Monty Python and the Medieval Other

Monty Python and the Medieval Other
The posters advertising Monty Python and the Holy Grail at its
initial release in 1975 proclaimed, with appropriately comic bombast, that the film "set movie making back 900 years." The joke is
of course an anachronistic absurdity-filmmaking is perhaps our
most cherished form of modem artistic mimesis, the way in which
we flatter ourselves that we can capture the essence of the object
filmed absolutely: the final and conspicuously technological solution
to the dilemma of artistic signification. And the thought of transposing this twentieth-century technological wonder into the Middle
Ages is ridiculous enough to provoke a laugh. But the poster's claim
is also representative of a larger satirical strategy followed throughout Monty Python and the Holy Grail, tht<-deliberateexploitation of
anachronism to attack all modem attempts to grasp the alterity of the
Middle Ages and its artifacts. No sooner does the film evoke some
definite idea about the Middle Ages than it juxtaposes against it the
modem preconceptions or motivations that gave it rise, almost
always with hilarious results. Ultimately at issue in Monty Python
and the Holy Grail is our ability to know the Middle Ages at all,
when every attempt we make ultimately betrays the traces of its
modem manufacture.
The vehicle ofjilm itself is just the first and most obvious target
of this corrosive satirical method, the poster being one example of
this particular attack. Another occurs in the film's first scene, which
opens with the appearance on screen of large white uncial letters
against a black background, reading "England 932 A.D.," accompa-
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nied by a rolling flourish of heroic music. The writing and sound set
up an expectation, albeit one charged with a great deal of Monty
Python-inspired apprehension, that the scenes to follow will in some
fashion represent a medieval milieu, probably romantically with the
usual paraphernalia of such representations-castles, knights on
horseback, and so on. And the expectation is kept alive, at least for
a moment. We ftrst see swirling mist and then, emerging out of it,
a sort of cryptic standard, a pole surmounted by what appears to be
a wagon wheel, on which is stretched what may be a human body
(perhaps a gesture toward the unromantic view of the Middle Ages
as a time of draconian punishments, of extreme human cruelty).
There follows yet another reinforcement of the romantic expectation
through the medium of sound-we hear horse's hooves, and probably expect that the next thing to come out of the mist will be a knight
on his destrier, in full chain armor and holding his pennoned lance.
And this is of course what comes out of the mist, but with one of the
ftlm's more notorious modem modiftcations to the romantic myth
of the knight. The knight (in this case, Arthur) has no horse, although
he and his esquire studiously preserve the illusion of one by walking
with a peculiar jog that mimics a horse's gait, and the esquire's
clicking two coconut shells together. The ftlm.therefore undercuts
its own earlier evocation of the knight of romance by visually
portraying the Monty Python knight of limited absurdist ftlm budgets: horses are expensive to keep and feed, one would expect. It is
as if the Python troop, by this visual portrayal of the medium of
sound, are admitting that they can afford to get the sounds right, but
not the sights one would expect from a ftlmic view of the Middle
Ages. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but the ftlm is not the perfect
medium of transmission you perhaps thought it was-perhaps you
should try radio.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail in fact points out that this
modem attempt to grasp the Middle Ages inescapably taints them
with our modem concerns, whether those concerns are dictated by
the emotional, intellectual, or ideological stake we have in seeing the
Middle Ages as we do, or by the ftnancial and aesthetic concerns
governing the medium of expression. As always, the Python troop
are here busily engaged in exploiting dilemmas that vex the much
more serious concern of scholars and philosophers, but it is nevertheless interesting to note that this precise problem is of great concern
to medievalists today. I How can we get outside ourselves enough to
Monty Python and the Medieval Other
85
~r~p the essence of the medieval Other? As Frederic Jameson puts
It1n "Marxism and Historicism":
If ... we dec~dethat C:haucer,say, or a steatopygous Venus,
o! the narrau,:es of nm~teel?~-century Russian gentry, are
more or less directly or Intuluvely accessible to us with our
?wn cultural moyens du bord-then we have presupposed
In advance what was to have been demonstrated, and our
apparent "comprehension" of these alien texts must be
haunted by the nagging suspicion that we have all the while
remained locked in our own present-the present of the
s~ciete de c~nsummation with its television sets and superhighways, Its Cold War, and its postmodernisms and
poststructuralisms:-and that we have never really left home
at all, that our feelIng of Verstehen is little better than mere
psychological projection, that we have somehow failed to
!ouch t?e strangeness and the resistance of a reality genuInely different from our own. Yet if, as the result of such
hyperbolic doubt, we decide to reverse this initial stance and
to afftrm, instead and from the outset, the radical Differ~nce
of the alien object from ourselves, then at once the doors of
comprehension begin to swing closed and we ftnd ourselves
se~arated by the whole density of our own culture from
objects or cultures thus initially defined as Other from
ourselves and thus as irremediably inaccessible (43-44).
