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March 28, 2024, 07:19:44 PM

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The reason the left's been fucked since 1979...

Started by Rizla, April 18, 2021, 07:01:52 PM

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Rizla

...is the fucking People's Front of Judea. How much nuanced political discourse has been snuffed at the wick by some drudgerous dullard going "hey, this is like that bit in Life of Brian!". It's usually not, it's usually two very different points of view on the same subject at odds with one another. Where would the terminally unimaginative be without that reference? The modern equivalent might be "are we the bad guys?" Stops you having to think about stuff.

I like Life of Brian but those PFJ scenes bum me out a bit (don't get me started on welease wodewick).  Holy Grail's much better on politics. The red wall bloke in his swamp castle.







Old Nehamkin

#2
The "What have the Romans ever done for us" routine is another bit that retrospectively comes off as quite blinkered and reads as a kind of smug rebuttal of left-wing anti-colonialism. I love Life of Brian and I still find both of those scenes very funny in execution, but the film's elements of contemporary political satire feel like they betray a prickly reactionary impulse among the increasingly wealthy and middle-aged Python team (or maybe just a couple of them), and I think that to some extent they undermine the ageless, transgressive quality that characterises the best of their output.

I think that if the film didn't exist then centrist/right-wing folk would just find some other pithy line to annoyingly quote all the time, though.

neveragain

I can't find any fault with the PFJ scenes, they're all about the petty bureaucracy of political groups. The whole Stan/Loretta sketch though...

Video Game Fan 2000

#4
Brian is one of the very few pieces of "we make fun of everyone equally" comedy that actually comes off. And even then, with everyone giving their all and a gift of a script it manages to use that to indulge in a bunch of prejudices. I'm surprised the rape joke never gets mentioned when people drag Python for being middle class white guys, its genuinely shocking. In The Meaning of Life it was like they were trying to make the audience feel like shit over what they were laughing at, but they never out did that one. Perfectly delivered but so very horrible, I feel bad every time. It outdoes Derek and Clive for that.

Reg being a coward does a lot of heavy lifting in Brian. He's clearly shown as wrong about Loretta, he apologizes to her when his joke about feminism eats shit in a later scene, so it works as a joke about someone making arguments for something for the sake of it then abandoning the point when its clear no one else agrees. Even "What Have The Romans..." relies on his pompousness, he's using someone else's plan to go off on a rant. You lose the fact that Reg is established as a coward with no convictions and all the little bits start feeling very nasty. I could absolutely watch it over and over, but I get the feeling if you stripped it down to what used to by the album version, just the sketches without the plot sequences, the reliance on typically 70s targets for humour would wear me down quickly. Lol, women. Lol, speech impediment. Lol, terrible disease. Lol, religious persecution.

I like how everyone in the movie is resisting authority but only in vain and pointless ways, the implication that everyone is fauning over the Romans and religious institutions but outwardly appearing independent, it really makes good on the otherwise fatuous "yes, we're all individuals" message. The problem with all the Python movies is that they never got beyond "just a bunch of sketches" but Brian at least has a consistent structure to most of its humour - mocking performative resistance. Everyone is in thrall to someone else. Everyone's under someones boot and trying to put a brave face on it rather than changing anything. Palin is the best at it - the Leper, Ben and Nisus. People who have completely caved into horrible situations and somehow manage to pride themselves on their failure to confront it and smiling through the misery. Too English for words. Brian is just a hapless guy who believes in fairplay in a world shrieking "nail them up!" or handing out crosses with a big friendly smile, and his amiable haplessness isn't all that much different. Cleese saying "you couldn't get away with it today" is fucking ironic because there's tons of fedora crap out there but nothing much that really hits the catharsis laughs like Ben or the "crucifixion's a doddle" bit. Ben is one of the most ahead of the curve bits in any comedy from its time. Genuinely something that you wouldn't really see today, but for the complete opposite reason Cleese thinks.

I wouldn't recommend to someone these days without a content warning because it crashes into nearly every 70s unPC comedy speedbump full tilt. There's even tits just for the sake of it. But as a whole thing, I think it works. Unless specifically speech impediments are upsetting then you're fucked with anything that's Starring Michael Palin.

Jockice

Obligatory mention of the time I was talked into going on an SWP protest by people I knew who were members. And being quite surprised when some members of the RCP who I also knew turned up. But it turned out they were there to protest against the protest...

You couldn't make it up. Good job too as I didn't.

thenoise

QuoteThere's even tits just for the sake of it.

Willy for the sake of it too, though.

Dusty Substance


Shoulders?-Stomach!

I think the PFJ stuff isn't really sneering or punching down, it's a valid and quite funny observation of how overly formal and bureaucratic processes applied to progressive groups result in a kind of cosy insularity and prevarication, while reflecting on how smaller pressure groups fuck themselves by being unconciliatory and narrow even when their wider agenda overlaps.

I think it is a valid and relatively funny pop at the left that seems to be coming from a place of genuine fondness. It's not sneering at the losers, it's a rather neat fatalistic sketch on why people will invariably get ruled over by might rather than by their own collective will.

Video Game Fan 2000

#9
Whenever I hear about Cleese pushing to play Brian himself I always think that was a close shave. Not only because Chapman was great in the role, but cos Reg being an arse but not that much of an arse is crucial for all those scenes to work. Without Cleese they'd probably have had to have Palin or Jones do it, and having the leader of the group be a more agreeable or sympathetic character means the scenes would be far more mean-spirited or sneering. You only have to look at rightwingers post the gifs of the amphitheater scene or "what have the Romans..." with the assumption that Reg is the reasonable one to see what the tone could so easily have been.

neveragain


gilbertharding

'course, the actual answer to the question "what have the Romans done for us?" is "not as much as they've done for the Romans".


Mister Six

If the left had its shit together then a brief skit in a 1970s film wouldn't matter one jot.

idunnosomename

i cant see how if you've been through student politics how you can't think its send up in Life of Brian isn't hilarious

SPLITTER!!



I mean this is a film that was seen as an existential threat to the establishment of the Church of England, which it clearly wasn't (it's actually quite kind to Jesus), so it clearly isn't really detrimental to the left either. we also get the comfortable middle class getting shat on too (I'm Brian and so's my wife!).

it really is a superb film. also still looks fucking great for something set in 30s AD, locations and matte paintings all in.

wonder if that old cunt's juniper bush is still there.

Petey Pate

Quote from: Mister Six on April 19, 2021, 11:15:54 PM
If the left had its shit together then a brief skit in a 1970s film wouldn't matter one jot.

Yes, the premise of this thread is odd. Should we also be blaming Alan Parker: Urban Warrior for the rise of Tony Blair?

Wet Blanket


Factionalism is a thing that lefties are prone too though, innit? It's probably one of the Python team's less original observations.

Alexei Sayle regularly comes back to it as a topic, and his left wing credentials can't really be questioned:

QuoteI used to me in this militant communist organisation as a youth. We were full of righteous hate. We hated fascism, we hated intolerance... but most of all we hate each other.

13 schoolyards

Quote from: Wet Blanket on April 20, 2021, 09:51:41 AM
Factionalism is a thing that lefties are prone too though, innit? It's probably one of the Python team's less original observations.

To be fair, it's not like right wing groups don't encounter the occasional night of the long knives spot of factionalism either.

Retinend