Heresy!

That’s what this article in the Independent (UK) by John Walsh no doubt is to some folks. On the 40th anniversary of the first airing of the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Walsh slips in a tape of that first shot fired in a comedy revolution and compares what the 55-year-old Walsh thinks with what the 15-year-old Walsh thought.

The Halves of the Staff happened across some old episodes on our local PBS outlet a few months ago. We remembered many of the sketches vividly. A good number of them had fallen down the memory hole. We laughed heartily at about 25 per cent of the material. (We seem to recall being bored while watching some of the episodes the first time around, back in the mid-70s, so the .250 batting average this time around was not surprising or disappointing.)

Walsh, viewing Episode 1 with 2009 eyes, sees a bit of elitism, some homophobia and some other flaws, but eventually gets to the heart of the show’s appeal, and to some of its flaws.

Looking back, I suspect it was the lovely randomness of the show – the sense that anything could start or stop at any time, or be interrupted by a giant foot or a human hand – that most delighted my generation in 1969. And we loved the individual performers, especially Cleese and Palin. But a lot of Python was stuck fast in the public-school-Oxbridge ethos, the comedy of the schoolroom, the naughtiness of playing foolish japes on figures of authority. It liberated us all from the tyranny of the punchline– but it may be time to stop thinking that the liberation was a revolution.

Or… we can regard it as a revolution, but we can acknowledge that it doesn’t necessarily obliterate all that came before it.

2d of Webster’s definition of revolution:

a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something : a change of paradigm

And paradigm is defined as, “an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype.” (And archetype is just a fancy word for perfect example. We feared for a moment that this could go on all day!)

So, to review: Monty Python’s Flying Circus may have been a fundamental change in the way of thinking about sketch comedy television shows. A TV show that was a new and near-perfect example of a sketch show, after which all sketch television shows were merely representations or copies.

Would this be true?

Some folks will give you a good argument that is.

We would argue that so-called revolutions can exist side-by-side with other so-called revolutions.

Folks exhibit a strong reluctance to declare that something they were absolutely charmed by as a teen or young adult just doesn’t hold up– be it music, television or comedy. Walsh deserves credit for doing an honest assessment and reaching the conclusions he reached. (And some might call him brave. So passionate are folks about that which made them giggle 40 years prior that they often become violent when someone dares to suggest that they re-assess that material. Folks get very attached to their humor.)

But the side-by-side revolutions theory means also that we can soberly assess comedy from the past and still acknowledge that we totally understand why we were so taken with it in the first place. (It isn’t merely an out-of-hand dismissal of the older work, just an acknowledgment that some of it doesn’t “hold up” and a simultaneous acknowledgment some recent stuff might just do it better. Think Ernie Kovacs. Times change, people change, tastes change.)