J~m~n argue~ here a~d elsewhere that a ~ufftciently sensitive
~ar~st Interpretauon of history as a dialectical process between
differIng modes of production may offer a way out of this dilemma
of ~
ages' alt~rity/identity, the "hermeneutic circle," as it is
so~~tImes called. But Monty Python and the Holy Grail seems to
antICIpate such. maneuvers in general and this one in particular.
C:0~Ider the epIsode of Arthur and Dennis. This begins with Arthur
ndin~ over the crest of the hill seen in the ftlm's ftrst scene; the same
cryptIc standard continues to crown it, but this time it is seen against
an overcast and ~earr sky, while in the camera's foreground two
~~
are kneehng In the mud, gouging at the ground with sticks
and ptl~g. up "ftlth.~ The ~gle of the shot changes, and we see
Arth~ ndin~ up behind Denrus as he trudges along, pulling a heavy
cart; In the distance, ~e see a.castle between the peasant and the King.
Both these shots are IdeologIcally "loaded"; their setups in each case
Monty Python and the Medieval Other
King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his trusty steed Patsy (Terry Gilliam)
in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
present the peasants in the foreground working at some menial
drudgery with a symbol of authority placed behind and slightly above
them- in the first shot, the standard with its ill-defmed human body,
a vague reminder of authoritarian discipline; in the second, the
brooding castle, sitting between the King and peasant. The overall
effect is to realize in starkest visual terms yet another modem
preconception of the Middle Ages, one underpinning the Marxist
view of the feudal "mode of production," a tendency to regard the
time as one of grim and barbarous tyranny, an age in which the lower
class was ruthlessly exploited by its feudal overlords.
The King mistakenly accosts Dennis as "old woman," asking
who the owner of the castle is. One expects, perhaps, a pulled
forelock at the very least from this down-trodden medieval unfortunate, but Dennis is a touchy peasant and, as it turns out, an anarchosyndicalist. He protests the King's "automatic treatment of him as
an inferior," accuses him of "exploiting the workers" and of "hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma." Outdated by whose stan-
87
~ds? Only fro~ a ~odern perspective could one possibly accuse
King Arthur of clinging to a royal prerogative in the least outdated'
it wo~ld have just been coming into style in his day. The politicai
col~:>nngof ~~ scene's visua! presentation, portraying an expected
typIcal ~ondit1on ~f ~e medieval worker, is surrealistically juxtaposed wIth the socIalIst construct that at least in part produced such
preconceptions-the Marxist model of history, which with its insistence on the linear progressivity of human achievement toward
socialist perfection requires as a starting point a view of the feudal
economy as exploitative. The effect of putting Marxist rhetoric into
the mouths of medieval peasants is again to undermine this modem
construct.of medieval economic realities. What does it say for linear
pr<;>gress
If the same Marxist rhetoric is being used by workers in the
qUintessentially exploitative Middle Ages as that used by the framers
of Marxist historical theory?
'!O be fair 1<;> .J~m~sonand o.thertheoreticians who are trying to
m~fy the POSItlVlStlctendencIes of Marxist theory, it should be
pomted out that this scene parodies an extremely overgeneralized
and dogmatic variety of Marxism, the sloganeering sort that arrogantly assumes the correctness and fmality of its interpretations of
the past Thi~ focus becomes clearer as the scene progresses and the
level of conflict between Arthur and Dennis rises. Arthur becomes
increasingly exasperated at Dennis's torrent of Marxist rhetoric
which grows more impudent and abusive with. the arrival of rein~
forcements. f. warty old woman enters with a cry of "Dennis, there's
some lovely filth over here." Then, being informed that Arthur is
her king, she wants to know how he got to be king-she "didn't vote
for him." Arthur, his eyes turned heavenward launches into a
descr~ption of how he received his kingship by' the supernatural
sanctl.on of "the :Udy of the Lake, her arm clad in shining samite,"
who lifted Excahbur "aloft from the bosom of the lake" to bestow it
upon him. As he speaks, a choir of angelic voices begins to sing in
the b~ck~round. Arthur's appeal to the supernatural for his right to
rule IS.directly out of medieval political theory, which saw an
anagoglc.al reflection of the divine order in the structuring of the
monar~hic~l ~tate. A~ Dante puts it, "When mankind is subject to
o?~ Ptl.nce It.ISmos~h~e to God and this implies conformity to the
divm~ mtent1~n, which ~sthe condition of perfection" (13). But any
assert.l~nof~.s alternatIve vi~w of political legitimacy is ended with
~e~s s detlSlVesquawk, which debunks Arthur's appeal with what
IS literally a modem party line: "Strange women lying in ponds
Monty Python and the Medieval Other
distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. You
can't expect to wield supreme executive pOwer just because some
watery tart threw a ~ord at YO\1!" A true stateme~t of the case,
