The Monty Python Classic 'The Life of Brian' Relentlessly Mocked Christianity Forty Years Ago, Comedy Needs to Do the Same Thing to the Church of Wokeness Today
/Estimated Reading Time: 3 Minutes 33 seconds
The woke are winning the culture war and comedy needs to step up and expose these ludicrous fools for their fanaticism before it’s too late.
The Life of Brian, Monty Python’s classic cinematic mocking of Christianity, was so scandalous for its blasphemy back when it was released in 1979, that it was actually banned by some British theatre owners, while others gave it the scarlet letter of an X-rating.
An X-rating in those days was the movie rating equivalent of being stoned to death for saying “Jehovah!”
As a sign of how dramatically the culture has shifted in the last forty years, the BBFC now rates The Life of Brian a very warm and fuzzy 12A – suitable for viewers 12 and up.
The film isn’t considered dangerous for its blasphemy anymore because Christianity doesn’t much matter anymore…and I say that as a practicing Catholic.
Christianity with its endemic corruption, devout fanatics and exuberant magical thinking has been usurped in our culture by a newly ascendant religious force even more severe in nature.
That force is wokeness, which is accompanied by its own inquisition and enforcement wing – cancel culture.
If you doubt that wokeness is the new dominant cultural religion, consider this…in most places in the U.S. you aren’t allowed to go to church because of coronavirus but are wholly encouraged to attend Black Lives Matter protests - which apparently confer some magical and mystical powers of immunity upon attendees.
Meet the new religion…same as the old religion.
Monty Python were such a brilliant comedic force they not only obliterated the old religion in The Life of Brian, but also ridiculed the new one too, forty years before it rose to power.
In the film there is a scene - which would never get made in today’s stultifying p.c. environment - that deals with transgenderism.
Set in the Coliseum of Jerusalem, the scene shows the People’s Front of Judea…not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front…comprised of Stan (Eric Idle), Reg (John Cleese), Francis (Michael Palin) and Judith (Sue Jones-Davies), meeting to discuss their goals.
When Stan keeps interjecting feminine pronouns into the proposed language…he is asked by Francis why he keeps bringing up women?
Stan - “I want to be one….I want to be a woman….from now on I want you all to call me Loretta…It’s my right as a man.”
Judith – “Why would you want to be Loretta, Stan?
Stan – “I want to have babies…It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants.”
Reg - “You can’t have babies!”
Stan - “Don’t oppress me!”
Reg - “I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”
After some hemming and hawing, Francis chimes in with a solution.
Francis (to Stan) - “We shall fight our oppressors for your right to have a baby, brother…ooops…sister, sorry.”
Reg - “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies if he can’t have babies?”
Francis – “It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”
Reg – “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”
It is impossible to imagine any comedy of today having the testicular fortitude to do a scene as brutally honest and savagely insightful as that.
“Symbolic struggle against reality” is the perfect definition of wokeness and this is why we need a new Monty Python-esque group to make a film eviscerating wokeness as exquisitely and relentlessly as the The Life of Brian did Christianity…maybe call it The Life of Karen.
Wokeness, with its incessant self-righteousness, aggressive illogic, absurd preferred pronouns and ridiculously insufferable p.c. jargon, is a gloriously target rich comedy environment.
Sadly, there’s no Monty Python equivalent in our times comically capable of dismantling the new Church of Wokeness. The most prominent sketch comedy show today is Saturday Night Live, and they’re shameless, politically correct lap dogs.
In stark contrast to the ballsy comedy bravado displayed by Monty Python forty years ago, watching SNL’s impotent, flaccid, woke-approved humor is like getting a scolding from a Methodist temperance movement a hundred years ago.
SNL is so neutered by wokeness, in 2019 they actually fired comedian Shane Gillis before he ever appeared on the show because he offended the Cancel Culture Centurions and Tiny Torquemadas of Twitter…the horror!
Besides suffocating the comedy of today, the woke are actively scouring tv and film history searching for retroactive blasphemers to silence.
The Office, Community, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and Fawlty Towers, among others, have all had episodes scrubbed from streaming services for their past politically incorrect sins.
Let us pray to our Lord and Savior Brian and his Sacred Shoe and Holy Gourd, that Monty Python’s glorious canon is not next on the cancel culture crucifixion list.
By today’s woke standards they’d certainly deserve it for their insightful dismantling of transgenderism, their mockery of speech impediments in the form of ‘pwonouncements’ by Pilate and his ‘fwiend’ Biggus Dickus, and for the crime of having men play female roles!!
“On the bright side”…if Monty Python does get crucified at least they’ll go out singing!
The bottom line is this…wokeness must be stopped and I believe the best way to stop it is to mock it. Sadly though, the Church of Wokeness is winning the culture war because unlike Monty Python forty years ago, today’s comedy hasn’t found the courage to tell the unvarnished, hysterical truth…and we are all worse off because of it.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2020