Academic literature on the topic 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'

Monty Pythonin komedia vastaelokuvana Englantilainen elokuvateoreetikko Peter Wollen lanseerasi vuonna 1972 termin ”vastaelokuva” kuvaamaan Jean-Luc Godardin elokuvaa suhteessa valtavirran (eli Hollywoodin) elokuvaan. Vastaelokuva muistuttaa jatkuvasti katsojaa siitä, että tämä katsoo elokuvaa konstruoituna tekstinä, ei elokuvallisuutensa häivyttävänä ”todellisuutena”, kuten Hollywood-elokuvassa. Artikkelissa Wollenin käsitettä sovelletaan Monty Pythonin komediaan, jossa on vahvat vastaelokuvalliset piirteensä. Huomionarvoisaa on, että Monty Pythonin median roolia korostava komedia ja vastaelokuvakeskustelu olivat samanaikaisia ilmiöitä. Ne ilmentävät 1960–1970-lukujen elokuvaesteettistä ja -kerronnallista ajattelua.Monty Python sekä parodioi uuden aallon elokuvaa ja taide-elokuvaa ylipäätään televisiosarjassaan Monty Pythonin lentävä sirkus (Monty Python’s Flyng Circus, Iso-Britannia 1969–1974) että otti siitä vaikutteita omiin kokoillanelokuviinsa. Artikkelissa analysoidaan Lentävän sirkuksen sketsejä sekä ryhmän toista elokuvaa Hullu maailma (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Iso-Britannia 1975) komediana, jossa on vastaava tavoite kuin vastaelokuvalla: katsojan tietoisena pitäminen ja tämän samastumisen estäminen. Tärkeä ero kuitenkin on, että vastaelokuvasta poiketen Monty Python on komediaa. Tämän vuoksi artikkelissa Wollenin teoreettista vastaelokuvan typologiaa (1982) sovelletaan komediaan viimeksi mainitun erityispiirteet huomioiden.Monty Python’s Comedy as Counter-CinemaIn 1972, English film theorist Peter Wollen launched the term “counter-cinema” to describe films of Jean-Luc Godard, which Wollen saw as oppositional to the mainstream cinema of Hollywood. The key idea in counter-cinema is that it constantly reminds the spectator that (s)he is watching a film as a constructed representation, not as cinematic “reality”, which is the objective of mainstream cinema. In the article, Wollen’s arguments are applied in an analysis of Monty Python’s comedy, which has a strong counter-cinematic style to it. It is notable that Monty Python’s comedy and the discussion on counter-cinema were contemporaneous phenomena.Monty Python parodied New Wave, and Art Cinema in general, in their sketch comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus (UK 1969–1974). However, as they became filmmakers, they were also highly influenced by Art Cinema. The article analyses sketches of the Flying Circus and the feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (UK 1975), the most counter-cinematic of troupe’s films, as comedies with parallel objectives to counter-cinema: keeping the spectator conscious of the constructed world on screen, and thus preventing identification with it. However, it is crucial to understand that there is a key difference, too: unlike counter-cinema, Monty Python is comedy. Hence, Wollen’s later typology of counter-cinema (1982) is applied to Monty Python with regard to that important difference.

El cinco de octubre de 1969, los cimientos de la BBC se tambalearon con la explosión de una forma radicalmente nueva de hacer comedia: Monty Python Flying Circus. La serie que iba a estar en antena durante cinco años ininterrumpidos, el último episodio se emitió el 5 de diciembre de 1974, se convirtió con gran rapidez en un éxito clamoroso. Los Python recogieron el legado del mítico The Goon Show o las comedias de la Ealing, así como de figuras tan relevantes con Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers o Richard Lester que cristaliza en un irreverente programa dispuesto a cuestionar inmisericordemente las formas televisivas y las convenciones culturales. La serie resultó ser un espacio abonado a la experimentación estilística y temática mediante la utilización de una compleja forma de comedia que hizo estragos no sólo con el aparato cinematográfico sino también con la cultura contemporánea.Palabras clave: Comedia, Monty Python, Flying Circus, Televisión Británica.

