Howl Stretching Time

John Cleese has moved from London to Bath because he feels more comfortable in an old-fashioned, British place.  Or, to put it negatively, he feels uncomfortable with the new, multi-cultural London.  Cleese has always been known to speak his mind, and he's such an institution I don't suppose too many of his liberal friends will be troubled by his feelings, which seem more generational than political.

But his statement has caught the attention of Ed Driscoll in a short piece entitled "Man’s Crisis of Identity at the Dawn of the 21st Century" (a nod to an episode of Monty Python): 

...what did he expect? [....] Besides being, at times, one of the greatest comedy shows ever, Monty Python was a weekly assault on the values of post-war England. And England’s societal bedrock of wisdom and knowledge proved in retrospect, to be surprisingly fragile. If you’re throwing traditional values onto a bonfire every seven days, isn’t the inference you’d like to see them changed?

Of course, you shouldn’t be all that surprised if change for its own sake doesn’t go quite as planned. Or that [...] the new era turns out to be, in many ways, less tolerant than the old one.

First, while there was an explosion of British satire in the 60s, I wouldn't give it too much blame, or credit, for changing the direction of England.  It had its place, but post-War Europe was going to change no matter what.  I'd guess that the satirists were better at picking up on trends than creating them.

Second, though some call Monty Python satirical, I never thought it was their strong suit. Compare them to Beyond The Fringe, a show that used satire in an almost unprecedented and comedically powerful manner (and even then, a lot of their best stuff is not topical, but timeless).  Python was more traditional sketch comedy taken several steps beyond into the world of the surreal.  I think this is one reason why their humor isn't especially dated.  While there are occasional references to people and issues of the day, it's mostly operating at another level. (I still remember a snotty piece on Monty Python by National Lampoon, where they mocked the troupe for being cowardly, and taking on figures like Queen Victoria.)

I suppose Python mocked Britain, but it mocked almost everything it came in contact with, old and new.  It's hard to give it a particular political slant.  The main thing they rebelled against were the rules telling comedians how to put on a show.