perhaps, but so egregiously overstated that we have lIttle ~ympa~y
with it. The viewer perhaps resents the thoughtlessness WIthwhich
Dennis relegates Arthur's soliloquy to the rubbish-heap of political
thought, not to mention his hypersensitive proletarianism. before
which Arthur is reduced to frustrated impotence-shaking
the
"bloody peasant" by the collar only to have this epithet turned against
him. "Oh, that's a dead giveaway," says Dennis. "Did you see him
repressing me?" One has a dreary sense that this kind of rhetoric
can, and probably will, be prolonged indefinitely in tedious combat
with any tendency, however innocent, to wish for a simpler time and
a simpl~r way of doing things, any less complicated alternative
ideology, which it will automatically dismiss as outmoded. As so~e
Marxists would have it, Marxism may be salvable as a more.sensItive nuanced system for grasping the past. But some latter-day
De~ses in the academic community are even today guilty of forcing
the remains of the past into the overly restrictive mold of their
ideology. As Lee Patterson notes of Marxist hermeneutics:
The text serves not as the source of the historian's knowledge but merely as an occasion of its deployment. The
interpreter possesses a knowledge of the Real (apparently
derived from wholly extratextual sources) with which he
will unmask the evasions and repressions of the text; he can
say that which the text must always silence because he
already knows that which the text refuses to (but, from
another angle, must inevitably) say. Paradoxically but predictably, then, the historicism of the left comes round to meet
that of the right: history ... tyrannizes the text and constrains
its meanings within predetermined limits (47-48).
This analysis of the Arthur and Dennis episode should not be
understood as an argument that the film has any sort of axe ~o grind
when it comes to Marxism. Monty Python and the Holy Grail also
satirizes less ideologically defined attempts to grasp the Middle
Ages; indeed, it seems to level its guns in general at academic
accounts of the Middle Ages. There is, for example, the very strange
interlude following King.Arthur's failure to take the French castle
through the Trojan Rabbit ploy. A bespectacled and tweed-suited
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gentleman referred to in a subtitle only as "a famous historian," his
generalized anonymity making him appear as a sort of academic
Everyman, comes on screen to "explain" Arthur's subsequent strategy for taking the castle. This grey eminence gives his totally
unnecessary explanation, made all the more strange and irritating by
the scene's garish intrusiveness and artificiality, in the carefully
modulated English of an Oxford don seen through the eyes of P. G.
Wodehouse. His tone is animated, reinforced by frequent gestureS;
he seems totally absorbed in and enthusiastic about his expository
charge. Then there is a barely audible drumming of horse's hooves
from off-screen, followed by the appearance of a knight on a real
horse, in full thirteenth-century panoply of war, who flashes between
the camera and the historian and cuts the old gentleman down with
a single sword stroke. The brutality of the scene is shocking but also
rather funny; it is easy to resent the historian's officious intrusion
into the story where no explanation was asked for or needed, and his
demise is not mourned. The scene seems to reverse the sound/sight
opposition invoked at the film's beginning; there, the romantic view
of the Middle Ages is aurally invoked only to be visually undercut.
Here, the modem words of the "famous historian" are just so much
professorial wind to be cut violently short by the visually invoked
medieval other, as if to point out that we medievalists talk a good
game, but to ask how we would fare when confronted by the actuality
of the Middle Ages, personified by its most imposing figurehead, the
knight, the "terrible worm in an iron cocoon." The answer suggested here is of course that we would fare poorly; tweed-suited
urbanity is not much of a defense against cold steel. And so the
necessity of a safe, modem starting point for our academic expositions is required, lest we fare as the "famous historian."
But this scene has another importance beyond its character as an
attack on academic medievalism. The thread of self-reflexivity
noted in the advertising poster and the first scene is here picked up,
and begins to run as a subversive subnarrative behind the continuing
story of Arthur's quest. Following the murder, a middle-aged
woman in a cardigan and skirt rushes onto the screen crying for help;
we briefly see her standing over the body wringing her hands, then
the scene changes to the "Tale of Sir Robin." The narrative again
briefly alludes to this new subplot several scenes later, when the first
part of Arthur's episode with the Knights Who Say "Ni" is followed
by a brief shot showing the same woman standing over the historian's
body with several policemen, gesticulating and plainly telling them
Monty Python and the Medieval Other
King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and one of the K,nights Who Say
(Michael Palin) in MontyPythonand the Holy Grall.