Abstract In his 1990s studies of visual humor, Noël Carroll left to “future researchers” the laborious task of developing a “comprehensive and rigorous classification of the phenomena” pertaining to “the sight gag.” Carroll contributed five possible items belonging to such a taxonomy, i. e., “the mutual interference gag” (e. g., a character’s perspective vs the viewer’s one), “mimed metaphors” (e. g., Chaplin’s bread rolls as dancing feet), “the object analog” (e. g., a tuba used as an umbrella), “the switch image” (i. e., reinterpretations forced by montage) and “the solution gag” (e. g., the character’s inventiveness surprises the viewer). Following the implicit reference to rhetoric built in the very names of some of these items, this article shows how the well-established tropes of classical rhetoric, indeed three hundred of them, can be employed, with a modicum of analogical creativity, in order to address the visual component of comedic sketches, as exemplified by Monty Python’s famous Flying Circus.

At a small suburban dinner party, the hostess asks a guest if he would like some more. Bunging on a silly accent, he grunts, "no, look. I couldn't eat another thing, I'm absolutely stuffed." Everyone at the table smiles. The host, who has no ear for accents, says, "oh, go on monsieur, wouldn't you like an after-dinner mint?" Smiles widen. "No. Bugger off," says the first guest. "O go on sir, it's only wafer-thin." "No, no," cry the other guests. "You're supposed to say, 'just one?'" "Sorry," says the host, much abashed. The first guest, however, picks up his cue and says, "oh alright, just one." Then he puts up his hand. "No really," he says, in his normal voice. "Unless you want me to explode." This causes the remaining guests to fall about laughing. "What," wonders the American at the table, aloud, "was that?!" Was it play? Certainly, it bears most of the elements prescribed by Huizinga as characteristic of play. It occurred spontaneously, according to pre-arranged rules which the participants all knew (except the American, but exclusivity too is a characteristic of play). It had a beginning and a clear end. It was not productive but rather was performed for its own sake. That is, it did not perform any work, such as helping to close the meal or providing information, but merely made the players happy. It was accompanied by the requisite feeling of joy and there was an element of tension (getting the script right). Further, the event incorporated two of the social practices which Huizinga identified as amongst the most playful -- performance and ritual. But there are two elements that Huizinga identified as being characteristic of play which do not quite fit the above scenario. Interestingly, they are the two characteristics about which Huizinga is most adamant. The first is the stricture regarding place. Huizinga argues that all play occurs in a specific, often dedicated, playspace. The dining room table, however, is hardly a defined play-space; indeed many mothers would argue it was precisely not a play-space. Perhaps it was a play-space in that the child in the back bedroom was not "playing", while everyone in the dining room was "included". The second question regards Huizinga's assertion that play happens in a "time apart". The performance described above, however, happened during dinner -- again, a time which many would regard as designated "not play-time". Perhaps the little ritual might be regarded as "time apart" -- a diversionary loop in linear time, if you like -- in that it did not progress the course of the meal. Huizinga, of course, wrote as a social philosopher. His work goes on to categorize the play element in cultural activities such as politics, art, music, games, and so on. If it is not limited to sport or the make-believe activities of children, what is play? How is it (if this is not entirely the wrong word) practised? If, for example, we went back to the dinner party, would the people there be able to identify what they had just done as play? Nor do my recollections of work, either as a secretary or later as a postgrad, bear out the complete separate-ness of play which Huizinga proposed. Rather, while the diversionary element is retained, for adults at least, play seems to be largely embedded in the stream of work, often occuring in a workspace, during worktime. Play for adults is a quick game of solitaire while answering a phone enquiry, netsurfing while the photocopier runs, or a bitchy (but fortunately silent) IRC chat with another worker, even in the same office. It is far more like de Certeau's notion of la perruque, though necessarily less productive. Kirsty Leishman's article about working in a convenience store bears out my initial feeling that most people's experience of play -- in their day-to-day lives at least, rather than on holidays (another can of worms entirely) -- consists of playful acts or moments, rather than Huizinga's "acts apart". Play, however, is consistently discursively constructed as the opposite of work. As such, it has a place in our thinking about creativity, but there remains a degree of suspicion with which we regard creative work, and even creative work-places. For example, Pixar, the company who (with Disney) created the computer-animated features Toy Story (1995) and A Bug's Life (1998), is described thus: "at Pixar, Steve Jobs' animation house in nearby Richmond, the mood is quirky and relentlessly upbeat ... . On a typical workday, employees' kids and pets roam the halls. 