Monty Python Deconstructed [Open Spoilers]

Cafe Society
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  1. The Knights Who Say Ni!

I’m just not sure about Monty Python any more.

I like their sketches well enough. Some of them even make me smile. These vignettes of everyday life in the UK, where the threat of interrogation by the notorious Spanish Inquisition is an ever present worry, continue to enthrall viewers the world over.

Nevertheless, I have always felt that something, some element of je ne sais quoi perhaps, has been missing from the entertainment. After much study of these sketches, I have come to the conclusion that they lack the essential elements of a) logic and b) economy of action.

Consider if you will a scene from the movie Monty Python & The Holy Grail, to wit The Knights Who Say Ni!. Admittedly this is not a scene from everyday life, but logic was just as important in Arthurian times as it is today (except for the bit about that woman who lives underwater with just her arm sticking out above the surface).

The Knights Who Say Ni! patrol a patch of woodland which King Arthur (and his entourage) must cross in order to reach the other side. The Knights Who Say Ni! demand a shrubbery from Arthur as payment for letting him pass. Shortly afterwards, The Knights Who Say Ni! stop saying Ni! and become The Knights Who 'Till Recently Said Ni!.

In an unexpected twist to the plot, The Knights Who 'Till Recently Said Ni! raise the ante by demanding two shrubberies (in order to achieve a two-level effect). They then ask Arthur to chop down a tree using a herring, a fish not noted for its cutting properties, especially when applied to tree trunks and other large pieces of wood.

A most humorous tale I think you’ll agree.

But, applying some logic to this scene, I can’t help but think that if The Knights Who Say Ni! (aka The Knights Who 'Till Recently Said Ni!) had simply asked Arthur for a bag of gold, or a couple of distressed damsels, Arthur would have paid the price, no problem. This simple script alteration would have avoided all the brouhaha with the shrubberies (which require horticultural expertise to plant and great care to grow in the early stages anyway) and the contentious aspects of the confrontation would have been avoided. As a result, we could have moved on to the next sketch with more alacritous progress. How much better that would have have been can only be imagined.

Also, if Python had taken this logical and economical approach to humour throughout their careers, it’s quite possible they would have become comedy icons in their own lifetimes.

I regard this as a missed opportunity for the Monty Python team who, I feel sure, will be sitting at home right now ruing the mistakes they made in their chosen field of comedy.

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Errr…what would have been funny about asking for a bag of gold? Obviously shrubbery makes no sense…although at the same time fits in with the “requiring a boon” thing that’s part of the stories they were parodying. Logic doesn’t enter in.

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“Ruing” is a made-up word. You now owe three shrubberies. Harvested with a sea slug.

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Not to mention the fact that King Arthur clearly says the word “it” in the first scene, which
elicits absolutely no reaction from the Ni-ites at that time.

5

Stop this! It’s silly.

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The hallmark of the Monty Python oeuvre is subtle social satire. While it is true that the Knights Who Say Ni! are, superficially, an illogical obstacle to the progress of the protagonist, they actually represent the deeper truth of the sundered class structure of Arthurian England.

In 10th Century England, a tremendous divide between the upper and lower classes, represented by the mud-farming Constitutional Peasant and the King, respectively, was forming. The King, so distinguished from the lower classes “because he hasn’t got shit all over him,” is followed by his dirty and unpleasant thralls and servants, while peasants grub in the dirt to eke out a living.

The Knights, who are tall, healthy, and powerful, are symbolic of England’s struggle toward parliamentary reform and the two-house system, representing both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and the “path” between them the road to England’s future. The shrubberies are indeed an obstacle to King Arthur’s very future, and the future of all kings who descend from his rule, either spiritually or genetically. For England, therefore, to progress, Arthur and kings such as he must surrender into the power of the Knights the two-[del]shrubbery[/del] -house system.

This symbolic obstruction of the path to dictatorial power is hinted at in the speeches of the Constitutional Peasant, who insists that “supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses.”

As an obstacle, the shrubberies hearken to the opposing perils of Scylla and Charybdis — the peril of absolute dictatorial monarchy on one hand, and the perils of untamed absolute democracy on the other, and the path to the future lies between.

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Well, of course, only the knights who recently said ni have a weakness to the word it. The Knights who say Ni have a completely different word that they’re weak to.

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Fish, you frighten me. Quite a bit.

That’s all I have to say, because I’m too scared to stick around this thread right now.

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Fish that was excellent! Please continue by deconstructing the scene with the bridgekeeper. What is the significance of the unladen swallow? :wink:

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On second thought, lets not go to Cafe Society. It is a silly place.