U
Ni
H
the events surrounding the killing. We next see the policemen
standing by the shrubbery plot of the Knights Who Say "Ni,"
following the explosion of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, the
sound of which alerts them to the medieval film being made nearby.
They appear again following Arthur's outwitting of the Bridge
Keeper, shaking Lancelot down as he leans with his hands aga~t
the roof of their squad car, the static and scratchy voices of theIr
two-way radios providing the shot's only sound. And their final and
most important appearance is of course in the film's last scene w~en
their car with sirens blaring pulls up in front of Arthur's advancmg
army; the last shot is of Arthur being led away in handcuffs, obliterated finally by a policeman's peremptory bark of ••that's enough,"
followed by his palm covering the camera to terminate the film.
In these scenes, Monty Python and the Holy Grail seems to
acknowledge that it is implicated in the very strategies it satirizes,
for it is a modem film about the Middle Ages and cannot escape from
its own modernity. The enterprise of filmmaking is after all moti-
91
vated by an intrinsically modem desire to make the historically
distant apprehensible to the eyes and ears through technologically
ensured mimesis, to capture its essence through some metaphysically
perfect medium of transmission. But one can do this no more than
one can trapSpose the medium of film "back 900 years." The very
effort to do so leads to an incident of violence on which the modem
authorities frown; the film self-consciously acknowledges its status
as a medieval fiction depending for its existence on the modem
milieu that surrounds it-a milieu in which one cannot kill medieval
historians with impunity. The modem world will not, cannot, be shut
out of the film's enterprise of trying to capture the Middle Ages, and
its intrusions eventually overload the efforts of Monty Python and
the Holy Grail to sustain itself as a medieval fiction.
It would not be too extreme to see the real quest of the film as
an effort to say something genuinely medieval about the Middle
Ages, but unlike the actual quest for the Grail, there is no Galahad
to act as deus ex machina and find the proper medium for saying it.
Galahad here is certainly but quite understandibly possessed of
impure thoughts, as the episode at Castle Anthrax demonstrates, and
the characters are usually thwarted by the modernity of the very film
they move and act in.3 Not all the humor in the film fits into the
pattern I have charted here, and to inSist that it does would be to
ignore a great deal of the inspired lunacy that graces the movie. But
much of it does fit, not only the scenes I have discussed but others
as well: the cartoonist's coronary that saves Arthur's party from the
Black Beast, or th'eRambo-esque, grotesque juxtaposition of modem
military hardware and medieval religious artifacts in the Holy Hand
Grenade of Antioch with its biblical instruction manual, the Book of
Armaments. Moments like these demonstrate that there is a broad
method to the madness of Monty Python and the Holy Grail; a
ruthlessly comic tendency to point out modem constructs for grasping the medieval Other that is our shadow, constructs that prove only
the shadows of our own age.
I See, for example, Lee Patterson's book Negotiating the Past: The
Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: Universityof
WisconsinPress, 1987); or the essayscollectedby DavidAers in Medieval
Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History (Brighton: Harvester, 1986);
in addition,both Pattersonand Aersjoined with SheilaDelanyat the 1989
MLA Conventionto give papers at a specialsession entitled"Politicizing
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David D. Day
the Middle Ages in Theory and Practice," led by R. James Goldstein.
Patterson, Aers, and Delany all argue that this problem of the "hermeneutic
circle" is inescapable; the alternative is therefore a criticism that frankly
admits its ideological motivations and preconceptions even as it uses them
to interpret the past. "To acknowledge this [one's ideological stance and
the effects it has on one's criticism] is to acknowledge severe problems.
But these are simply unavoidable, and they are best confronted openly"
(Aers 2).. \
2Most notably in The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981).
3Perhaps ironically this idea of a quest for the ideal system of signification haS recently been proposed as the guiding principle of Piers Plowman, another story of a frustrating quest that ends ambiguously. See Laurie
Finke, "Troth's Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers Plowman,"
Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, ed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin
B. Shichtman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 51-68.
Aers, David. Medieval Lit~rature:
Brighton: Harvester, 1986. ,.
Criticism, Ideology, and History.
.
Dante Alighieri. Monarchy, trans. Donald Nicholl. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1954.
Finke, Laurie A. "Troth's Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers
Plowman." Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, ed. Laurie A.
Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1987. 51-68.
Jameson, Frederic. "Marxism and Historicism." New Literary History 11
(Autumn 1979): 41-73.
Patterson, Lee. Negotiating the Past: the Historical Understanding of
Medieval Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.