circus selfconsciously employs these excessive...

Recycling Literature, Drama, Cinema, and Art

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pp. 83-86

The Flying Circus’ sketches drew heavily on canonical works of drama, literature, and film by such authors as Shakespeare, Proust, and Brontë, but emptied them of their revered mode of presentation and...

Language, Words, Sense, and Nonsense

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pp. 86-94

The uses and abuses of language play a prominent role pin most of the sketches. Often the play on words seems nonsensical, bearing no relation whatever to meaning. In some instances, the words are...

Common Sense and Audience Response

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pp. 95-99

Woven throughout the Flying Circus are the “Vox Pops,” the voices of the “people” designated by the Pythons as representing commonsensical responses to events. These responses are associated in the series with a commonsense view of the world...

The Flying Circus Revisited

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pp. 99-104

Monty Python’s Flying Circus continues to be rebroadcast, and videos and DVDs of all of the episodes have been released for consumer purchase. The series has maintained its cult status...

NOTES

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pp. 105-108

VIDEOGRAPHY AND FILMOGRAPHY

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pp. 109-110

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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pp. 111-114

INDEX

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pp. 115-120