'Work hard and play hard, and in between time you're flying down the hall on a scooter,' says Pixar's head recruiter, Rachel Hannah." A number of significant elements appear to emerge from this description. The first is the description of Pixar as an animation "house", relating it back to the domestic, the realm of the private, the realm of play (as opposed to the public realm of work). This is underlined by the association with children (who are free to play) and pets (more domesticity -- and of course, what you do with your pet, usually, is to play with it). Working at Pixar (especially compared to work in university admin, or a convenience store) can hardly amount to work at all. It's too much fun. Clearly, in mobilising this kind of discourse, Pixar seeks to enhance its reputation for creativity. In that particular industry, such a discourse has two functions. One is to enhance the "fun" and child-appropriate-ness of the films in a marketing arena. The other, however, disguises the very real, very mundane and very tedious work that actually goes into computer animation (not to mention Disney's well-known corporate bastardry), which, objectively, is far more like factory production than we would like to think. The technology of these productions is always discussed; the work of production is never mentioned. For example, another review of Toy Story claims that rendering the film took "800,000 computer hours", but makes no mention of how many people worked for how long to operate those computers. Thus, descriptions of animation workplaces as playgrounds feed into the "magic" discourses which are traditionally associated with animation. One's first instinct is to disbelieve the above type of description of a workplace as mere "publicity", as a lie constructed to perpetuate the conditions of production. As Smoodin points out, the technological and creative discourses around animation embody one of the "paradoxes of capitalist mythology: industry becomes a wonderland and work turns into fun, while at the same time workers disappear" (96). Academic use of the notion of play picks up on this suspicion, and propagates the discursive division between work and play. Our good leftist assessments of power structures would suggest that there is no room for play in the workplace. There is even less room, presumably, for fun. Fun is a notion fairly effectively erased from academic discourse, as Rutsky has pointed out. Rather, academic use of "play" to describe the structure and nature of texts such as IRC chat, or animated films, turns play into a kind of legitimated "not-work". Unfortunately, it becomes not-fun as well. The problem is that the above descriptions of "work" in an animation studio may be more or less accurate. Certainly, there is a lot of tedious work in animation, but the animation houses I have visited (including Disney Studios in Sydney) are playful places. They do involve loud music, people who dress funny, visiting dogs and an abundance of what can only be described as toys. (Admittedly, some of these 'toys' are very big, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are produced by Silicon Graphics.) Similarly, my work as an academic pretty well fits Huizinga's definition of play, with the exception, again, of a separateness in time and space (I am, after all, writing at home on a console still Tetris-warm). And, while the kind of play performed by secretaries and convenience-store clerks in their workplaces might be a fairly desultory kind of play, with a somewhat subdued sense of "fun", it is play nonetheless. It seems that the divide between work and play is perhaps less clear in our lived experiences than it is in our writings. The fuzziness of the divide -- and the determination to maintain its existence, if only academically -- is something deserving of further attention. References De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. 1949. Trans. George Steiner. London: Paladin, 1970. Johnson, Brian D. "Toy Story." Rev. of Toy Story, dir. John Lasseter. Maclean's 11 Dec. 1995: 74. "Mr Creosote Sketch". Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Dir. Terry Jones. Perf. John Cleese, Terry Jones. Celandine Films, 1983. Rutsky, R. L., and Justin Wyatt. "Serious Pleasures: Cinematic Pleasure and the Notion of Fun." Cinema Journal 30.1 (1990): 3-19. Smoodin, E. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Sound Era. Oxford: Roundhouse, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Rebecca Farley. "How Do You Play?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/how.php>. Chicago style: Rebecca Farley, "How Do You Play?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 5 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/how.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Rebecca Farley. (1998) How do you play? M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/how.php> ([your date of access]).

