Their jokes about assigning gender to babies and to being transgender, dressing in drag, like all of it was a send-up.
Sure, they did punch down if you were a person who were in those groups, but the fact that it was large enough social event to be relevant enough to be a comedy skit on a television show or a movie seen by millions implies that there were some serious things going on back then that they could see and wanted to address.
What the hell was going on that put all of those things in their mind?
In addition to the comments from others, it’s worth remembering that a lot of their humour is timeless. Shakespeare made drag jokes. The handsome cabin boy is as old as sailing.
Basically, taboo is funny - and these subjects have been taboo for most of human history.
Check the history of comedy.
Mel Brooks ‘The Producers’ movie had two gay men. Bugs Bunny was in drag in the 1940’s. “Some Like It Hot” came out in the 1950s. Heck, pretty much any Hollywood movie made before the Hays Code would have had gay gags.
Milton Berle was the King of Comedy and he did drag for years.
The Pythons didn’t invent anything
This is why the whole woke thing is so stupid to me.
“I’m sick of Hollywood putting DEI bs in my movies not like the old days!”
The old days: “Come see two men dress as women to escape the mob!”
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“Disney has gone woke”.
Meanwhile Mary Poppins (made in the 60’s) straight up has a banger song “sister suffragette” and signs for women’s suffrage in it.
“Disney has gone woke” has to be the stupidest thing to say, they’ve been woke longer than I’ve been around.
This is it exactly. Before magnetic tape, Comedians told the same jokes For generations.
Modern comedians act like they’re the first people to come up with jokes because of the first people to record them.
Sometimes I wonder about how many songs the average person would know throughout history. An ancient Roman would be exposed to songs from the entire Empire, while a 1000 AD English farmer might only hear a few dozen in their whole life time.
I grew up in Seattle in the 80’s. I really thought all races and sexualities were accepted and that men and women were equal. Boy was I surprised to find out a lot of our nation was backwards as fuck.
Monty Python made such sense to me philosophically so it was second nature to watch it. I didn’t even think of it as British and for me it will always be timeless
Monty Python and its absurdities are a breath of fresh air in a world gone stale.
Let’s put this another way: why are the same routines from the 70s still relevant today? It’s like all the movements of one generation have had almost zero effect on society as a whole.
problem is the progress goes to about then. I have often commented that things have been going downhill post seventies but it was hard to notice for awhile and I would get blowback on how bad particular groups had it. Thing is they had it way worse in the 60s and the 50s and have seen little progress in the eighties onward. Feels to me like progress pretty much stopped or reverted since then on the environment, our infrastructure, and our social programs but like the few decades before had massive progress.
Think about this. Public sex clubs like ‘Plato’s Retreat’ and gay bath houses were mainstream in the 1970s. Bette Midler got her start performing at a gay bath house. There were porn theaters catering to couples all over the place. AIDS came along and threw everything back fifty years.
yeah and today we have roe vs wade thrown out and folks that are against condoms. ugh.
Hey, I’m against condoms. They suck, and don’t feel very good for anyone. That’s why I got sterilized, and when I was dating I got tested regularly and insisted on the same from my partner(s).
I once read a novel from the 1970s. There were a couple of thugs who were arguing over who’d had more STIs. It was a simpler, happier time.
Dressing in drag had been a staple ofEnglish comedy for decades if not much, much longer In the first world war guys were doing it for concert troupes (essentially, vaudeville acts by and for the soldiers.)
It literally goes back to Shakespeare, something all Brits are completely aware of.
In addition, transgender people have always been around, and it seems as if the conservatives have been terrified of them forever. So there’s obvious potential for comedic value.
Echibit A: Queen, I Want to Break Free.
This is the most correct answer. English Theater, historically, had men playing the women’s parts. There’s a long, long tradition of it. So MP dressing in drag follwed the tradition, the viewer might find it both appropriate, and humorously anachronistic, along with MP’s exaggeration of the characters makes for great humor.
The UK is an incredibly Classist society with a long-running “know your place” kind of mindset and very low Social Mobility for an European nation - people very much are defined by their class (all the way to ther being a very specific, non-regional, English language accent for the upper class) and one’s social class is very much inherited.
The 60s and the 70s were the peak point for the result of the post War (that being WWII) increase in social mobility in Britain with lots of Working Class lads and lasses making it big in, amongst others, the arts (and you see it not just in Comedy but also Acting more in general and especially in Music were almost every great British star from that age had working class origins).
All this has in the meanwhile being reversed, hence once again almost all modern British artists are the sons and daughters of the upper-middle and upper classes.
During that golden period the massive mix of people from all origins in the arts created all kind of original and “not knowing your place” art expressions, and I believe the Money Pythons are one of those.
Love seeing foreign people attempt to explain the culture of a country they’ve never been to.
That’s such an interesting statement.
Irrelevant for my post, since I lived in Britain for over a decade, but interesting.
Thank you for sharing that tidbit about yourself.
the sexual revolution took place in the 60s/70s, partly due to invention of the contraceptive pill, which became available to unmarried women in 1967. homosexuality was partially decriminalized in 1967. abortion was legalized. no fault divorce was introduced.
it was the biggest social movement of their lives, perhaps started by women joining the workforce for world war II.It was ABSOLUTELY started by women joining the workforce due to WWII.
I like to make a joke how Hitler was the biggest driving force in the feminist movement. Not because I support Hitler, and not because I’m anti-feminist.
I do it because it amuses me so much to say a wild and absurd claim like that, where womens feminists movements happened because of Hitler, and then watch their faces when I explain in a calm voice, with logic and reason, that there is a legitimate explaination for how all of womens progressive movements happened because of the most evil man in modern history.
I make sure to carefully tiptoe around saying that HE was a feminist. He was not. I never claim that. But by making THE LISTENER frame it in their own mind that way, and then explaining facts and truths, their faces contort trying to find the flaw. It’s great.
Again, not pro-hitler, not anti-feminism. Just very much pro-trolling chaos.
To make your little prank more airtight you should say “driving force behind the feminist movement,” not “in the feminist movement,” because he was not in the feminist movement.
To summarize: America is like 50 years behind culturally rhe rest of the civilized world. They already got the social issues we are currently dealing with sorted out
note the items i listed were for the UK. Americas stances on them are devolving.
Drag mainly.
