How Monty Python Became a Part of Pop Culture

In the time of the hippy movement, anti-baby pills and anarchy, they penetrated the boundaries of freedom and entered the legend.

Monty Python are one of the great examples of intelligent humour, however many do not understand its irony and radicalism, so they reject it.

“Monty Python did not emerge without a context, and that is where the reason lies of their interest to us. They played with multiple meanings and media meanings, and an intellectual circle formed around them who understood the humour” said Nikica Gilic, a professor at the Zagreb University and lover of Monty Python.

Unlike standard humour

The series started broadcasting in 1969 and immediately attracted great attention for standing out as different from “standard humour”. The uniqueness of their style was comprised of sketches which would often be considered as thoughtless and not interconnected, and often they would not have an ending, and in some cases the was no start. This was the result of an unusual creative process by them who would work on sketches in groups of two, and then gather together, and decide what would enter the show. As John Cleese said on one occasion himself, if they spent too long on the ending of a sketch, they would simply break it in half.

Taking into account the time that they started creating their series, Monty Python moved the boundaries of censorship and conservatism. The best example of this is the BBC broadcasting company that was, and remains, one of the most conservative television stations, and they allowed them to be shown. In the time of the hippy movement, anti-baby pills and anarchy, they penetrated the boundaries of freedom and this is the reasons they managed to penetrate the BBC.

“Monty Python is general culture today, just as it is normal to recognize who is Madam Bovary, we also must know who John Cleese is. Not only did they foresee what the public will recognize as humour, but they managed to repeat, recapitulate tradition. So they managed to impose themselves in culture” said Branko Kostelnik, a journalist, publicist and musician at a public forum.

However, the greatest speciality of Monty Python, for which so many people love them today, and why so many comedians are compared to them, is their radicalism. They were radical because they made humour post-modern. They touched upon taboo topics that could not be talked about at the time, from homosexuals, cannibalism and similar topics, and with that stopped any further movement in that direction.