Neste Trabalho de Projeto final de mestrado abordam-se vários aspetos relacionados com a tradução na legendagem da série “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, recorrendo a exemplos retirados de seis episódios da série. Ao longo deste trabalho identificam-se também algumas ocorrências problemáticas na tradução, comparando as legendas na LC (Língua de Chegada) com o guião original na LP (Língua de Partida). O objetivo deste trabalho é o de efetuar uma análise à tradução existente (legendagem) e verificar as dificuldades na tradução, através da teoria sobre modalidades tradutórias e tendo sempre em conta o contexto cultural da LC, sendo necessária uma adaptação do texto original para a LC. Apontar-se-á também a relação entre língua e cultura; Abstract: Analysing the translation of British Comedy (Britcom) scripts: “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” In this Masters essay project, it’ll be appointed various aspects associated with the translation in the subtitling of the TV series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” consulting examples taken from six episodes of the show. During this essay it’ll also be identified some problematic occurrences in the translation, confronting the subtitles in the TL (Target Language) with the original script in the SL (Source Language). This essay’s goal is to do an analysis on the existent translation (subtitles) and check its translation struggles, talking about the translation procedures and taking in account the TL cultural context, being necessary adapting the original text for the TL. Also in this essay there will be some talk about the relation between language and culture.

Abstract British-made series airing in the United States featured themes and music that differed in style but were no less effective in dramatic storytelling. Edwin Astley’s music for The Saint, Secret Agent, The Baron, and other shows was distinctive in its use of wordless soprano and jazz harpsichord. The Avengers had tongue-in-cheek scores by Laurie Johnson, and Doctor Who was a rarity: an all-electronic theme by Ron Grainer. John Barry’s theme for The Persuaders was a huge hit in England, although not in America. Masterpiece Theatre imported dozens of UK adaptations of classic literature, scored by some of England’s top composers: “I, Claudius,” “Jewel in the Crown,” “Jeeves and Wooster,” “Sherlock,” “Downton Abbey.” Mystery! matched them for intriguing scores, including “Sherlock Holmes,” “Inspector Morse,” and “Poirot.” Great Performances grabbed the other UK classics, notably “Brideshead Revisited.” Pride & Prejudice aired on A&E, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus ironically employed a march by American John Philip Sousa. The themes for Masterpiece Theatre, Mystery!, and Great Performances also have fascinating backstories.

With the advent of the electronic mail system in the 1970s, a new opportunity for direct marketing using unsolicited electronic mail became apparent. In 1978, Gary Thuerk compiled a list of those on the Arpanet and then sent out a huge mailing publicising Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC—now Compaq) systems. The reaction from the Defense Communications Agency (DCA), who ran Arpanet, was very negative, and it was this negative reaction that ensured that it was a long time before unsolicited e-mail was used again (Templeton, 2003). As long as the U.S. government controlled a major part of the backbone, most forms of commercial activity were forbidden (Hayes, 2003). However, in 1993, the Internet Network Information Center was privatized, and with no central government controls, spam, as it is now called, came into wider use. The term spam was taken from the Monty Python Flying Circus (a UK comedy group) and their comedy skit that featured the ironic spam song sung in praise of spam (luncheon meat)—“spam, spam, spam, lovely spam”—and it came to mean mail that was unsolicited. Conversely, the term ham came to mean e-mail that was wanted. Brad Templeton, a UseNet pioneer and chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has traced the first usage of the term spam back to MUDs (Multi User Dungeons), or real-time multi-person shared environment, and the MUD community. These groups introduced the term spam to the early chat rooms (Internet Relay Chats). The first major UseNet (the world’s largest online conferencing system) spam sent in January 1994 and was a religious posting: “Global alert for all: Jesus is coming soon.” The term spam was more broadly popularised in April 1994, when two lawyers, Canter and Siegel from Arizona, posted a message that advertized their information and legal services for immigrants applying for the U.S. Green Card scheme. The message was posted to every newsgroup on UseNet, and after this incident, the term spam became synonymous with junk or unsolicited e-mail. Spam spread quickly among the UseNet groups who were easy targets for spammers simply because the e-mail addresses of members were widely available (Templeton, 2003).