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Before I read the rest of the OP, I must comment. Isn’t the lack of those two elements the basis for good sketch comedy? Just ask Second City or SNL

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Upon reading the rest of the OP, I have decided we’ve all been whooshed

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er, never mind. I’m the only whooshie. Pretend I was never here, k? :smiley:

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I applaud the learned Fish for his invaluable analysis of the historical background to the incident concerning The Knights Who Say Ni!

The accuracy of his contribution to this discussion cannot be faulted, unless you count a difference of about 400 years between the time of Arthur (6th century) and Fish’s discourse on the political upheavals of the 10th century.

The class structure in the 6th C. was totally different to that in the 10th C. At the time of Arthur’s death in 537, the Romans had only been absent from Britain for 100 years. The population of the country was quite happy with the Roman legacy of straight roads, sanitation and snails. They just weren’t interested in the concept of democracy, or anything else for that matter.

Am I really expected to take this seriously? No lesser person than Johannes Philoponus Grammaticus (485-555) refuted this theory several years before he also denied the teachings of Proclus and other Neo-Platonists.

In my assessment, and in the opinion of other clever historical experts of that era, The Knights Who Say Ni! are a metaphor for the bureaucratic red tape which would arise from the ashes of the Dark Ages and stand as an obstacle to progress until time immemorial, or maybe sooner.

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I refer you, sir, to the source material: clearly the 6th century is contraindicated by the title card which reads “932 A.D.”

We must take Arthur as the archetypical symbol of primitive pre-historical English monarchy rather than as the man himself.

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The unladen swallow, eh? Isn’t it obvious?

The Guardian at the Gate is a deeply mythic Campbellian archetype, best represented by Cerberus, the three-headed hound who guarded the gateway to the underworld. Also famous as Death’s gatekeeper is Charon, represented by an insulting and crotchety old man in Aristophanes’ play “The Frogs.” This correlation is suggested by the name of the bridge: it is indeed the “Bridge of Death” which crosses the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

Notably, the Guardian at the Gate is as much to prevent interlopers from getting in — as observed by Charon’s toll of a gold coin to ferry the dead across the River Styx — but also from getting out (witness the abduction of Persephone). The passage across the bridge is, therefore, a one-way journey, representing the descent into the underworld; there the hero must conquer his greatest enemy — in this case, the French — and emerge from the underworld a changed man.

The Old Man From Scene 24 stands athwart the gate, refusing passage to all those who cannot satisfy him; those unlucky souls are cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. This parallels the fate of the Lost Souls on the edge of the River Styx who could not pay the boatman’s toll and there wandered for eternity.

Peril, as we know from earlier passages in the Python material in question, is represented by the debauchery of the voluptuous, scantily-clad ladies of Castle Anthrax.

It is therefore obvious that the Gorge represents sexual awakening and understanding, which Lancelot deemed “too perilous” for Galahad to confront; naturally, it is Lancelot who successfully negotiates the exchange at the Bridge, and Galahad who cannot.

All of this is reinforced by the image of the laden swallow, whom we know bears a coconut. The coconut, of course, is a symbol used extensively in Hindu ritual as an offering to the gods; and significantly, the coconut palm itself is polygamomonoecious, containing both male and female flowers — itself a symbol encompassing sexual understanding.

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Well of course the title card reads 932 AD.

That is the whole point of the OP - there is simply not enough logic in the Python canon. You have to read between the lines in order to understand it.

Fine.

We are supposed to look up to a bloke who can’t even afford to buy himself a horse.

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This theme is echoed in Shakespeare, where no lesser a light than Richard III laments, “My kingdom for a horse!”

Clearly, these are deeper waters than one would expect from an ordinary comedy troupe.

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Oh no, no, no! In fact Monty Python themselves have realized that implausable, outrageous twists are unacceptable forms of humour:

“June the 4th, 1973, was much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough, and Ralph Mellish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work as usual when — [da dum!] Nothing happened! [dum dum da dum] Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Ralph Mellish looked down. But one glance confirmed his suspicions. Behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was no severed arm. No dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties. No head in a bag. Nothing. Not a sausage. For Ralph Mellish, this was not to be the start of any trail of events which would not, in no time at all, involve him in neither a tangled knot of suspicion, nor any web of lies, which would, had he been not involved, surely have led him…”

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Except the (Head?) KWSN says “Suffice it say that it is one of the words that the
Knights of Ni cannot bear to hear!” Note how he IDs himself and his band of
merry crusaders. :stuck_out_tongue: