My high school friends and I used to rent vcrs of flying circus episodes for all our sleepovers. Nevermind giggling and talking about boys. I’ve never noticed a gender disparity in who likes Monty Python but I associate almost exclusively with geeks, nerds and dorks so there you go 
I would say that when I try to introduce Flying Circus to someone unfamiliar with the show, I do try to pick an episode or sketch that resonates with something else I know they’ve found funny. I’ve had some success with Cuidado Las Llamas, but that’s definitely out on the absurdist end of the spectrum.
My ex-wife is a major, major Python fan. And her all-time favorite scene–I couldn’t even call it a routine–is the fish-slapping dance.
I can’t remember where, but I read just recently that (American) women very strongly tend to prefer the setup-punchline sort of joke. If that’s true, it’s easy to see why Monty Python might not appeal to many of them.
I’m not a geek and not only is John Cleese a scream, but Eric Idol was My Serious Crush back in the day. Beyond hot! I had no idea women didn’t like Monty Python as a rule.
Are you me? What **Antigen ** said. I adore Python.
Sorry to double-post, but I noticed this after. I looooove British humor, too, and actually prefer it to American humor. Not that I don’t laugh at that, too.
Marley23 --Do you think that guys tend to go for the weird, absurd humor more than women do? Do you think that if you were trying to show a woman what the deal is, you’d play some of the more straightforward stuff?
I wasn’t quite clear on your position.
Well, I am here to proclaim only geekish tendencies, but a full blown love of MP. I cannot wait for Spamalot to come here (I’m taking my teenagers)–I love the score to it.
As for MPFC, I have never liked the animation–I don’t care much for Terry Gilliam (he did a nice job on the accountancy bit for Meaning of Life) and he makes a great Patsy. And I liked the animation in the movies, but not in the show so much.
Some of the skits don’t work for me–but I find humor in attempts. Put anyone of them in drag and I’m laughing already (and I never found Milton Berle to be funny in drag). I love the way they play with language and social strata and pomposity.
I grew up with MPFC on channel 11 (PBS), 10:30 pm on Sunday nights.
If I were to introduce someone to MP, I would start with the movies and work backwards.
I have no idea where you got that impression.
After hearing about Monty Python and the Holy Grail for about two years, I finally watched it with the group of friends who talked incessantly about it. It was built up WAY TOO MUCH for me. It was a major letdown. So, if you want to “market it” to anyone, I’d say just show it to them and let them decide. Also, shut up when it’s on, nothing ruins a movie like someone quoting it throughout the whole thing. And don’t make someone feel like an outcast if they don’t laugh.
I don’t really find absurdity to be funny. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up an idea which is absurd, so it just comes across as amateurish, like a high school kid with a video camera trying to be a director.
That, and to me “British comedy” is a contradiction. Though I did kind of enjoy Shaun of the Dead.
Maybe some day I’ll watch “Holy Grail” again. Alone.
Maybe you should try “Saving Grace”. Not at all Python like and yet very funny.
Jim
To start anyone out with Monty Python- style humor, you have to start with the parrot sketch.
If your friend doesn’t laugh at “HELLO POLLY!!” and the fwap-fwap-fwap of the stuffed bird on the counter… there’s just no hope. Dump the friend and move on. You tried.
Count me in as another girl who loves all things Python. I even used to have the Complete Waste of Time program and at one point my computer was completely Pythonized. To the point that whenever you even hit a key you’d get a random weird noise (farts, burps, whistles; various quotes from the show: “Erogenous Zooooone!” etc.).
As far as appeal goes, I think you just either appreciate good humor or you don’t. I don’t think it has much to do with gender.
<air kiss> to marley23 for making me (sick with a bad cold) laugh out loud today. Thanks.
One of the best attributes of Python is that these guys were(are) excellent showmen. They can sing and dance–they can compose memorable tunes that also skewer hypocritical societal values. They’re all rounders–and they set a very high standard, that has not yet been matched by a group. I also think that like the Beatles, their sum was greater than their parts–when it comes to MP type stuff.
Cleese is a genuis at some forms of comedy, Idle another, Jones a third etc–but it’s the alchemy between them all (not meaning to leave Palin out-or Chapman, sigh) that makes them so funny. Alot of their stuff is still pertinent.
They also benefit from comedy being almost moribund these days. Wit is not appreciated today, nor is satire (TDS and Colbert excepted over here).
I also tend towards British humor because it combines intellect with absurd physical so well. I don’t like set up/punchline stuff most of the time.
HA! Me too! I hope that someday I can be someone’s ex-wife too!
On a side note, I also prefer British Comedy. In fact that’s what I’ve been watching exclusively for a while now (long story). I also really like American humor, but there’s something…special about British.
Also I find it amusing that I can’t really stand American slapstick. Never got into the 3 Stooges (also something ‘they say’ women don’t ‘get’). But I can’t get enough of Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson’s show “Bottom.” It’s nothing but slapstick. But it’s VIOLENT slapstick. Instead of a guy getting a bop to the nose or accidentally clocked by a ladder, “Bottom” has guys getting hit repeatedly in the nuts with cricket bats. Hard. Tee Hee!!!
If anyone has come close, it’s Codco, who are inexplicably pretty much unknown outside of Canada. I will never never understand how The Kids in the Hall made it outside instead of Codco. Not to sneer at the Kids, of course – they’re definitely well above average – but Codco was much smarter, much more edgy and outrageous, and several orders of magnitude funnier. Compared with Codco, The Kids in the Hall feels a little bit like Saturday Night Live – Safe and somewhat lowest-common-denominator.
Codco had a theatre sensibility, and their stuff was of the very highest quality.
I’ve often wondered, though, if their recurring characters “Jerome and Duncan, Queen’s Counsellors at Large”, weren’t cribbed a bit from Python’s “gay judges” sketch. Maybe it’s just natural, what with the wigs and robes and all. (Jean Genet went in a similar direction.)
Smart and funny, though. One of my favourite sketches is James Joyce Ruined My Life – a mock documentary about a Newfoundland man who becomes obsessed with Joyce, which inspires him to get roaring drunk every night and stumble around orating. There are “interviews” with his disgusted wife (who is apparently completely unaware that she’s the spit-and-image of Nora,) complaining about his bad behavior, and little things like his forever pawing through her underwear drawer.
I can’t stand that Codco isn’t available on DVD yet. It especially grieves me that there are so many people who haven’t been able to see the work of Tommy Sexton, who was (without fear of hyperbole) one of the greatest comedic performers ever to grace the planet.
Not only am I a female Monty Python fan, a couple years ago, I had a brief relationship with a Dubliner who looked like a young Eric Idle, and was nearly as funny. So [Nelson Muntz]HA ha![/NM] My Eric Idle lookalike wasn’t a Python fan, though. My current boyfriend doesn’t like them, either. 
My husband smiles and looks like he wants to like MP, but remains puzzled by it all.
I shoulda had him watch before we had kids…
Has anybody noticed anything unusual about this thread?
Perhaps something is lacking here?
—thirty seven posts, and not one silly quote.!!!
perhaps the thread is pining for the fjords…
(sorry, but somebody had to do it…)
I shall live vicariously through you, my friend. Hubba-hubba, Eric!
I’m a female, and I love Monty Python. My mom made me go rent some Flying Circus tapes and the movies when I was about fourteen. “You have to watch this stuff!”
I think my mom used to watch them when she was younger and get stoned. 
I like goofy humor. And MP is excellent goofy humor. I’m also a dork.