 The Life of Brian, produced by the Monty Python team, raised a veritable storm of protest among Christians when it was released 20 years ago. Steve Tomkins watched it during a 20th anniversary screening on BBC television, and looks again at the issues of humour and religious offence.
A PRIEST in full regalia, down to the Levitical meringue headpiece, is skipping and spluttering with undignified indignation, as only John Cleese can. Behind him are a death squad of women wearing false beards (because women aren't officially allowed to go to stonings).We're at the trial scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian. A man has been heard saying, "That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah", and so is about to be stoned to death for using the name of the Lord. Unfortunately, the trial doesn't go quite according to plan, and our uptight priest learns the very hard way how tricky it is to convict someone of saying... the J-word, without saying it yourself. It just goes to show how jolly amusing blasphemy is. And how dangerous it is to point the finger. These days we do things rather differently. Pickets, letters to The Times and a chatshow confrontation with stuffy Church leaders were the retribution that Monty Python suffered for The Life of Brian. Brian's life bore an uncanny similarity to that of another well-known messiah, and ended in a singalong crucifixion. It is, of course, a sin to blaspheme the living God, and pretty pointless to blaspheme anyone else. So just how blasphemous, with 20 years worth of hindsight, was the movie? PLENTY OF THE JOKES in The Life of Brian aren't even religious, of course. I assume we can rule out Incontinentia Buttox and the Judean People's Front Crack Suicide Squad from the charge of blasphemy. There's also a lot of political humour, like the revolutionaries who plan to overthrow the Roman Empire by passing motions at it – and not in the biological sense. When it comes to the religious jokes, it's interesting how many of them are pointed nowhere near anyone remotely divine, but at us – the believers. That stoning scene makes a well-earned mockery of religious legalism and sexism. Then there are Brian's own demented and painfully true-to-life followers. They read miracles and signs into every slip he makes...
YOUTH: He's gone! He's been taken up!And they split over whether to adore his unwanted gourd or his lost sandal. There's also what must amount to a prophetic satire on Britain's snootiest church, Holy Trinity Brompton...
GREGORY: I say. I say, could He just see my wife? She has a headache.It's hard to imagine the Lord losing too much sleep over people laying into the Church, when he seems to have made quite a career out of doing it himself. Christian censors, though, can easily overlook the difference between people laughing at the Almighty and laughing at them. JESUS HIMSELF is treated in the film with a respect that now seems almost quaint to a generation weaned on alternative comedy. He recites Living-Bible beatitudes, genuinely heals a leper... and that's it. You can read this two ways. Maybe he's just there as a decoy – to maintain the fiction that the rest of the movie's not really about Jesus, allowing Mr Python to blaspheme with impunity. Alternatively, consider this: the beatitudes are misheard, misunderstood and talked over, the healing received with ingratitude, and then Jesus is quietly forgotten. The religious people are far to busy chasing messiahs through the desert and trying to con themselves to notice that the Son of God is among them. It's a classic in the finest tradition of Christian unrest. If anything, it affirms Jesus's teaching, but isn't so convinced by his misguided champions.
Admittedly, the Pythons also manage to have fun with Jesus's own teaching by putting it in Brian's mouth, while he is speaking in front of a small crowd...
BRIAN: Consider the lilies...It's hard to find that terribly offensive, though. If you do, you're probably not reading this article. Then there's this glorious inanity, spoken by a member of the crowd in the Sermon on the Mount scene...
MRS BIG NOSE: Oh, it's the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that's nice, isn't it? I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause they have a hell of a time.I could be mistaken, of course, and maybe we are wrong to find humour in what is holy. But the best relationships are the ones where you're happy to laugh at each other, and I can only hope God feels the same way. WE CAN'T skirt for ever around what I'm going to have to call – with a dangerous level of irony – the crux of the issue. Isn't it a tad offensive to crucify your comic messiah to a soundtrack of the light-hearted "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"? When you look at the crucifixion scene, at face value they do seem to get away with it. A political activist is executed by a method the Romans routinely used on thousands of people. What's that got to do with Jesus? But of course, 2,000 years of devotion to the image of the crucified messiah means that this scene can't get off so lightly. The movie has echoed the Gospel stories so closely – right up to a would-be Simon of Cyrene who doesn't manage to hand the cross back to its rightful occupant – that the connection between this crucifixion and its more famous predecessor is undeniable. However indirectly, the movie is laughing about the death of Jesus. And another problem: the scene's offensiveness is softened by the fact that for many people, it's so darn funny. Humour is even more subjective than offensiveness, but I find that the movie's parody of the high spot of Spartacus (where everyone is claiming to be Spartacus to save Spartacus's life) is irresistibly funny. Then there's the surreal futility of an attack by kamikaze foot-soldiers. And that song: whatever else it is, the resolution into such Broadway cheeriness is black comic mastery. Logically, though, that doesn't make any difference – after all, good timing doesn't stop a racist joke being racist. I'm not as confident at diagnosing blasphemy as meringue-wearing priests. Maybe I just have lower standards. I think the ending goes further than I'm comfortable with. But I also think that this scene shouldn't blind Christians to the incisive critique of religious behaviour (and good jokes) that the rest of the movie is blessed with. There are two kinds of people whom the Church has traditionally stoned: blasphemers and prophets. I'm not suggesting that the Pythons are in the latter category – even with their comedy beards and tea towels on their heads. But their take on dysfunctional religion deserves to be heard. I often wonder if those who speak out in the name of the Lord aren't in greater danger of taking it in vain than those who laugh at it. As another great comic profaner, Eddie Izzard, said: "If you are religious, that's OK, but you've got to keep analysing it, and keep a sense of humour, because without a sense of humour people start dying." Especially if the ones without the sense of humour have stones. Top of Page | Archive | Ship of Fools Central © Ship of Fools 1999 |
